How Vera Bradley Profits From Big Data

In a session yesterday at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City, Scott Steever, senior director of strategic initiatives at Vera Bradley, discussed how the brand uses big data to make its marketing and merchandising decisions more profitable.

Email Marketing
Vera Bradley wanted to improve the productivity of its email program, Steever said. After years of declining effectiveness, in large part to a "spray and pray" strategy of sending the same message to everyone on its list, the retailer began to use big data customer insights — e.g., purchase history, average order size, types of products purchased — to send targeted messaging to its subscribers.