Episode 13

Enhancing Your Customer Experience with Omnichannel Engagement

In this episode, Carolyn Pollock, Chief Marketing Officer at Tailored Brands, discusses how to unlock more meaningful communication with customers and the power of creating a strong engine for new customer acquisition.

 

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Guest speaker: Carolyn Pollock

Carolyn Pollock is the Chief Marketing Officer of Tailored Brands, the owner of Men’s Wearhouse, Jos. A. Bank, K&G Fashion Superstores, and Moores Clothing for Men in Canada. With a successful track record of driving growth, Ms. Pollock joined Tailored Brands to help unlock the potential of its suite of brands. Carolyn oversees all consumer marketing efforts and is chiefly responsible for leading the team developing marketing strategies and innovative programs instrumental to Tailored Brands’ business transformation. Previously, Ms. Pollock was a managing partner at marketing strategy consulting firm, RevelOne, and served start-ups and established companies across consumer retail and technology. Prior to consulting, Ms. Pollock held marketing leadership roles at eBay and started her career with Unilever and Labatt Breweries of Canada.

 

Episode summary

This episode features an interview with Carolyn Pollock, Chief Marketing Officer of Tailored Brands, owner of companies like Men's Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank. Carolyn has 20 years of marketing and management experience driving growth and building brands. Previously, she served as a marketing leader for eBay and Facebook. At Tailored Brands, Carolyn oversees all consumer marketing efforts and leads the team developing marketing strategies and programs.

In this episode, Kailey and Carolyn discuss the hybridization of retail, leveraging technology to gather data, and showing up for customers in the right channels.

 

Key takeaways

  • Crafting a well-rounded customer experience requires a hybridization of online and in-store knowledge. When customers are researching your products online, you can use that data to help outfit them in-store and provide them exactly what they need.

  • From a customer service standpoint, retailers have an opportunity to go above and beyond in providing an experience. For instance, if a customer spills a drink on their shirt at a wedding, a Tailored Brands store manager will hand-deliver them a new shirt. Showing up for your customer goes beyond data, it means they can depend on you throughout the entire experience.

  • When trying to uplevel your customer engagement, don’t boil the ocean. It’s critical to be realistic in your expectations and figure out what’s most important and foundational to your process right now, and then act on it.

 

Speaker quotes

“No one walks into our store not knowing something about what we have to offer, [...] the integration of on and offline is a really big part of it. And making sure that you've got the tools and the understanding of where those handshakes of information transfer have to happen, is a really important way to respond to that.” – Carolyn Pollock

 

Episode timestamps

‍*(01:46) - Carolyn’s career journey

*(04:33) - Industry trends in customer engagement in retail

*(12:16) - Challenges in the customer engagement journey

*(18:26) - How Tailored Brands is leveraging technology to build a sophisticated customer journey

‍*(22:27) - An example of another company doing it right with customer engagement (hint: it’s Sephora)

*(24:57) - Carolyn’s favorite piece of data

*(29:01) - Changes in the next 6-12 months in marketing and retail

*(31:01) - Carolyn’s recommendations for upleveling customer engagement 

 

Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn

 

Read the transcript

 

Kailey Raymond: When COVID happened in 2020, retailers were hit particularly hard. Brands aimed at selling items for special events like weddings and proms were at a standstill. During this temporary pause, however, we saw increased innovation and creativity with many brands fast tracking their digital efforts. Now in 2022, we're seeing a return to normal events and retailers' creativities paying off as omnichannel experiences that bridge the gap between physical and digital have become the norm. In today's episode, I'm speaking with Carolyn Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer at Tailored Brands. We discuss the hybridization of retail, leveraging technology to obtain data and showing up for customers in the right channels. Carolyn, you've worked at some incredible brands across retail and tech holding leadership positions to places like eBay and starting your career at Unilever and Labatt Brewery. But I'd love to hear how you got to where you are today as a CMO of Tailored Brands.

Carolyn Pollock: Probably I peaked with my job at Labatt when we launched beer.com in 1999. I think that might have been the pinnacle. My career did start in package goods and actually started even before Unilever at a market research firm in Japan, which is how I got into marketing in the first place. But that gave me a really good grounding in data and the importance of it and analysis of the work and that art and science of marketing. I think through my journey, that balance of everything has been really driven by what we can learn from our customers at scale as well as quantitatively and qualitatively. But yeah, after I was in package goods, I moved to the San Francisco Bay area and landed at eBay eventually and was there for a really good chunk of time. Had some incredible partners there on the data and analytics side as they partnered with me on marketing. And moved from eBay to, I had another job for a little while and then I actually started consulting.

And that enabled me to, I built my own business for about 10 years and worked with a wide, wide range of clients. So they were really large companies like an eBay or a Facebook to tiny little startups and really helping them across the board just with aspects of their marketing or their entire marketing that they needed to level up. And so I started engaging with Tailored Brands back in 2018 in a consulting capacity with my business partner. And we just started getting more and more dug in there and helping them as they're really transforming their approach to marketing. And then in 2020 they asked me to join as CMO. So always known for one with incredible timing. I became CMO on February 1st, of 2020.

Kailey Raymond: I was going to ask, it was like 2020 in retail, tough time.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah. So six weeks into my job we're shutting all of our stores and it was quite a lot to handle. And fortunately because I knew the business, I knew the people, it was manageable as much as any of that was manageable versus had I come in cold to the company, I don't know if anybody could have really handled all of that. So I was very lucky from that perspective and then gave the team a pep talk around, okay, gang, we're now an eCommerce company because we don't have…

Kailey Raymond: Let's embrace tech now.

Carolyn Pollock: ... any stores right now. Yeah. So all those things that we've been talking about doing, were really going to move faster on in terms of the digital transformation. So, that was the quick synopsis of my journey to being the CMO at Tailored Brands.

Kailey Raymond: That's amazing. So you definitely saw that impact of digital transformation, acceleration and retail firsthand. What did some industries quote five to seven years within a two year time span as what the calculated acceleration was, which is absolutely incredible. What are some of those trends that you're seeing? I know digital transformation obviously been a huge one across every single industry pretty much forever and for always, but as it relates to retail, what have you been seeing in the past few years?

Carolyn Pollock: Well, it's interesting because my primary experience with retail, well first was in grocery when I was at Unilever and that's one type of retail. And then I spent a lot of time obviously in eCommerce with eBay, which is a very different kind of retail. And apparel retail, it's even more different. It's similar concepts and principles in a lot of ways, but it is quite different. I think it's interesting to me how apparel retail probably lags definitely, obviously eCommerce, but even grocery to some extent in terms of that data transformation. And I think a lot of retailers are going through the same journey that we're going through at Tailored Brands in terms of built on antiquated systems that were needed from POS in retail stores back in the day. And it's just a different kind of journey. And it's, literally the whole cliche of flying the airplane while you're rebuilding it is very, very true and you have to do it in a way that's as just less disruptive as possible. But it's still is a lot of change.

And we also have incredible tenure in our teams, which is amazing because we've got people in our stores who have been managing our stores for decades, which is a real testament to the company and the culture that we have. But it also means it's a lot of change for folks. It's not like we're in a startup or an eCommerce place where everyone comes from a tech background and is used to orienting themselves in a certain way that there's a lot of change management that has to happen as well.

Kailey Raymond: That's so interesting. One of my first jobs, I was an intern at a company that was doing iPad point of sale systems for the very first time, eventually got to Groupon in 2011, 2012. But you're right, that transformation to gain that data that's actually okay now usable in a real time way was a complete change for that industry. And I didn't even think about the way that point of sale impacts your ability to collect all that data in different places and unify that personal journey for every single customer. And that's something I want to learn about from you too, is how do you think about that? You are trying to create really connected experiences for all of your customers and you have those relationships in store of course, and that point of sale is where you're getting a lot of that information from. How are you making sure that you're getting that insight and personalizing experiences? What's been your experiences with that so far?

Carolyn Pollock: It's a huge focus for us right now. And I think we are an omnichannel retailer like most folks in our space. But given what we sell, so much of our experience is really best for the customer in our stores. And so that they come to us for the expertise of the teams in our stores. Getting fitted properly requires physical contact to measure people and that kind of thing. But a lot of their experience starts on our website. So there's information that we can be gathering about what they're interested in and their preferences and that type of thing through our website as well. And then very focused on how do we then translate that into the store experience, so that the associates when they're working with the customer have a leg up and some of that information is already captured in there. So it's everything from very simple things like them indicating product that they're interested in and booking a reservation to us having full awareness of their account and things they've bought in the past.

And then one of the things our team does best is really helping outfit a customer. So it's not just about buying this one particular item, it's really about what's the whole look that they're going for, for whatever that special occasion is, which is typically the experience. So it's really about how do we make sure that we're harnessing not only the data that happens and is gathered through the website, but also just what they share with us such that we keep that and then we can be more effective in our interactions with them and guiding them in their looks as we go forward.

Kailey Raymond: That was interesting, and I'm always curious about this, talking to The New York Times the other day, talking about topic modeling and taking unstructured data sets and making sure you can build structure behind that. I imagine maybe this part structure, part unstructured with your associates in the stores. How are you gaining that information and then making sure it's standardized so then you can actually action on it in the future?

Carolyn Pollock:Well, one of the things that we're looking into a lot right now, again, a lot of retailers, is how do you do that through things like clienteling and that? And so how do you capture data? One of the biggest things that's unique about our experience is our associates actually interview the customer when they come in. It's like, Well, what are you shopping for? And what's the occasion? And tell me more about that. Is this your 20th anniversary or is it a first date? Is this your first wedding or not your first wedding-.

Kailey Raymond: Or your fifth. Who knows?

Carolyn Pollock: Yes, or are you a guest? And do you have more weddings that you're attending as a guest this summer? All that kind of stuff. It would be impossible to create all the fields of data for that. So that kind of information is super valuable so that the next time the customer comes in, which is often as frequent as within the next 30 days, they can be showing that they understand who that person is and what their needs were and are, and pointing them in the right way. So that's one of the things that we're tackling right now, is how do we enable it? Because right now we're relying on good old human brain power and the expertise in the salesmanship of our consultants who just take the time and the energy and the effort to really get to know their customers and fortunately are around and retained such that they are there for the customers when they come back.

Kailey Raymond: You said people come back within 30 days, and as somebody who goes to a lot of weddings, I can assure you that, that is definitely the case. You have your go-to places. I'm also wondering about any of these bigger consumer trends maybe that you've seen in the past few years. What are some of those that you're keeping track of, that you're thinking are going to impact the ways that you're building strategies and doing business?

Carolyn Pollock: Obviously a big trend that happened and one of the things that everybody cites is the progress made during the pandemic was companies launching things like BOPIS, buy online, pickup in store, and even companies like us that are not super tech first, we were able to mobilize that and develop a product in record time. It was super impressive. It's always just amazing what sheer human willpower can accomplish when highly motivated. I think most of us have seen that taper off a little bit, is everybody's been very much craving the in-store experience and especially for what we offer, but those types of things where there's just that hybridization of the experience. And I was speaking about earlier, we know customers do a lot of online research and they explore our products. They get their preferences of what they want before they even walk in the store. That is more alive than I think it ever has been. No one walks into our store not knowing something about what we have to offer.

And so it forces our associates to really be on top of that stuff too. But it also speeds the cycle, which is great because it enables us to really help them in the areas where we can really be most beneficial. So I think that whole trend of the integration of on and offline is a really, really big part of it. And making sure that you've got the tools and the understanding of where those handshakes of information transfer have to happen is a really important way to respond to that.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. That hybrid, that omnichannel, that's something that we hear across every single industry. It's consumerization in the healthcare, it's omnichannel and retail, and it's really all has to do with making sure that you're building the best customer experience that you possibly can, which is really, really hard to do, especially as you're opening up more and more channels. I want to learn about that too. I'm sure you've had a couple of challenges, of course, you've already cited the pandemic as it relates to accelerating some of your timelines. What have been some of your biggest challenges as it relates to the journey to customer engagement?

Carolyn Pollock: Well, I think for us uniquely, we've been in a great position with the way that the category of men's wear is evolving in that we've been able to really take advantage of the fact that special occasion needs and needs for dressing up for those occasions have really increased. And while obviously it's a bit of a blip and the massive number of weddings that are happening this year is not going to repeat itself every single year, but there's still a pretty solid number of weddings that we think will continue to happen. And so I think we've been in this great position this year where we've been able to get off the addiction that we have unfortunately had around our pricing and promotion strategy and this very high low type of approach. And now we're in a much more consistent, really fair everyday value that we deliver to our customers, which is very different. And it's a very different perception that is shaped.

And that coupled with now our ability to better help tell our overall brand story because we're not taking up all of our air time with price points and that kind of thing, is a great opportunity, but it continues to be the thing that we're really focused on. And I don't really think of it as a challenge, I think of it as an opportunity, but it's that ability to go out and tell our story and back it up with storytelling and inspirational imagery and styling and all of that, that really gets customer excited about our brand is something that we're really focused on. And so then you think about how do you take that and personalize it in the right way for the right people so that you know that this person came to you first for wedding, whereas this person over here came to you first because they're about to make a really big presentation for work.

And so how do you actually divide up the content and tell your brand story in a way that's relevant for that person based on what you know they're interested in? And so I think that's ongoing. So it's not just about basic, we're going to show you this product because you looked at these products. It's also about content in general and how you tell the right story to the right person.

Kailey Raymond: I love that. Let's dig a little bit deeper into that. So you're talking a little bit about some behavioral based trigger campaigns, perhaps that you might categorize people in a certain segment. You're also talking about something a lot bigger than that, which is making sure that everything fits within the umbrella of your brand marketing and making sure that it's consistent and making sure that it's inspirational and bringing people in while tailoring that. So would love to hear any stories or tactics about some of your favorite campaigns that you've been running off the back of some of the data that you've been able to collect.

Carolyn Pollock: Well, okay. So a good example would be our prom efforts. So every year it's a new audience of customers for prom when you think of the kids that are getting dressed for their prom, yes, there's some who as juniors will go to prom and that, but really it's like-

Kailey Raymond: That was me-.

Carolyn Pollock:... the seniors.

Kailey Raymond: I did go to-.

Carolyn Pollock: Yes.

Kailey Raymond: Actually I was a sophomore.

Carolyn Pollock: Oh, well look, you. See, then you would be a customer three times over, but there's that target and then there's the parents who actually are paying for it in most cases. And so we go to find ways to reach both of them in a relevant way, find them and reach them. And the parents often are already in our database because they're customers in some shape or form, but the kids are not. And so how do we show up for them and then connect that to the fact that we're also potentially talking to their parents and identify them as targets, capture that so that we know that for ongoing. So, that's been a really interesting journey there. And I think also-.

Kailey Raymond: Wait, how do you do that? Tell me how you do that. So you have a parent and a child in the same household, IP address matching, I don't like... How do you do that?

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah, there's some common identifiers and that there's also, we capture that information in a database, whether it's names or whatever, because we want to capture the child's measurements and everything too so that we can help them when we actually go, if they need to make any tailoring adjustments or anything to either what they're renting or what they're buying. So there are ways that we can start to match that up a little bit, but it also really helps us refine our media strategy even. So thinking about, okay, well you got to reach the parents in probably different channels. Mom's on Facebook, son is not on Facebook, son is on-.

Kailey Raymond: He's on TikTok.

Carolyn Pollock: He's on TikTok or Snapchat. And so it's like how do we make sure that we're showing up for both of them in the right way and then also knowing that they're actually potentially consuming it together as well? So, that's been really fun to see that. And it's a little bit the stuff I dealt with at eBay where you're in a marketplace and you've got buyers and sellers. It's like you've got these two different audiences and you have related stories to tell them, but they're different. It's a little bit like that, I think too. It's fun.

Kailey Raymond: That is so interesting. Yeah, the purchasing power is within somebody's hand, but the design and criteria is within another's. That is unbelievable. Have you found any successes in that? Any win stories that you wouldn't want to point to?

Carolyn Pollock: Well, yeah, and I think that I don't want to tip our hat too much to what we've got in store for this year, but I think some pretty good insights in terms of where best to reach our customer and the story that to tell the kid and how that potentially translates to the parent as well. So I think creatively it's been pretty inspirational too. There's things that we can do that actually will generate buzz and attention for the parent, but we're also doing it with the focus on the kids. So whether that's something we might do in social media or whatever. So it's just been, I think just having that eye to the two different audiences and where best to reach them and what messages resonate has just opened up some creative ideas for us as well, which has been great.

Kailey Raymond: I love that when data doesn't inherently always feel like it's going to be a creative outlet, that's always a place that I start. Whenever I am stuck and I need an idea, I run a Salesforce report and I try to figure out if there's pockets of opportunity and then I try to ideate around it. Those creative pockets often are bred exactly from the data. How are you leveraging technology to build a sophisticated customer journey?

Carolyn Pollock: You mentioned Salesforce, so we've just engaged with Salesforce to leverage their Interaction Studio product to build out more in depth personalization. So that's one area that we're really excited about and we're just actually at the very initial launching of some of that stuff. So, that's going to be really valuable. I think then too, there's some pretty neat things happening with real time stuff as well. And again, you consider that our customers are on our website researching literally as they're walking through the door into our stores. That is fascinating that when you think about real time personalization and what you could do there and knowing that, that's a messaging opportunity and a way to showcase the product uniquely, I think that we're pretty excited about the stuff that we can do with that. I think a lot of it too is the insights that we get and how that translates into the data that we then report on and how we then use that data to refine our targeting, to refine the stuff that we both do manually as well as the automated stuff.

So we look a lot at when and where they're buying what. And again, a lot of this is fairly fundamental, but it's been very helpful for us in terms of who sees what messages, how we actually structure the content, whether it's our emails or the thing I'm really excited about is how we can then take that level of personalization and bring it to other channels that we know our customers are navigating outside of our ecosystem. So whether that's something on display or something in social, I think that's super important because if we just rely on things like email, you're only scratching the surface and your ability to reach a customer. Those are some of the ways that I think we're going to really be able to unlock more meaningful communication with our customers.

Kailey Raymond: Definitely. Yeah, taking the multichannel integrated approach to marketing and making sure that all of that rich data that you're creating, I know about a person and building into a profile can be piped into any single channel that you want to activate into in real time. That's the dream. Do you have any examples of real time use cases that you're super stoked about? That idea of somebody researching on their phone at the moment that they're entering the store is super fascinating. I've never thought about that before. Are there any other ones that you're excited about?

Carolyn Pollock: From a customer service standpoint, I think there's potentially things that we could do as well. We have examples of this again, where we do things very manually. So customers at a wedding and something happens with the product that they bought and they spill something on their shirt or whatever that happens. We literally had store managers drive product to churches to get the customer what they need in the moment.

Kailey Raymond: That's customer service. Let's go.

Carolyn Pollock: So, that's real-time customer services. So there are ways that we can help digitize that in terms of notifications and, I don't know, I think there's something interesting from a customer service standpoint of where we could be helping customers because there are oftentimes critical moments that our customers are dressing for where that moment's got to be right. And if there's something that happens where they need support quickly, we obviously want to be able to be there for them.

Kailey Raymond: The in-app bat signal. Yeah-.

Carolyn Pollock: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Kailey Raymond: Interesting.

Carolyn Pollock: So actually we've got a product we're testing that is very focused on weddings and that whole wedding experience. And I think that's something that we've talked about, it's just that whole, it's the emergency line, because you're at this critical moment, it can't be messed up because your shirt got dirty. And that's part of the service that we provide is that we would be there for you.

Kailey Raymond: I have been the person that's had to run to the store to buy a tie for folks in the wedding party. So I understand the real-time urgency of that one. One that we hear a lot too is real-time and suppression, especially nowadays is like everybody's trying to figure out how to tighten their wallet a little bit. And so being able to figure out how to not serve people that you're already serving really well and save those dollars. Who do you think is doing it right in terms of customer engagement?

Carolyn Pollock: So one of the things we're also very focused on right now, and especially relevant from a data standpoint is retention and loyalty and how we're using our data to drive increased engagement, increased purchase frequency spend, all of that. We have a very strong engine for new customer acquisition through our wedding business and our rental business in particular. And so then it's like how do we keep those people? And like we were saying earlier, I know you just got married, now you've got a honeymoon and you've got other events and things that follow that, and you're probably in that age group where you're likely attending other weddings as well. And so how do we actually use that data to engage you and make it a meaningful experience?

I look at companies a lot, like Sephora, who I think has just got an incredible loyalty program. And I think part of what's so brilliant about their loyalty program is their rewards system is, and this is a little bit unique to their category, but it's all based on product samples that their manufacturers provide. So the cost to them-.

Kailey Raymond: It's like nothing.

Carolyn Pollock: ... appears to be a lot less than most retailers that need to offer their own currency of points which turn into dollars spent. And Sephora has successfully navigated around that. But I also think in addition to that, it is so easy to go in and just reorder stuff that you know you want. It's so easy to go in and say, “Well, I used to really like that. I'm curious about trying something different. What else is there?” And I think they've got a very good handle on how all of their stuff intersects in terms of the products that they offer and what's complimentary and that kind of thing as well. So I think they do a good job and then they couple that with some really good stances as a company in terms of what they've done with Black owned businesses and different things like that, that I think tie into it in a really relevant way for their customers.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. Making sure that you're bringing in really relevant social messaging into your brand, tying it back to the products that you're creating. Retention and loyalty are two of the things, again, I'll talk about the economy again. It's just like nowadays people are trying to dig a little bit deeper into that side where net new customers is great, but I don't know what in your industry it is, but you're going to get 2X the value out of customer than you are a person that you're trying to immediately convert into one.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah, absolutely. So you get a lot more out of existing than acquiring new. So the more we can do that, the stronger we all are.

Kailey Raymond: Absolutely. Do you have an example of a favorite piece of data that y'all collect?

Carolyn Pollock: I don't know if you would characterize this as a favorite piece of data, but I'm obsessed with trends. So whenever my team shows me something, they just show me a stat and they're like, “Yeah, here's the number”. That's awesome, but I don't have any context on that and I want to understand how that ties to historicals, seasonal, that kind of thing. And so we've gotten a lot more focus on how we look at things that way because if you think of the storytelling that data can provide, seeing how that's evolved over time, and especially relevant right now because everything's still so rather highly overused word of unprecedented. But we went from nothing-.

Kailey Raymond: Three years of unprecedented.

Carolyn Pollock: Exactly. But every year is a different precedent.

Kailey Raymond: It is. That's true.

Carolyn Pollock: And so it's even more fascinating to see the trend, but also, here we are in 22 and we're still comparing our business to 2019 because that's the last benchmark. But as we head into 23, looking at both 19 as well as 22, the way we're looking at that and understanding what customer behavior is doing over time, I think is so insightful for decisions that we can make down the road. So, that's probably my biggest thing. The other thing that we're looking a lot at as we're learning the impact and effectiveness of our different channels is incrementality.

So we do a lot of match market tests to understand when we dial certain channels up or down, how are those responding on all the core KPIs? And so that ability to do identify match markets and identify this size of store and this size of market with this kind of media and this kind of general customer income in that particular area, there's all these different data points that get triangulated to help us figure out what those comparable markets are. It's so important because it then helps give us a better, cleaner picture of what we're doing.

Kailey Raymond: Absolutely. You're a sucker for a stat. That's great.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah. Oh, I totally, I'm a geek with the data. I love it. It's all good.

Kailey Raymond: I love that. Very cool.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: And you were talking about something interesting that you benchmark against 19 and now you're going to benchmark against 22. We had two throw away years as it relates to trying to figure out what customer behavior looks like.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: 2023 too. I'm like, how are we going to begin to forecast for what's going to happen with... It's just everything feels extremely volatile and unpredictable and there is a lot of demand, but at the same time there's a lot of inflation. It's just like I don't envy the people that are doing those charts right now.

Carolyn Pollock: Well, and I think what we're seeing is, and this is true for the wedding industry, but I think it's true in general, is because unemployment is where it's at and as low as it is, there is still demand out there. It's just people are making trade down decisions. They'll go buy something or they'll go travel or they'll go do whatever, but they're finding more valuable economical ways to do that. And so we're certainly hearing that on the wedding side, and we're assuming that translates pretty well to other occasions that we serve as well. But it's making sure you've got the right product mix. So when we look at prom, we're actually introducing a whole lot of new product at slightly lower price points with a massive range of colors and styles and stuff so that there really is great selection and value at all ranges of our offering. And so I think it's just being aware that the customer's still going to take the action, but they may be more conservative in the action that they take in terms of spending.

Kailey Raymond: That makes total sense. People have been changing the ways that they think about celebrations and weddings in particular comes to mind is the number of weddings that I've been to that have been the big blowouts are way less these days. But that doesn't mean that you aren't still there for an occasion where you need to have the right look associated with it and are making sure that you are dressing to impress. And I never really considered the impact of what that looks like in terms of your supply, but increasing the different variability of all of your different products. What changes do you see on the horizon in the next six, 12, or more months as it relates to marketing and retail?

Carolyn Pollock: I get asked this a lot and I think it's always been and will continue to be about this balance between what we're talking about at the very outset of the brand storytelling coupled with the data and the insight about what parts of your story a customer cares about, and then making sure that you're not hammering them with the wrong part of your story and that you're actually speaking to them in a way that's relevant. So I think the more that we're able to get beyond just a mere product recommendation as the definition of personalization and into more rich content and all that, and do it in as dynamic a way as possible, I think it's going to continue to be a really big focus and balance for all of us marketers that if we all just optimize to the core customer action only and we have the same message and we don't vary that message, none of us are really going to drive any preference or choice with the customers. So it's really about the stories that you tell and how you use that to differentiate your brand.

So I think it's just finding that balance and how do we leverage the data that we get around that to our advantage.

Kailey Raymond: Contextual audiences. It's broader than-.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah, that's part of it too.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: It's broader than just the card abandoner workflow and it's a little bit associative with an emotion, a feeling, an event, a time in your life.

Carolyn Pollock: Yeah. We find that we get a lot of traction with things along those lines of contextually, making sure that we're showing up with that right content for the customer based on whatever article they're reading. They're telling you stuff by the actions that they're doing. So if you don't respond appropriately, you just seem like you're disconnected. And I think that's just, the customer expectation around that is just more and more that, how do you not know? So-.

Kailey Raymond: You have all my Google search results, do you not?

Carolyn Pollock: Exactly. Yes, exactly. They all know where we've got all the data at this point.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. Yeah. Amazon set the bar high for everybody. Google set the bar high. What are your recommendations for folks that are trying to up level their customer engagement story?

Carolyn Pollock: I think depending on the type of company you're at, if you're starting from scratch and you're in a startup, go for it. It's a lot more straightforward. In fact, we had a meeting today on a topic and we're like, Imagine if we were starting a company all over, how would we have done this differently? When you're in an organization like ours or any sizeable organization that's been around for a while and has data capabilities and infrastructures layered on top of one another because of systems that have been brought in or whatever, I think you have to be just realistic in your expectations, and I think you've got to figure out how to break this down into digestible steps so that you're not trying to boil the ocean out of the gate because you'll inevitably fail. And managing it through and saying, this is the most important thing that we need to tackle now, and this is actually foundational to other efforts that we're going to do down the road. You've got to break it down into whatever that is for your organization.

Kailey Raymond: I do think that don't boil the ocean is something that I have heard time and time again and is super wise advice of making sure you can build it in increments and doing it in the right way so that you can leverage it in the future.

Carolyn Pollock: Exactly. We're all impatient for change and we all want it to happen sooner than later, and I'm very guilty of that myself, and it's one of the biggest things I've learned is it won't be successful if you try and just do it all at once. And so you've got to just make your priorities, stick to your priorities, keep the focus so that you also don't burn out your teams and help them feel like we're all getting wins along the way as well.

Kailey Raymond: Incremental progress. Well, Carolyn, thank you so much. This has been so great to learn from you today. I really appreciate you being here.

Carolyn Pollock: Thanks for having me. It's been great.

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