Guest speaker: Julie Roy
Julie Roy leads brand and product marketing for DSW, a leading omni-channel footwear retailer. After having spent much of her career in the customer analytics, CRM, and loyalty space, Julie is now responsible for leading the development, activation, and continued growth of DSW’s cross-channel marketing campaigns and media programs, with the objective of improving brand awareness, customer acquisition, and brand engagement & loyalty.
Episode summary
This episode features an interview with Julie Roy, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at DSW. Julie has devoted 15 years of her career at DSW in the customer analytics, CRM, and loyalty space. Now, she is responsible for leading the development, activation, and continued growth of DSW’s cross-channel campaigns.
In this episode, Kailey and Julie discuss the phy-gital customer experience, building loyalty through content and communities, and balancing brandformance.
Key takeaways
The best customer experience in retail revolves around convenience, relevance, and value. By bridging the digital and physical experience, customers can conveniently shop across channels. Relevance happens by positioning your brand to align with customer values and their personalization needs. And finally, value is created through content and communities that connect customers.
In this current economic climate, CMOs are tasked with making every dollar work harder. This requires constant testing and optimization of tactics, channels, and content to better serve customers.
Customer loyalty should be thought of as a business strategy, not a marketing program. Everyone across the organization is responsible for creating brand stickiness and customer retention.
Speaker quotes
“The focus now will be on bridging and integrating the digital and physical retail experience for consumers. I like to call that the ‘phy-gital’ experience. [...] You get the full sensory experience of a brand and the physical experience. [...] Then you couple that with the endless choices of a vast assortment, as well as the expanded content and rich information that you're able to provide with the digital experience.” – Julie Roy
Episode timestamps
*(02:51) - Julie’s background
*(06:16) - Industry trends in customer engagement in retail
*(13:37) - Changes in consumer behavior in retail
*(17:04) - Challenges in the customer engagement journey
*(19:13) - How Julie defines “good data”
*(31:52) - Changes in customer engagement in the next 6-12 months
*(34:14) - An example of another company doing it right with customer engagement (hint: it’s beauty brands and Apple)
*(35:57) - Julie’s recommendations for up-leveling customer engagement
