“Phygital” refers to the coming together of the physical and the digital. It’s a portmanteau of two words – Physical and Digital.
In a marketing context, it refers to using real-world and online touchpoints to provide an integrated, seamless customer journey.
As consumer touchpoints continuously increase, Phygital aims to offer consumers a coherent, integrated journey across all of them. While also using new technologies to augment the customer experience, and leverage customer data in the real world.
Using a retail example, in-store sensors might indicate that customers are ignoring a certain part of the store. This data can be used to inform the layout of your shop, and help you understand whether the product stocked there is uninteresting to customers, or whether there’s a problem with the customer experience or layout of the store.
Industries where Phygital will move the needle most are those currently being disrupted by new digital entrants; brick-and-mortar retailers in particular are beginning to recognize the potential of augmenting in-store customer experiences with digital technologies.
As digital marketers, our CRM and marketing automation systems come into play. These channels can be used to send personalized messages to customers based on their interaction with brick-and-mortar stores, thus bridging the gap between physical and digital.
Phygital technologies
- Computer vision
- Machine learning
- Smart sensors
Conclusion
While only a nascent marketing approach, and often the subject of small-scale experiments like pop-ups or retail experiments. Expect phygital to become an increasing part of many brand’s core strategies.