• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer, January 11, 2015

We have already heard the stats from many sources that mobile played a much bigger role in holiday shopping in late 2014 than ever before. Consumers' comfort level with devices as research and even purchase channels took a bigger upswing than even iPhone sales. A little less clear has been how mobile worked within a larger omnichannel plan for retailers to capture consumers wherever they could but still focus on in-store experiences.

Late last week, one of the biggest retailers in the country gave at least a few specifics about the synergies of its multiple channels and their impact on increased sales. The company claims that sales at Target.com on both Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday were up 40% from the same days in 2013. This was part of a public relations dump at their official online magazine “A Bullseye View.”

Like its main rival Amazon, Target tends to cherry pick the numbers they release and the ways in which they shape the metrics, leaving as many questions as answers. Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday were doorbusters at the site, but nothing is said here yet about overall holiday sales. Well, I guess that is why we call it content “marketing.”

Still there are some interesting overall benchmarks in here. Most notably, the company says that 60% of traffic to Target.com in November and December was from devices, double the share from last year. Of course the big question for marketers is how much of that traffic was converting on device rather than being fulfilled elsewhere. The role of mobile devices in research and shopping is as undeniable as it is hard to quantify, since conversions still tend to occur elsewhere. Target doesn’t say, simply teasing that purchase made on mobile phones on Black Friday last year were twice as high as last year.

Target wants to make clear that its mobile presence is driving in-store traffic. Not only are store pickups higher, but things like store maps were accessed over 400,000 times. Also, activity on its often-lauded coupon app Cartwheel has grown substantially. The apps added 2 million new users during the holiday period. The company claims that the app itself has been responsible for more than $1 Billion in promotional sales since launch.

Overall online activity was helping in-store fulfillment, however, if Thanksgiving is an indication. Pick-up orders hit a record, albeit an unspecified one. And on the cutoff date for shipped orders arriving by Christmas, Target.com reported double the sales of last year.  

Target claims it effectively activated and then leveraged the social channels as well. And, again, mobile was key. The company says tens of thousands of people used the #TargetStyle hashtag in Instagram to feature their own personal style and Target products.

Target says that the much-increased role of mobile in the purchase cycle this year is fueling its optimism that the apps will continue to innovate and drive sales in 2015. The iPhone app leads with practicality – shopping lists and an in-store mapping feature that helps the shopper find what is on the list. They seem to be positioning it more as a store companion. The tablet app is focused as much on product discovery (using trend analysis) and converting. Since early in the iPad’s life, it became clear that it was a formidable e-commerce engine where conversions could even track higher than desktop.

There are a lot of missing pieces in this tease about Target’s overall omnichannel strategy. The role of email and search in the mix are absent, for instance. But Target does make clear that it sees mobile apps as a central part of an omnichannel approach. Apps engage loyal customers with a formidable depth and breadth. The trick is getting people to them and coming back to them. But they do represent that most personal touch point that most easily knits together the other channels, especially retail.