A consumer who shops with Bon-Ton in store, online and on her mobile device spends more money with the retailer than a consumer who shops in just one of those ways, Tiffany Cooley, vice president of marketing for department store chain The Bon-Ton Stores Inc., said at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago yesterday.

Four times more money, to be exact, she added.

And so catering to omnichannel shoppers and turning more shoppers into multiple channel shoppers is key to Bon-Ton’s strategy, Cooley said. Bon-Ton defines omnichannel as a combination of online sales and sales through its Let Us Find It program in which store clerks locate out-of-stock items for shoppers and order the products for shipment to the customer. To help drive more consumers to use more than one shopping platform, Bon-Ton offers shoppers bonus reward points if they do, Cooley said.

Bon-Ton also works to connect with its shoppers via email and social media, and knows that a consumer may be on her mobile device when accessing the retailer online.

“Mobile has really crept its way into the customer’s life in a way that allows the brand to connect with a customer any time throughout the day or night,” Cooley said.

Bon-Ton measures its performance on these channels depending on the program, such as impressions for its social media marketing or increased basket size and conversion for loyalty shopping.

Mobile is also important when shoppers are in stores, Cooley said. Bon-Ton cannot have human personal shopping assistants for every shopper, so the app and mobile site is meant to fill this void, Cooley said. For example, a shopper can save her Bon-Ton credit card digitally in the app and take a picture of her receipt with her smartphone to store it digitally.

“Mobile is a personal assistant to consumers,” she said.

Bon-Ton, No. 169 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, reported omnichannel sales grew more than 20% year over year during the quarter, with mobile growing “in the triple digits,” CEO Kathy Bufano told analysts during a conference call for the retailer’s first quarter ended April 30, according a transcript from Seeking Alpha.

“36% of our omnichannel traffic came through our mobile site,” Bufano said. “We have a number of upgrades to our mobile interface underway and more mobile-friendly access to our Your Rewards loyalty program benefits. On our mobile apps, we are adding a streamlined mobile checkout process.”