Tapestry's CDO Noam Paransky on the Dos and Don’ts of Digital Marketing

Noam Paransky, chief digital officer of Tapestry, parent company of brands Kate Spade, Coach, and Stuart Weitzman, gave the opening keynote at CommerceNext IRL last month. He focused on how Tapestry has been adapting customer experience and marketing in response to today’s evolving customer needs.

Tapestry recorded $1 billion in digital sales growth in two years and brought in a million new customers during that time, Paransky noted. Fundamentally, Paransky says there are three things that all marketers want:

• to reach the right customers with a relevant message;
• to manage investments profitably; and
• to drive more brand love and revenue-achieving accelerated growth.

In order to achieve that, marketers should do four things, according to Paransky:

Be intentional about who you’re speaking to and what you’re saying.

Develop a plan around the journey, around the customer or customer segment, and the experience you want them to encounter, Paransky said.

Work to make interactions meaningful.

There’s no such thing as a “good” channel or a “bad" channel, Paransky said. “Every customer touchpoint has an opportunity to make a positive, neutral or negative impression on a customer. The most important channel is the channel that the customer is engaging with now and today, so embrace it. Seize that moment.” Paransky advised the audience to start analyzing their platform data, construct an engagement strategy, and then connect it to the platforms.

Have a customer plan.

Just like the chief merchant has a merchandising plan and the chief financial officer has a financial plan, digital marketers need a customer plan.

Measure return on investment holistically.

At Tapestry, Paransky uses an econometric, multitouch attribution hybrid approach that allows the company to understand how much profit it's creating for every dollar it put in against those customer groups.

Conversely, here are the things Paransky advices marketers don’t do:

Don’t rely on viral moments.

Instead, work on setting the conditions that enable more and more of these content pieces to catch fire. “You need to marry up the viral campaign and moment in creative,” Paransky said.

Don’t chase the highest value customer cohorts.

Instead, create lifecycle engagement, nurturing the customer relationship to create additional purchases, advised  Paranksy.

It’s good to approach the “don’ts” with a grain of salt, however. “There’s goodness in even doing the 'don’ts,' but it’s with caution,” he said. “Play the odds.”