AppDate: RetailTune’s new app for the store

ENGAGE.IT
PAMBIANCONEWS.COM

Reviews, messages, information requests, and in-store bookings. Starting today, stores can handle all online user requests simply, immediately, and quickly thanks to AppDate, the RetailTune app that lets sales staff turn digital requests into offline sales.

RetailTune’s AppDate is not just a simple application: it’s a tool that creates a connection between the user and the store. Today more than ever, the user’s purchase journey is dynamic and calls for immediate, personalized information. A user browsing a brand’s products online is sending a very simple signal: they’re dedicating part of their time, they’re interested in the brand, and they may even be asking for information. It’s precisely at that moment that the brand and the store need to step in, engage the user, and give them the right answers.

UPDATING STORE OPENING HOURS

Updating store opening hours across digital touchpoints — especially for companies with hundreds of single-brand, franchise, and multi-brand stores — is a genuinely costly task, and unthinkable if all the data has to be managed centrally from headquarters. Anyone who had to do it in past years, when hours changed all the time, knows this well.

To meet precisely this need for decentralization and giving stores ownership, in 2020 RetailTune launched the B2B app that lets a store update its regular hours and add special hours, pushing them out to every touchpoint (from Google Business Profile to Facebook, from Store Locator to Apple Maps) simply and immediately. By downloading the native mobile app, the store manager can, from anywhere and at any time, manage their store’s data and propagate it in real time across every touchpoint.

MANAGING USER REQUESTS AND CONVERSION ACTIVITIES

But that’s not all. AppDate is now also getting push notifications: every user request to the store generates an in-app notification. So for every new review, question, or message left by potential customers on Google Business Profile, sales staff will get a notification on their smartphone and can handle it directly from their phone, anywhere and in real time.

VIEWING STORE INSIGHTS

A dedicated analytics section will show in-store visits, the number of times the store was viewed online, requests for directions, calls, appointments booked, and in-store item reservations. It will even show the items most viewed online by users near the store.

“We started from a very basic assumption: it’s clear that if we ask store staff to spend time learning how to use a new tool, we’ll end up delaying the delivery of information to the end consumer and, in turn, their satisfaction,” explains Claudio Agazzi, founder of RetailTune. “We needed to find a simple way to communicate, which is why we thought of the smartphone, a device used by 80% of people worldwide, one that everyone is now highly familiar with. The process is very intuitive: just download the app, register with the credentials provided by the brand, and start using it. See for yourself: less than 10 seconds are enough to update hours across every touchpoint. And even less to respond to a user’s request and turn them into a customer. To us, this is the revolution of Local Digital Marketing: a return to the store, to human contact, but powered by technology!”