In an in-depth conversation with Fairchild Studio, Jamie Elden, Chief Revenue Officer at Listrak, sheds light on the current challenges and transformative strategies in marketing within the beauty and fashion industries. As the focus has shifted towards more personalized, community-driven approaches to connect with consumers, Elden highlights how pivotal tailored communication has become and the role of technology such as AI in achieving a closer bond between brands and their customers.
Fairchild Studio: With that, from a marketing perspective, what do you see as some of the challenges in beauty and fashion?
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Jamie Elden: Communication between brands and consumers has changed dramatically and has become incredibly hyper-personalized. It’s like, ‘Hey, we don’t just want to advertise our brand to you; we want to communicate with you as an individual. We want to participate with you in the things you like and contribute to your conversations. What’s of interest to you on social media? We want to be part of your conversations.’
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To break through today, whether you’re a beauty brand, a new fashion brand or a legacy brand, it’s really about trying to find unique, creative ways, and even cultural topics to connect with consumers. Consumers are much more interested in the value proposition of a brand today. What does your brand stand for? And how do you connect on a personal level? The challenge for beauty and fashion brands is to deliver hyper-personalized communications that are simultaneously rooted in both the brand’s core values as well as the consumer’s passions and interests.
Fairchild Studio: Which brands do you think are taking this approach?
J.E.: There are some amazing brands out there who are really getting closer to their communities. One that comes to mind is the beauty brand e.l.f. Cosmetics.
e.l.f. Cosmetics has very strong brand values, which it communicates clearly while also talking directly to its consumers. They build communities. They take customer feedback extremely seriously. They have these little communities that they look to for their feedback on pricing, how products look, whether their consumers like it. The feedback they get informs them not only about their product roadmap but also about what they make and how they communicate. I’m a huge fan of e.l.f. as a brand for doing that.
There’s so much content out there. How does your brand break through? I think that’s the challenge, both in the fashion and beauty industries. Brands need to figure out how to break through, and the way to do that is by creating a one-to-one connection with a customer.
Fairchild Studio: How can Listrak help?
J.E.: Listrak is a person-first platform. That is what differentiates us. A lot of marketing automation companies, they’re like, ‘Yeah, we send email, we send SMS.’ But really it might come from two different vendors or platforms that silo channel data. The SMS might come from one partner, the email from another. The problem here is an individual is treated as different people across those disparate channels, with purchases, behaviors and preferences spread across different identities. That’s very impersonal — and worse, can be embarrassing and damaging to your brand!
The power Listrak brings is that our technology unifies that. We stitch together data across every touchpoint, creating a single customer view so you can market to individuals—not just email or SMS lists. Our AI tools and AI learning, or Listrak Intelligence as we call it, really digs in and starts to personalize this person. While they’re browsing and looking for things, we’re able to capture that data. We’re able to find out from them what they like, what category. We’re able to understand their browsing habits. We’re also then able to analyze which channel they prefer to receive communications on. Some people prefer email, some respond better to SMS. We can even break it down by which day and what time of day somebody is going to be most likely to respond to a particular communication in a particular channel.
But I think where Listrak really nails it is when somebody taps that SMS or clicks that email, with our product recommendations, which is a predictive AI tool, they’re going to see exactly what they’d just been looking at or a similar product that is most likely to convert. We may incentivize them to make that purchase right then.
And sometimes it’s not about a discount. Sometimes it’s about loyalty. We know they love the brand, we know how to communicate with them, and we know what’s interesting to them right now, so let’s communicate with them at that point. That’s where we’re seeing a lot of success. Listrak knows who that person is and understand their habits — no matter what the channel. Then we put products in front of them that are of interest and relevance to them in the right place while they’re on that journey. That’s where we’re helping fashion and beauty brands to find success in the market right now.
Fairchild Studio: You previously mentioned that shoppers are returning to stores but want more engaging experiences. Who are some of the retail brands leading this?
J.E.: Yes, some retailers got ahead of that curve and realized, ‘Hey, we’ve got to create an in-store experience that is like the kind of experience that we’ve been driving through social. We’ve got to make in-store hot again.’ I think when you look at some of the companies that do that really well: Nordstrom.
Take the Nordstrom store here in Manhattan, it’s incredible. It’s an experience. You walk from this designer to that designer, there are Instagram moments everywhere. There are all sorts of interactions and engagements that you can have.
I think that Abercrombie & Fitch is exactly the same. When you walk into that store, it does feel like an experience. People who are working there are really happy to see you. There’s a customer engagement model that works there. When you walk in the doors at Abercrombie, it has this unique perfume that brings you in. It makes you feel like, ‘I’m in here and I’m never going to leave.’ I think that’s smart. You want to create an exciting, unique in-store experience where people don’t want to leave, and you want to connect that to a dynamic online experience and have it all be seamless across in-person and digital.
Fairchild Studio: What about online?
J.E.: It’s all about seamlessly bridging the offline and online experience, creating a unified view of your customer. By truly understanding and speaking to each individual, you can deliver personalized marketing messages that set you apart from the competition. And Listrak is helping fashion and beauty brands do exactly that.
To read more about Listrak, CLICK HERE.