Cultivating Customer Loyalty Through Immersive Experiences

What’s the best way to cultivate loyalty with customers? By building meaningful relationships with them. When customers feels emotionally connected to a brand, they're:

• 86% more likely to continue buying from the brand in the future.
• 52% more likely to go out of their way to purchase from that brand. 
• Spend up to 67% more and are up to 70% more likely to convert versus fresh prospects.

Let’s dig into why immersive experiences play a key role in customer engagement, and how they correlate to stronger relationships, greater loyalty, and more revenue. 

The Shifting Dynamic Between Customer and Brand

Brand loyalty today looks pretty different compared to ten years ago. Rather than shopping exclusively with a single brand, customers are more diversified—the average customer forms an emotional connection with roughly four or five different brands, and those connections can change at any time. 

Given this shift in attitude, businesses that want to stand out need to make every interaction count. That means delivering a compelling, personalized experience to each customer. Increasingly, this involves providing not just engagement but also immersion—for example, 61% of consumers prefer shopping at stores that offer an AR experience. 

Immersion, Loyalty, and Customer Satisfaction

In the context of online shopping, an immersive experience gives customers new ways to interact with a brand and its products. Leveraging technology like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), retailers can provide customers with a smooth, convenient, and more comfortable shopping experience.

Just like a frustrating experience can turn a customer against a business, the positive emotions associated with an exceptional experience cement that customer's loyalty.  Per PwC, a positive emotional connection makes customers likelier to not only buy more, but also to share their experience with friends and colleagues.

Building a More Immersive Shopping Experience

You cannot create a more engaging customer journey simply by deploying a few new technologies. To successfully transition to an immersive experience, you need to lay some strategic groundwork. Here are some suggestions:

• Have a clear understanding of your brand identity and values—and how you’re going to get those across to customers
• Map out the typical customer journey for each audience segment and analyze every touchpoint along the way that you’re able to
• Incorporate personalization through tools such as Monetate or Intellemize
• Stay on top of emerging technology and trends and explore use cases for your brand

‍

Here are some clients that have successfully used our solution to build loyalty in the real world: 

• Direct-to-consumer online jewelry retailer Jewlr increased conversion rates by 10.4% and revenue per visitor by 15.38% with Virtual Try On.
• H&T Pawnbrokers experienced a 380.55% increase in conversion rate after deploying Tangiblee's On-Model and Virtual Try On features. 
• Bario Neal, a sustainable online jewelry retailer, increased revenue per visitor by 159% by working with Tangiblee. 
• Vintage reseller What Goes Around Comes Around used Tangiblee to create a more consistent shopping experience, resulting in a 221% increase in revenue per visitor and a 227% higher conversion rate. 

The Future of Retail is Intelligent and Immersive

Immersive experiences are here to stay and will continue to define the retail landscape through 2024 and into the future. AR and VR technology continues to become more advanced, and we’re predicting that retailers will provide increasingly sophisticated experiences to their customers. Generative AI will further speed up immersive content, enabling deeper levels of personalization.

We’re expecting heavy investment into both Generative AI and immersive technology in the coming years—the retail market cap for immersive technology is projected to reach $42.5 billion that same year, so commensurate investment is sure to follow.

Meanwhile, customer loyalty strategies remain focused on using immersion and hyper-personalization to build relationships—a tried-and-true approach that has only grown more effective with the help of AI. 

Bringing Immersion and Customer Loyalty Together

Consumers now have more online shopping options than ever, and the e-commerce market has never been more competitive. Simply put: customer loyalty has never been more important.

To remain competitive, retailers are incentivized to embrace immersive experiences and familiarize themselves with emerging AI technology, enabling them to better adapt to a rapidly evolving market. This will help them better adapt to an evolving market while continuing to prioritize what's truly important: the customer.

Ready to go beyond traditional online retail with Tangiblee?

We understand the challenges of online shopping and we're here to help. Our sophisticated customer-facing AR and 3D visualization tools take guesswork out of the equation—by extracting data from your catalog, our software generates product images and 3D visualizations on the fly. Plus, our software seamlessly integrates into your backend without affecting site performance for a true plug-and-play solution. 

We've expanded beyond accessories, apparel, and home decor to cover sectors like department stores, fitness equipment, and pet supplies—we’re committed to tailoring our solutions to the unique needs of each client.

The future of retail is immersive, and we’re bringing the future to you: schedule a free demo to see how Tangiblee can answer your product visualization needs for retail.

‍