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How Coach, JustFab and Walgreens personalize marketing on a 1:You level

Retail is one of the more advanced industries when it comes to personalization, with almost every retailer offering some degree of personalization to enhance the customer journey. 

Gone are the days of delivering the same campaign to all of your customers, relying on inserting their name to personalize the experience. Today’s consumers demand more, and retailers understand the power of data-driven personalization and proper segmentation. 

Consumers agree.

In an Epsilon study on personalization, 27% of people said that brands are doing well in providing recommendations unique to each individual. 

Online retailers, specifically, are making a mark with their websites and mobile apps, where we found that 81% of consumers say they’re doing “very” or “somewhat well” with personalizing experiences for each individual.

People shop three times as often with companies they believe do personalization very well, and younger consumers, in particular, want retailers to offer them more personalized experiences.

In fact, a study from BRP on consumer shopping habits showed that 65% of consumers aged 18-37 said they wanted to receive personalized recommendations from retailers. 

Consumers have high expectations of retail personalization

Although retail is ahead of the curve as an industry, forward-thinking brands can’t afford to rest on their laurels. Retail marketers are pioneers of digital marketing strategies, and consumers expect the best experiences from their favorite brands.

Consumers are looking to retailers to provide a seamless and highly personalized omnichannel experience. They value their time and want their retail experience to be effortless. By delivering enhanced personalization, you’re making their lives easier and building loyalty. 

Effective personalization is more than just using the customer’s name and presenting the best offers. It’s no longer enough to segment customers into large groups using basic attributes and create a handful of “personalized” campaigns for each segment.

Personalization now means creating hundreds or thousands of different versions of content to match your individual customer’s behaviors and preferences. It’s about engaging the customer in a meaningful way and delivering a truly 1:You experience.

With the strategic use of data, machine learning and other technology, more and more retailers are delivering a deeper personalization experience to enhance and support the customer journey. The future of retail personalization aligns new technology and new strategies to offer a seamless and individualized omnichannel customer experience.

Coach achieved a 3.7% AOV increase with highly personalized emails

Email marketing is moving on from being a way to reach large numbers of customers with one particular message. With enhanced personalization, it’s now a performance-driven channel that provides a way to engage in personal conversations with your customers that produce stronger outcomes.

Like many retailers, Coach has always emphasized delivering personalized emails with great success. Recognizing an opportunity to improve customer connection further, they partnered with us to deliver an even deeper level of email personalization with Agility Harmony.  

To begin, we matched each customer profile to modeled attributes and data-driven insights. Subscribers were grouped into audiences by matching their profiles to modeled attributes, combined with behavioral, demographic and engagement data.

Finally, our machine learning and decisioning engine provided customized recommendations for individual subscribers based on data including:

  • Gender
  • Interests
  • Browsing history
  • Previous purchases
  • Abandoned cart data
  • Email engagement

Using this data to customize subject lines and pre-header text, Coach was able to go way beyond standard personalization and deliver truly 1:You inbox content.

The result? A 9.5% lift in site visitors, a 3.1% lift in revenue per recipient, and the average order value increased by 3.7% across both online and offline.

With 72% of retail consumers preferring to receive personalized experiences through email, this is the channel where people want and expect to see personalization. From customer acquisition to retention, personalization in digital messaging isn’t just welcomed—it’s expected.

Retailers who aren’t delivering a deeply customized experience to their customers can expect to lose those customers to competitors who are constantly innovating with their email personalization.

Our email personalization quiz uncovers how your brand’s approach to email personalization measures up to customer expectations and provides actionable suggestions to up your personalization game.


**Take the email personalization quiz now


 

With personalization at the core of the brand, JustFab leverages data to connect to identify new audiences

JustFab has built an entire retail business based around the power of personalization. Each month, members of their subscription eCommerce site can shop customized selections of fashion, footwear and accessories based on their own personal style.

Looking to reach new customers in a more personalized way, they partnered with us to implement a marketing strategy to acquire new VIP customers through direct mail—a first for their brand.

With our data-driven marketing solutions, we were able to identify exactly who to reach with direct mail for the best results. This very specific list of new customers delivered a 163% higher lifetime value than customers acquired through other channels.

Achieving great outcomes from personalization requires having quality data to work with. By leveraging our Abacus Cooperative database, JustFab was able to identify, reach and convert prospective customers across multiple models and re-engage existing customers, building a highly qualified direct mail audience for the brand.

Walgreens uses online and offline interactions to inform personalized loyalty offers


“Personalization… is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.”  -- Seth Godin


A recent report from LoyaltyOne found that loyalty members can spend up to three times more than non-members. Segmenting loyalty members allows retailers to deliver a personalized loyalty program that capitalizes on what really matters to their customers.

One of our retail clients assumed that free shipping was important to all their loyalty program members. However, value proposition research revealed that higher-tier members didn’t value free shipping.

They valued quality and service and had much more interest in benefits like free alterations, early access and members-only experiences. The client modified the benefits for each tier and personalized each tier’s communications accordingly.

Consider the different ways your customers interact with your brand and use this to optimize all of your available data sources. Over time, this will provide a comprehensive view that enables 1:You connections.

Another interesting example of personalized loyalty solutions is Walgreens Balance Rewards loyalty program, which uses our Agility Loyalty platform to support and route data. By combining data from online and offline interactions as well as activity uploads from devices, they were able to reward customers in a more personalized way.

The program focuses on rewarding customers for purchases, services and healthy behaviors logged via devices like FitBit or through in-store activities like blood pressure checks.  

By maintaining a focus on experiential rewards that extend beyond in-store and online transactions, Walgreens enables customers to have flexibility and choice in how they redeem their points.

More than 150 million people have enrolled in the program, and the systems handles more than 4 million purchase transactions each day.  


**See how to take loyalty from 1:1 to 1:You


 

Final thoughts

At its core, personalization is about delivering a powerful, human experience at every stage of the customer journey. Approached holistically and applied to the entire customer experience, it builds trust and shows your customers you value them. 

Interested in learning more about how retailers are doing with personalization? Check out our study, Power of Me: More than a [FirstName].