Bluecore Tips about Utilizing Knowledge to Construct Buyer Loyalty – FMG Tech Discussion board – Footwear Information

One of the big retail topics that has emerged from the past 16 months of experience is the idea of ​​”digital transformation” and what it means from a marketing perspective – which begs a question: as ecommerce growth continues, how do you build customers? Loyalty?

At the Fairchild Media Group Tech Forum, Sherene Hilal, SVP of Product Marketing and Business Operations at Bluecore, addressed this topic in her presentation “Marketing in 2025: Preparing for Big Changes Ahead”.

Hilal said when brands and retailers are discussing a “digital-first” approach to growing e-commerce, it’s important to understand that consumers “are now buying new products from new brands faster than ever before. And the speed and volume of shoppers discovering and shopping online are forcing us all to reformulate what growth could mean for our brands. “

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In this context, Hilal said that digital transformation “is the approach your brand will take to grow in the digital realm by just pulling on the three critical levers.” Those levers include buyer identification and improvement conversion rates, “by connecting your buyers faster and in more places with the right products and offers that really make their purchase easier”. The third lever is “repeat purchases through loyalty programs that add value to your product”.

Hilal quickly realized that there are tactical traps for successful digital transformation and marketing, including assuming that there is a single platform or technology that can solve a marketing strategy problem. Another trap is that brands think they need to have all of their customer data in one place. In addition, retailers and brands cannot activate them even if the data is in one place. In this case, they fall into another trap, namely increasing spending on customer data collection. A better approach is to retain customers using technology, customer data, and predictive data.

Hilal suggested making small adjustments “that could radically change your company’s approach to digitization”. The first is to change the way the retail or branding team thinks about outcome versus channel. She said that companies tend to align their marketing teams with channels or systems, with customer loyalty being the “holy grail” – but “it is seldom defined by a particular team or part of the brand.”

This usually leads to “an exhaustive list of activities and processes that may or may not drive the growth of e-commerce,” said Hilal. When loyalty is measured by an outcome, one can take a test-and-learning approach and use technologies like machine learning to optimize marketing campaigns.

Hilal then presented a case study of a clothing brand that was transforming its organizational mindset from a channel approach to a results-based approach. In it, the brand defined customer loyalty as “repeat buyers with a higher average order volume”. Next, the data activation was put in the hands of the Brand Driving Communication teams “for the personalization of the entire life cycle”. At the same time, marketing execution, analytics, and technology have been placed under one leader “for data-driven, consistent experiences.”

“By putting your e-commerce and marketing teams under a chief customer officer and specifying the definition of customer loyalty, you can fine-tune how your programs drive product discovery and how that product search increases the distance between searches for a new product and actually convert and buy it online, ”Hilal said, noting that the one-on-one personalized recommendations resulted in additional purchases.

The brand became more profitable by identifying buyers (rather than buying a list), leveraging first-party data on its own channels, and testing first-party data on paid media. An important part was putting customer data “in the driver’s seat” while using predictive analytics to increase conversions. The end result, said Hilal, is “the transition from an acquisition mentality to a retention mentality”.