Last month I joined my SoundCommerce team and 1,500+ retailers at GROW NY, one of the largest retail events in the country. The event focused on answering the most important eCommerce questions – what is working and what is not working across your online sales channels, and what actions are your team and company taking to drastically improve marketing campaign ROI? Through interviews, panel discussions, workshops – and very hot temperatures! – the SoundCommerce team and I connected with and had insightful conversations with many impressive retail leaders such as The Sill, Sanzo, Harry’s, Glossier, What Goes Around Comes Around, among others.
The event highlighted that you must do everything in your power to set your brand apart from your competition by identifying specific ways to differentiate in a saturated market. One huge way brands can do this is through personalization – how can you get personal with your shoppers in an eCommerce-driven world? How can you use your brick and mortar stores to increase shopper engagement and loyalty?
Insights learned at GROW NY
Brands are spending a lot of time and money trying to determine who are their “sticky customers” – the ones who buy the most frequently and increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), an area that SoundCommerce is already helping its customers to quickly and automatically identify. Additionally, brands – especially luxury brands – are hyper-focused on customer loyalty. Loyalty data can help determine what shoppers are shopping for and which occasions they’re focused on. In turn, brands can use that information to increase CLV and Average Order Value (AOV), as well as overall brand loyalty. Brands also want to personalize their shoppers’ experiences and treat their shoppers like real humans. Post conversion surveys, SMS, emails, and marketing ads are all ways brands are actively trying to optimize the personalization of their shopping experience.
I especially enjoyed listening to the Branding/Creative Panel discussion, which featured Emily Simmons, CMO of July, Max Kiselwitz, Co-founder of Bala, Natalie Holloway, Co-founder of Bala, and Melissa Duren Conner, Managing Partner at JBC. These retail leaders captivated the audience with their discussion on the importance of creative marketing as a way to display the passion and enthusiasm of your brand and products. For July, this is especially important since their product is the always necessary, but not very sexy air conditioning unit. If only July had been responsible for the A/C at the event! Bala reiterated how unique branding is imperative to set your brand apart; Bala does this by fusing fashion and fitness into their marketing efforts for a truly unique brand experience for their shoppers.
Another way brands can set themselves apart from their competition is by ensuring they have the right technologies in place to set them and their data up for accurate and timely success. Whether that’s one-click checkout, in-store optimizations, warehouse automations, or retail data software that automatically identifies profit opportunities. Understanding CLV, its drivers and detractors, and metrics like who will still be a customer a year from now are all important things many brands want to know. SoundCommerce customer Bala Brands, is using the SoundCommerce retail data platform to measure the profitability of every campaign, product, and customer to help them increase AOV and CLV, as well as helping to optimize their marketing campaign spend. Transparency around order and shipping delays is also important, especially for newer and smaller brands to be able to compete with Amazon. These transparency efforts are helping to mitigate the challenges of increasing supply chain issues and rising shipping costs.
Insights learned at GROW NY
Customer shopping trends are constantly evolving and it’s often challenging for brands to keep up. Many brands at GROW NY shared that while they know the importance of being on TikTok and using it to penetrate new shoppers, that they are still trying to identify the best way to utilize influencer marketing and new social media apps like TikTok to target their millennial and gen z shoppers. Creative brand experiences with influencers and on social media is another way brands are setting themselves apart from their competitors. SoundCommerce customer PacSun regularly revists their TikTok strategy to keep it fresh and innovative. Constant evolution also ensures that they are never too comfortable with what is working on their TikTok channel. The SoundCommerce platform helps PacSun to manage and organize all of the data from their different marketing channels and internal systems, which is helping them to unlock value from their data to drive great customer experiences and higher customer lifetime values.
The SoundCommerce team and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and learning from so many insightful DTC founders, growth marketers, and retail leaders at this year’s GROW NY. The event successfully addressed the most important topics impacting retailers in 2022 through inspiring conversations, stories and practical, important lessons.
Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how a retail data platform can help your organization to acquire new customers and increase profitability.
Molly Miesen is an Account Executive at SoundCommerce. She is passionate about helping customers drive profitable growth, CX and lifetime value across their retail systems – from first click to doorstep delivery. Outside of work, Molly can be found traveling, eating, reading, and spending time with her daughter, Lucy.