March 2 - Day Two: Digital Strategies For The Next Normal

Throughout the pandemic, there was a noticeable difference in how brands started to display their products online. With no stores for customers to visit, brands had to rely on product reviews, customer photos, stellar images, and more to make the sale. Retailers even added virtual try-on’s and virtual showrooms to their websites to help customers see clothes on their bodies or furniture in their living rooms – making their products pop. Now that customers have gotten used to this level of product detail, there is no going back- in fact customers will expect the above add-on’s at minimum when interacting online. Join this fireside chat with Max Johnson of jewelry brand Awe Inspired as he talks through how they overcome buyers hesitation with gorgeous photos, great descriptions & an easy to navigate product page. Expect to hear about:

• Breaking through the merchandising clutter and standing out with a product that makes a statement
• Ensuring the item has a descriptive product name for easy search, ensuring visibility to shoppers on the hunt
• Using AI tools to help aid in this product hunt and provide shoppers with exactly what they are looking for
• Promoting reviews to show instant feedback for buyers
• Getting your products sold quickly 

Max Johnson

CEO and Co-Founder
Awe Inspired

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“Headless”, “composable”, “modular” - there are lots of different buzz-words being used to define the evolution of e-commerce. In this session, fabric Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder, Ryan Bartley sits down with Scott Saeger, CIO at GNC, to shed light on why composable commerce should be the north star for brands, and how GNC was able to scale their revenue globally with it. Key Discussion Points/Learning objectives:

· What is headless commerce and how is it different from monolithic solutions?

· What is composable commerce and how is it different from headless?

· What are the benefits of a headless commerce solution?

· What steps can I take to move to a headless architecture?

Key Takeaways:

·        Composable commerce is the next evolution of headless commerce that further decouples backend business functions into more modular pieces AKA microservices, offering greater flexibility, customization, and time to market

·        Migrating to a composable commerce architecture such as fabric is considerably faster, easier, and less risky than “re-platforming” as it is possible to move elements independently

·        Modular commerce principles enable lightning-fast and modern customer experiences that far surpass traditional frontends

·        Embracing an API-first headless architecture vastly improves customization and extensibility, resulting in more streamlined business processes and better customer experiences across any user endpoints

Ryan Bartley

Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder
fabric

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Scott Saeger

CIO
GNC

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Your customer does not have the patience to wait for pages to load or glitches to settle. They want to visit your website and expect a smooth experience from the minute they click on to the minute they check out. Any hitches could result in killing your sale. Join this panel of digital product and experience experts from top retailers as they walk us through how to create the most seamless web experience for your customer. Expect to hear about:

• Focusing on providing a solid, dynamic customer experience and testing out new functionality at each given moment
• Building the foundation for your site overhaul: constructing a platform that can respond quickly and flexible
• Rebuilding tools into your new platform as needed (such as A/B testing)
• Conducting effective and efficient tests of your site to provide relevant and timely feedback to continue improvements 

Bill Ryan

Sr. Business Relationship Director – Digital & Mobile
PetSmart

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Nick Smotek

Director, Omni Tech & UX
Deckers Brands

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Leslie Carruthers

VP, Strategy
YourAnswer

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Jill John

Chief Customer Officer
Interior Define

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Sam Foster sold the first pair of sunglasses in modern history in 1929 on the Atlantic City boardwalk – marking the birth of America’s first sunglasses brand, Foster Grant. In the 1960’s, Foster Grant catapulted to fame with the renowned “Who’s That Behind Those Foster Grants?” ad campaign starring Hollywood favorites like Mia Farrow, Raquel Welch, Vanessa Redgrave and later Brooke Shields and Cindy Crawford.

While Foster Grant is a “heritage brand,” it is also the modern-day star of the FGX International portfolio, which now includes all forms of eyewear like reading glasses, blue light glasses, gaming glasses and more. The transformation of a nearly century-old brand is ongoing, with a markedly new, laser-focus on consumer-centric and digital-centric efforts.

Join this fireside chat with Denna Singleton, SVP, Global Marketing and Portfolio Transformation for FGX International as she talks through FGX’s plans to accelerate growth across their brands by leveraging their assets, finessing the consumer journey, and embracing their global responsibility toward sustainability.

Expect to hear about:

• The key reasons for embarking on a brand transformation 
• The goals of a major brand transformation, and its anticipated impact on the consumer journey and the employee experience 
• Strategies to reassess your own value proposition and bolster your brand 
• How an updated brand promise can win customers and keep current customers loyal 

Denna Singleton

SVP, Global Marketing and Portfolio Transformation
FGX International

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Patricia Waldron

Contributor
Retail Wire

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In this case study style session, you will hear from the CIO of Pacsun, Shirley Gao, on how an automation and self-service first strategy enabled the brand to leapfrog its operational efficiency, while delighting modern consumers with interaction experiences that improve CSAT and loyalty.

Key learning objectives:

• What is an automation-first approach to best-in-class CX
• Top use cases where Automation really moves the needle for eComm operations
• Modern consumer preferences on service interaction channels and experiences
• How automation can yield critical insights that empowers the entire team
• What kind of results you can expect from introducing automation to your CX practice

Fang Cheng

CEO
Linc Global

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Shirley Gao

CIO
Pacsun

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There was never a more chaotic year for shipping than 2020. Especially during the holiday season. Customers were shopping online more than ever and expecting near inventory updates, fast delivery, easy returns and complete transparency on where their packages were. Products easily sold out, inventory went low and supply chains slowed down as the reality of this shift in customer behavior took effect. Join this diverse group of retailers as they walk you through their current plan for avoiding low inventory and overdemand and lessons learned over the 2021 holiday season and beyond. Discuss:

• Using real time data and insights to enhance and prioritize decision making
• Determining whether or not to promote when demand is outpacing supply but key promotional events are upcoming
• Keeping your inventory fresh and ensuring out of stock products don’t dominate a consumer’s experience
• Steps for keeping consumers engaged and finding alternate products to purchase
• Reviewing lessons learned and mistakes to avoid

Patrick Hodgdon

Director, Marketing
Slumberland

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Roderick De Rode

Founder & CEO
Spinn Inc.

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Not only has sustainability become important to increasingly conscious consumers, it is no longer a niche trend for retail. Corporate social responsibility initiatives are now becoming a priority as retailers work to reduce their environmental impact. Not only is it the right thing to do, but studies show that sustainability impacts purchase decisions. From sustainable packaging, product and manufacturing methods and more, there are so many aspects to consider. Join this c-level chat with John Tabis the co-founder of flower brand The Bouqs, as he walks us through how they’ve approached sustainability, especially given the nature of their product and how its shipped. Expect to hear about:

• Looking at the importance of sustainability for the success of your business
• Becoming an effective change agent for the company’s sustainability agenda
• Approaching sustainability holistically
• Incorporating environmental concerns into business practices
• Making sustainability part of the brand experience and creating opportunities for the consumers to experience it

Richard Kestenbaum

Contributor
Forbes

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John Tabis

Founder & CEO
The Bouqs Company

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A February ’22 Retail Dive survey asked 100 senior marketers from the largest us-based retail and dtc brands to anonymously share their best opportunities to drive revenue, and the biggest challenges they’re facing this year.

Join Nate Bucholz as he dishes the dirt directly from your industry’s leading marketers and uncovers where their plans are likely going to succeed or fail based on the purchase data from more than 160 million US consumers.

Attendees will see first-hand how the gap between first-party data and a “whole wallet view” that tracks consumer spending across all competitors in a category can lead to misallocated marketing investment and below-benchmark ROI.

Nate Bucholz

VP of Advertising Partnerships
Cardlytics

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Today’s customer is looking to buy from brands who are authentic and transparent, so this should be at the forefront of marketing messages and other customer engagement methods. Further, Generation Z is very in tune with this kind of messaging, and they know when a brand is behaving in authentically. Bottom line: there needs to be new ways of thinking about content for connection and keeping it real…and keeping it real means having an authentic voice that connects with the core customer. Join this panel with several retailers who not only talk the talk, but walk the walk when it comes to brand values and transparency. Expect to hear about:

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• Embracing brand authenticity and transparency
• Expressing values throughout the customer journey to invite and build a community
• Using meaningful messages to connect with value-driven customers
• Assessing how to showcase your brand purpose and value proposition, and which channels work best
• Understanding your customers and what they are looking for from your brand and creating a continuous customer feedback loop

Ilyse Kaplan

President & COO
Feather

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Mat Franken

CEO
Aunt Fannie’s

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Daniel Rodriguez

CMO
Simplr

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Today’s retailers need to be thinking about how social media can affect their customer’s buying journey. Millennials and Gen Z have adopted new digital shopping behaviors, including interacting with brands on social media. And given the amount of screen time these generations spend on social, how can you take advantage of these mediums and build a brand aesthetic without trying too hard to sell. Join this case study with the CMO of Kendra Scott as she walks us through some of the campaigns her team has developed to get in front of the social media savvy generation. Expect to hear about:

Using video to enhance your offerings as video consumption on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram LinkedIn and Twitter continues to rise

• Embracing gaming and VR, especially now that gamified promotions are now available
• Creating design elements like infographics and memes to deliver the bite size content that today’s consumers crave
• Focusing on authentic, thoughtful content vs. churning out hundreds of promotional posts
• Revisiting your ad buys and partnerships to ensure they really make sense for your brand
• Analyzing what’s not working in retail and which trends to skip over for now

Roderick De Rode

Founder & CEO
Spinn Inc.

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Learn how to connect data across all your sources including social and community to form a single source of truth, drive personalized retail experiences, and grow customer lifetime value with Salesforce CDP and Commerce Cloud.

Rachel Meyers

Director, Product Marketing
Salesforce

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Gabby Rajan

Senior Solution Engineer, Marketing Cloud (RCG)
Salesforce

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Influencers come with an already built community of potential consumers that might be interested in your brand. But working with influencers is not a walk in the park and campaigns have to have very specific goals in order to be successful. Join this panel with a group of influencer experts who will share some of their tips for optimizing influencer campaigns and finding the influencer community that will work best for your brand. Expect to hear about:

• Optimizing your influencer mix to take full advantage of this nearly $15 billion dollar industry
• Rethinking your social strategy: Moving away from highlighting product and brand, to highlighting your fans
• Bolstering impressions with well-known influencers
• Ensuring authenticity from your brand ambassadors’ content, but also ensuring they follow brand protocol
• Funding influencers: not all are the same. Lessons learned from spreading budgets and time
•  Don’t forget your “everyday” advocates: tracking, embracing, and empowering fans 

Catherine Seaton

VP, Marketing
Windsor Fashions

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James Thompson

VP, eCommerce & Growth
Nutrabolt

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Home Chef knew their customer experience was key to building customer loyalty, retention, and ultimately more revenue. When Conor Keane, Customer Experience Product Manager, realized their NPS score was plummeting, he knew Home Chef had to act fast. In this session we will discuss how generic data can tell the wrong story, while segmented data can help you uncover the truth behind customer sentiment. Armed with valuable data, Home Chef was able to build data-driven actions to improve their overall NPS 2X in just two months, and they’re just getting started. In this session you’ll learn how Home Chef: Aligned leadership goals to CX initiatives Started collecting valuable CX data in just 2 weeks Analyze qualitative and quantitative results efficiently Uncovered specific areas for small changes with massive results.

Conor Keane

Customer Experience Product Manager
Home Chef

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Kristina Koller

Senior Manager, Demand Generation
Momentive

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Making sure that your customer easily has a sense of the products you offer, the quality of the product, what it looks like on other customers and how other customers have reacted to the product are KEY to getting your customer to not only put an item in their cart but also eventually purchase that item. For that reason, eCommerce merchandising has never been as important, but stellar eCommerce merchandising requires a lot of teamwork and a huge amount of attention to detail. Join this panel discussion to hear how three brands well known for their standout merchandising are approaching this today. Expect to hear about:

• Bringing buying/merchandising and product marketing teams together to ensure efficiency and accuracy
• Learning how to create great customer experiences using merchandising tools
• Getting the right suite of tools needed to ensure 1:1 personalization to lead the customer to their desired product
• Balancing a great brand experience with customer demand as buyer preferences rapidly change

Vab Dwivedi

VP, Digital Products
Saatva

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Greg Dalby

VP of Ecommerce
Fender Musical Instruments

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Alex Bravo

Principal Product Marketing Manager- Retail
Twilio

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In this session you'll learn how leading data driven organizations put an emphasis on customer centricity to improve their overall performance and efficiency in an ever changing world. Highlighting key challenges from customers include Shiseido, Trifecta, ABInBev, and Muji, you'll learn how these diverse company's have built a playbook for all ecommerce and digital companies to improve their connection with customers and drive improvements across their business. Key learning objectives: - The key foundational elements necessary for customer centricity - How the Digital Native is changing how brands must interact with their customers - Why ecommerce personalization, demographic targeting, and traditional analytics tools are not enough to stay competitive in today's volatile market 

Zack Wenthe

Sr. Technical PMM, Product Evangelist
Treasure Data

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Keeping up with customer expectations in today’s world is not as easy as buying one new piece of technology or rallying your culture behind innovation. While those things are important, the key to unlocking connected commerce is having a fully revamped tech stack. All of your systems (for both online and offline interactions) have to talk to each other. There is no room in your new ecosystem for legacy systems that gum up the works and slow things down. Join Marta Dalton, Director, Global eCommerce at Unilever as she talks through their recent tech stack overhaul and explains how it has helped achieve improved experiences & customer growth. Expect to hear about:

• Getting the internal resources in place to support new tech and scale it effectively
• Finding and selecting the right partner or group of partners to bring your vision to life
• Building an order of magnitude: starting with one product in the test and learn environment and increasing new capabilities over time
• Implementing a phased migration and ensure all teams are on board with the plan
• Prioritizing investments given budgetary and time constraints 

Marta Dalton

Global Director, eCommerce
Unilever

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Platforms like Google and Facebook have a better understanding of how our consumers are spending their time each day. To take advantage of that knowledge, do digital platforms require advertisers? How do we ensure that we give them the strongest signals that result in us finding our ideal consumers? 

In this session, we’ll share tactical recommendations for driving more success from automated campaigns and share a case study of a multichannel retailer who was able to incorporate Predicted Lifetime Customer Value (pCLV) to better guide the platform algorithms to success. 

Attendees will learn: 

•         Which platforms are winning the automation race- and how 

•         Specific tips to maximize structures in Google to drive more sales and capture more new customers from Smart Shopping & Performance Max Campaigns 

•         How to “teach” automated campaigns to maximize customer acquisitions that align with your long-term business goals 

Ryan Gibson

VP, Strategy
Adlucent

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Today, it’s possible to buy a clothing item or piece of jewelry without ever having to leave social media. Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook (along with other platforms) have made it so easy for customers to click through products they like right on on their feeds and then even pay via those platforms. Is your brand taking advantage of this innovation and do you know what customers might be good segments to try to reach via this channel? Join this panel to hear more about how this group of social media executives from innovative retailers are enabling a fully social shopping experience. Expect to hear about:

• Looking at ways that commerce is happening on social platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Snap and Facebook among others
• Utilizing image-based platforms like Pinterest as if they are catalogs to lead to a direct sale
• Evaluating your audience as social commerce may not work for every customer base
• Working through potential back-end challenges

Bob Gearing

Global Head of Enterprise Solutions
Emplifi

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Branden Maes

Social Media Manager
EyeBuyDirect Inc.

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