Omnichannel in the future of shopping malls: the Ceetrus Nhood and RetailTune case
ENGAGE.IT
The past year's crisis put physical retail to the test, but no one suffered more than shopping malls, which experienced the greatest deprivations: tenant closures, cancelled in-mall events, partial weekend closures, and the absence of all those vital activities that resulted in the disappearance of consumers.
Physical retail is a hugely important sector for the Italian economy, with 1,200 facilities, 36,000 stores, 587,000 people employed and a turnover of 139.1 billion euros. Before the Covid emergency, the sector counted, in Italy alone, over 1 billion customers a year, but it now finds itself in the middle of an epoch-making transition, one that necessarily leads it to evolve toward omnichannel.
A pioneer in bringing omnichannel to shopping malls has been Ceetrus Nhood, a company born from the merger of Ceetrus and Nodi, with the goal of sharing its know-how and giving rise to a new real estate player serving citizens and listening to local communities.
It's with this outlook that in 2019 Ceetrus Nhood began working with RetailTune, an agency specializing in Drive to Store strategies, assigning 12 shopping malls to the project: CC Vimodrone, CC Fenicotteri, CC Olbia Mare, CC Cagliari Marconi, CC Rescaldina, CC Casamassima, CC Neapolis, CC Belpò, CC Porte dello Jonio, CC Porte di Sassari, CC Adda Center, Fanocenter.
The goal of the partnership was ambitious: on one hand, increasing the visibility of shopping malls by leveraging all the proximity searches, including those containing the names of the stores inside them; on the other, giving customers, quickly and immediately, all the information that acts as a “driver” for in-store traffic: hours, address, contacts, and above all events and promotions that encourage them to visit the mall.
The project's activities also included a complete overhaul and management of Google My Business listings, the creation of a Store Locator for 10 shopping malls with a dedicated page for each tenant, and the management of reviews and questions arising from the Google listings.
“Managing these touchpoints in a uniform and centralized way allowed us, at the height of the health emergency, to coordinate the continuous changes in closures and reopenings, with the benefit of always keeping customers precisely informed” explains Simona Portigliotti, Marketing, Com CSR & Innovation Director at Ceetrus Nhood.
With the end of the first lockdown, shopping malls saw a surge in visits. Comparing Google Analytics data for the period May – August 2020 vs. the previous year, in terms of total Store Locator views, there was an increase of 171% for CC Adda Center, 120% for CC Rescaldina and Vimodrone, 95% for Fano Center, 86% for CC Casamassima, 74% for CC Neapolis and I Fenicotteri, 86% for CC Olbia Mare, and 47% for CC Porte Dello Jonio.
The same positive trend is also reflected in direct visits to the Store Locator, registering +585% for CC Rescaldina, +448% for CC Adda Center, +156% for Vimodrone, +93% for CC Fano Center, +78% for Neapolis and Olbia Mare, +58% for CC Casamassima.
On the Google My Business side, the same reference period saw a 32% increase in discovery searches — that is, searches that allow the mall's Google My Business listing to be discovered when a user searches for a store or a similar category. This figure is a sign of ongoing local SEO work aimed at improving the ranking of Google My Business listings for generic searches.
A significant increase also comes from calls made through Google My Business listings, which showed a +41% rise in the reference period — a figure that can be linked to the increase in traffic at the mall.
An important part of the project is also devoted to review management, which has proven to be an increasingly strategic activity that many brands have started devoting some of their resources to. It allows, in fact, identifying the strengths of shopping malls, but above all the biggest issues highlighted by customers, which deserve maximum attention in order to improve the shopping experience.
Carrying out an in-depth qualitative analysis makes it possible to identify the topics customers are most sensitive about: the wide range of stores, the services available, ongoing promotions and events, product quality, staff training, and above all compliance with COVID rules inside the mall.
“Responding to user reviews promptly and accurately brings benefits both in terms of search engine ranking, with a resulting increase in discovery searches, but above all in terms of customer care and loyalty. Here too, results were not long in coming: in the first quarter of 2021, January – March, looking at the 12 shopping malls, 92% of the reviews recorded were positive, highlighting customers' positive sentiment and their loyalty” Portigliotti points out.
“This has been an important journey that we undertook with Ceetrus Nhood – adds Claudio Agazzi, Founder of RetailTune – born thanks to the attentive, omnichannel-oriented vision of Simona Portigliotti, who believed in the project and in us. Last year was the annus horribilis for retail and shopping malls, one that saw an acceleration of certain digital processes. In this sense, Ceetrus Nhood found itself ready to face the new challenge, and the results achieved show that the path taken is the right one”.