Experian

In episode 207 of Total Retail Talks, Executive Editor Joe Keenan speaks with Lester Holze, vice president of sales, retail and CPG at Experian Marketing Services, and Dan Thorpe, analytics leader at Chico's FAS. Listen in as Holze and Thorpe discuss why Chico's FAS chose Experian as its data partner and how the relationship has helped the women's…

The customer expectation is changing and developing lasting relationships with clients is only getting harder. Much is being written about customer loyalty, but many programs are still missing the mark. Until now, customer experience best practices have focused on product differentiation, special offers and customer service. However, most of these practices don't change or adjust…

Retailers are on a never-ending mission to find new and innovative ways to improve the consumer experience. Therefore, they can appreciate life hacks to help make their jobs a little easier. Integrating email marketing with Shopify is one of these helpful hacks that can make a magnitude of difference for retailers and customers alike. There are lots of great reasons to marry email marketing with Shopify, but here are three of my favorites:

Today's retail initiatives all seem to revolve around data. When we think about marketing automation, digital retailing and loyalty programs, they all have data at their core. Companies are looking to better understand their consumers so they can drive purchases and increase lifetime value.

The majority of retailers have loyalty programs to drive customer engagement and additional purchases. In fact, 90-plus percent of retailers have loyalty programs. The explosion of these programs is driven by today's empowered consumer. In the era of the consumer review, an ever-increasing number of digital channels and a 24/7 shopping cycle, retailers have less control over consumer shopping behavior than ever before.

Tried-and-true email marketing will be the focal point of many brands’ holiday marketing strategies this year, according to a report last week from Experian Marketing Services. Ninety-one percent of marketers surveyed around the world will use email in their 2014 holiday marketing campaigns, the most of any channel. Website (76 percent) and social media (70 percent) rounded out the top three channels.

Retailers struggle to provide a meaningful, consistent customer experience as the number of channels continues to grow. The increase in infrastructure and interaction points has led to separation in management, for example, for in-store and online programs. This results in various messaging distributed to customers at ill-coordinated times. Unfortunately, that's not how customers wish to interact in today's environment.

Using personalization in email marketing campaigns is a great way to build relationships with customers, increase your open and clickthrough rates, and suggest content that your customers will actually care about. Personalization enables brands to generate more customer loyalty and ultimately higher return on investment.

Email is still a top communication channel for retailers looking to stay in touch with customers and prospects. In fact, 98 percent of retailers collect email addresses through a variety of channels, with the most popular being their websites and point-of-sale locations. Retailers use these email addresses to send a high volume of messages to consumers for operational and marketing purposes in an effort to drive additional revenue. However, many retailers aren't capturing accurate emails or managing their email database effectively.

As data continues to grow at unprecedented speeds, retail organizations must embrace a data-driven mind-set to stay competitive. Considering that 90 percent of the world's data was created in the last two years, this won't be a curve that drops off. With the influx of bigger data and new types of data, retailers of all sizes increasingly depend on large sets of information to make better business decisions. Midsized retailers, now able to cross barriers to the new age of data, have fast become committed to discovering those insights and putting them to work for their operations and customer relationships.