In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are turning to phygital to boost customer engagement. “Phygital,” a combination of “physical” and “digital,” doesn’t just enhance customer experience. It’s a whole new way to tell your brand’s story.
Chemi Katz, the CEO and co-founder of Namogoo, writes in TotalRetail, “[Phygital] presents an opportunity to create a more immersive, engaging and interactive customer experience. Retailers from Sephora to Amazon.com are utilizing phygital strategies to reap benefits, including increased conversions, personalized customer journeys, and boosted brand loyalty.”
Sephora has led by example. It has improved customer engagement by offering multichannel experiences and implementing artificial intelligence (AI) to give customers an interactive in-store experience. Consumers can interact with augmented reality (AR) and facial recognition to get their perfect shade of foundation. The mobile app also uses location-based marketing to share relevant information, such as store maps and deals.
Keeping this in mind, I have outlined some of the benefits phygital offers brands below.
- Enhanced customer experience. Phygital can help businesses provide seamless and engaging customer experiences with virtual reality, AR, AI and other digital tools. According to Janelle Estes, chief insights officer at UserTesting, “embracing phygital reveals a growing recognition that creating seamless customer experiences across multiple channels is no longer enough — it’s now about fusing channels to engage customers with a more powerful and memorable experience than a single channel alone can provide.”
- Increased engagement and participation. By incorporating interactive media elements, companies can create more engaging and memorable offerings. For example, the World Tennis League (WTL) partnered with Akshaya.io to create a phygital marketplace for fans to share unique collectibles and entice customers with a “once in a lifetime chance” to meet the sport’s biggest stars. Akshaya.io and the WTL successfully achieved their goal of creating “tangible, emotional, and digital experiences” for fans on a popular platform, the NFT marketplace.
- Improved data collection. By enhancing the customer experience with phygital, companies can collect more first-party customer data about engagement. They can also identify essential touchpoints on the customer journey. Marketing and communication teams can leverage this data to plan events or campaigns and analyze these proactive effort results.
- Increased accessibility. Carol Martinez at Inclusive City Maker states, “Phygital experiences actually combine the best of both worlds (physical and digital) to remove accessibility barriers and foster inclusion.” For example, online streaming platforms allow people in remote or underserved areas to access live events, creating opportunities to participate regardless of location.
- Reduced carbon footprint. Phygital experiences lessen the need for resources like transportation to events, materials to build event venues and more. For instance, instead of exhibiting at CES, Panasonic created a digital booth to showcase its sustainable tech and offered virtual tours. In this case, phygital eliminated the need to use build the booth and repurposed some of the company’s existing factories to showcase these sustainability tours.
Leveraging phygital to create interactive experiences can enhance your brand’s impact. It helps you tell your story in a new and exciting way.