Grocery Store Digital Communications Trends: The Rise Of Email & The Fall Of Snapchat by Kelli Windsor, Food Marketing Institute
As a digital communications professional I like to take a step back from my day-to-day job of actually doing digital communications and look at FMI’s Food Retailing Industry Speaks with a practitioner’s eye. I like to look at the tactics my fellow communications professionals are pursing in their B2C efforts and examine what is working and what is not. I’ve shared my thoughts in previous blog posts, but I’ll be honest, today I’m a bit surprised by what I’m going to write.
The Rise of Email
According to the Speaks survey respondents, email is the wave of the future for grocery store customer outreach. Ninety-two percent of respondent’s report using email to communicate with shoppers and when they share their plans to invest more in the future, email ranks number one with 63 percent planning to allocate more resources in the next two years. For comparison sake, 96 percent of respondents are invested in Facebook currently, but only 60 percent plan to allocate additional resources to this communication vehicle in the next two years.
So, the future of grocery store customer communications is through email? I consulted my marketing colleagues for some insight and I think the reality isn’t more emails, but better emails. The rise of marketing automation systems that have the power to provide more personalized content to recipients could be one reason more food retailers are planning future investments in email communications.