Endear's Modern Retail Blog covers articles from luxury clienteling to advanced tips & tricks to stay on top of your retail business.

A growing collection of case studies of how our customers have effectively used Endear to innovate and invigorate their retail sales.

Hear it straight from the industry experts! Endear founders share their expertise in the retail industry to inspire business owners to do more for their brands.

We highlight the functionality of some of Endear app's key features to arm your team with the know-how to make them work for you.

Need fresh ideas for customer service training & building brand loyalty among customers? Read our articles for best practices for your retail strategy.

<p><a href="http://kirnazabete.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kirna Zabete</a> is truly a fashionista's paradise -  her "Happy Place" - as the website states. For many, it's the embodiment of New York, fashion, and high-end, service-driven shopping.</p><p>But when a pandemic forces everyone to go on lock-down, one would think that would mean the terrifying end of luxury apparel. And yet, as we head into our sixth month of a global pandemic, Kirna Zabete continues to provide the same high-touch level of attention it's known for to ensure their business stays afloat, leaving customers excited to indulge and ready to purchase. While the retail team used to keep track of customers on their own, the company switched to using <a href="https://endearhq.com/customers" target="_blank">Endear's CRM</a> in January, enabling them to stay on top of a wider customer base through the lock-down and scale their outreach through personalized email and text that didn't require sacrificing their signature personal touch.</p><p>Initially piloted by their team at their flagship store in Soho, Kirna Zabete started generating sales in <a href="https://endearhq.com" target="_blank">Endear</a> in just their first month. But even more promising was that sales did not stop even as mid-March came and went. By combining a high-touch remote sales strategy with the option to buy online and pick up in-store, the brand always ensured that their customers could continue to shop in a way that was safe and convenient for them. In fact, with just one salesperson manning outreach through Endear, this past June was Kirna's best performance when it comes to client-generated sales, a staggering 21% higher than their best month before the pandemic.</p><p>But how!? "No one is buying luxury!" you say? A close look at Kirna's outreach strategy can help illuminate how they've achieved success:</p><h2><strong>1. Personalize Your Outreach</strong></h2><p>With Endear's CRM, Kirna Zabete's retail team was able to segment customers by geography,  spending habits, and other relevant data points in order to make their outreach feel personal without actually having to send messages one at a time. Whether sharing a special code with VIP customers for a private sale, or letting local shoppers know about store re-openings, Kirna had complete control over the information their customers were receiving and could reach out to customers dynamically as conditions changed (as we know they are prone to do often). For example, the brand was able to inform customers as soon as they rolled out curb-side pick-up and local delivery so that their customers were always informed about their latest services and shopping options. Most importantly though, customers received these updates not in the form of a marketing email that they couldn't reply to (nor would they likely want to) but from a familiar name, someone they knew.</p><h2><strong>2. Prioritize Text</strong></h2><p>Customers are incredibly responsive to text, especially when the message feels like it's from a friend. While any SMS marketing site will tout the power of text, Kirna is a true symbol of how powerful Endear's method of personalization can be: the brand had a near 20% response rate and over an 8% conversion rate on the texts they sent in their top-performing month. Since the crisis hit, their average conversion on text has still been over 5% — over 100x what most brands see through standard email marketing. There is no clearer sign that customers are hungry for a direct line to your team.</p><h2>3. <strong>Empower Customers to Engage</strong></h2><p>Using Endear to email and text customers means customers can respond with additional follow-up questions and get real-time responses from a knowledgable resource. In fact, while news about the stores drove a majority of customers to visit the newly-opened locations, the retail team was also able to drive additional sales online. <a href="https://endearhq.com/analytics" target="_blank">Based on data in Endear</a>, about 5% of the retail team's outreach about stores actually resulted in online purchases. In addition, while some customers did not respond to the initial outreach, we found it empowered them to <a href="https://endearhq.com/sms-marketing" target="_blank">use the designated team phone number</a> or email address to send inquiries later on.</p><p>While the fate of physical retail stores still hangs in the balance, customers still need a way to engage directly with brands like they used to happen face-to-face. Even if your store is currently open, it's important to be realistic about consumers' willingness to visit and find a new method of providing the level of service they need to make informed purchase.</p><p>If you have a sales team or are thinking of how to build one that's suited for the new era of retail, reach out to us at <a href="mailto:sales@endearhq.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sales@endearhq.com</a>.</p><p>‍</p>

Learn how luxury retailer Kirna Zabete overcame the challenges of Coronavirus by focusing on an omnichannel clienteling strategy.

Conquering COVID through Clienteling

How Luxury Retailer Kirna Zabete Conquered COVID Through Clienteling

<p><a href="http://www.ettitude.com/?utm_source=endear.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=endearcasestudy_20200400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ettitude</a> is a sustainable lifestyle brand that delivers silky-soft luxury bedding, sleepwear and other home essentials directly to its customers. Using the world's first CleanBamboo™ fabric, the brand offers eco-forward products that are as gentle on the skin as they are on the planet.</p><p>Founded in 2014, the company launched its first pop-up in October, 2019 in one of the most popular shopping areas in the country, Abott Kinney in LA. The objective: show off how silky-soft the brand's fabrics are thanks to their sustainable materials and manufacturing. The strategy behind the pop-up was to introduce potential customers to ettitude's revolutionary fabrics IRL. In describing why they opened the pop-up, Melissa Kantor, the brand's marketing manager said, "We can only describe the softness of our sheets so much, but being able to give customers the opportunity to actually touch and feel it is invaluable."</p><p>Being located in such a hot spot created two challenges for the brand, whose pop-up audience was divided between locals and tourists. The challenge with local customers is that they may not have wanted to carry around sheets fit for a Queen (mattress) while they continued to shop in the neighborhood - the team wanted to make sure these customers had a <a href="https://endearhq.com/blog/showrooming-webrooming" target="_blank">choice between purchasing right on the spot or ordering later</a> from the comfort of their homes. Tourists, on the other hand, may be learning about the brand for the first time, so it was important for the retail team to have the ability to <a href="https://endearhq.com/messaging" target="_blank">stay in touch and continue to educate the customer</a> without putting pressure to purchase immediately.</p><p>That's where <a href="https://endearhq.com" target="_blank">Endear</a> came in. Associates at the store could overcome both of these challenges by relying on Endear to collect customer information and keep track of the products that customers were most interested in. Then, when the time came, they were able to follow up with customers over email and text, ensuring they had all the details they needed by sending them <a href="https://endearhq.com/lookbooks" target="_blank">virtual lookbooks</a> of the products they favored. New customers were also rewarded for sharing their details with bandana-style swatches of ettitude's revolutionary textile - what better way to remind shoppers just how good the product was?</p><p>To make the most of their time on Abbott Kinney, the retail team also encouraged their community to visit the store by offering unique promotions available only at their pop-up, such as an extended sales for Black Friday, Valentines Day, and Presidents Day weekend. But in order to ensure that these special offers were only shared with customers who could actually take advantage, the team again turned to Endear to <a href="https://endearhq.com/customers" target="_blank">narrow down their outreach by relevant zip codes and purchase history</a>. According to Mel, the results were tremendous, with sales on Mondays and Tuesdays rivaling their typical weekend performance. In fact, according to data collected through Endear, <a href="https://endearhq.com/analytics">sales over the course of the pop-up increased 300% month-over-month</a> as associates ramped up their outreach to customers. By the end, the team had an average 3% conversion rate on their outreach, meaning that for every 100 people they contacted, 3 ended up making a purchase.</p><p>We were so thrilled to work with ettitude and to be part of their pop-up experience. We were impressed with the way they leveraged Endear to acquire new customers, introduce their store's organic foot traffic to the brand, and ensure that customers could pick their own path to purchase. We hope that their experience inspires how you tackle your own IRL adventure.</p><p>‍</p>

Learn how organic home essentials brand ettitude used Endear to build brand loyalty and customer retention at their LA pop-up.

How ettitude Used Endear to Optimize Their Pop-Up

<p>This week, Endear hosted its first webinar with Peviter Veygal, Head of Regional Operations at Rhone. The topic: how to COVID-proof your retail strategy.</p><p>‍</p><h2>About Rhone</h2><p>Launched exclusively online in 2014, <a href="https://www.rhone.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rhone</a> is a premium men's performance lifestyle brand that prides itself on supporting customers with comfortable, functional clothing for work, working out, or simply hanging at home. Rhone opened their first store in 2019, and has since opened three additional stores across New York and Connecticut.</p><p>‍</p><h2>How Rhone Uses Endear (Before And During Coronavirus)</h2><p>When Rhone first came to Endear, they were focused on tailoring their messaging toward encouraging customers to use the brand's salespeople as a resource, even if they could not make it into the store. Utilizing one of Endear's many filters to segment customers based on lifetime spend, Peviter Veygal and her team were able to craft unique message templates to match certain customer characteristics and product preferences.</p><p>While this filtering strategy is a common approach with brands on Endear, Rhone was suddenly faced with new challenges when the effects of COVID-19 forced them to close all of their physical retail locations. The retail team at Rhone knew they still had a tremendous amount of value and insight to offer customers, even if they couldn't do it face-to-face, so they put their heads together and pivoted their retail strategy. As a result, their <a href="https://www.rhone.com/pages/rhone-virtual-concierge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">virtual concierge program</a> was born.</p><p>‍</p><h2>The Power of Omnichannel Selling</h2><p>Powered in part by <a href="https://endearhq.com/lookbooks" target="_blank">Endear's lookbook </a>feature, Rhone now promotes their virtual concierge program on their website so that customers can book 1-1 virtual styling sessions with a member of their sales team. Once customers book a time, they can preview products they'll be seeing with a lookbook shared ahead of their appointment. Thanks in part to customization and personalization within Endear, lookbooks are utilized even more when styling sessions conclude. "If the customer is uncertain [about buying] at that very moment or doesn't want to give credit card information over the phone, we send an email after their call with [a lookbook of] everything they said yes to, plus a few more items," Veygal shared during the webinar. <br><br>According to statistics courtesy of <a href="https://endearhq.com/analytics" target="_blank">Endear's omnichannel tracking</a>, to-date, this strategy has resulted in a 7.6% conversion rate on messages related to the virtual concierge program - a whopping 95x higher conversion rate than the average apparel brand's email marketing message. <a href="https://endr.co/l/voLei7Qo/ylOMXNtA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You can check out an example of the lookbook Rhone shares with their customers here</a>. Today, Rhone's virtual concierge program is still going strong, even as stores begin to re-open to the public in some states.</p><p>‍</p><h2>What Else We Learned</h2><p>After the webinar concluded, the audience had some follow-up questions for Peviter Veygal that helped shed even more light on the success of the program and Endear's role in their strategy:</p><p>‍</p><h3>"Did you use Endear during Father's Day and are there implications for uses during future holidays, like Black Friday?"</h3><p>According to Veygal, one of Rhone's biggest promotional pushes around their virtual concierge service came in advance of Father's Day as a way to help customers with gifting. She also shared that the flexibility of the platform will allow them to adjust their strategy according to what makes sense for any future holidays.</p><p>‍</p><h3>"How do you ensure sales associates are not emailing the same customers?"</h3><p>Users can always filter by "Last Contacted" to choose how frequently a customer is messaged. This filter can help distinguish customers who have been contacted through Endear within any time period. For example, users can exclude any customer who was contacted within the last three days. More importantly, Endear automatically omits messages sent to customers who have already received a bulk message in the same 24 hours to prevent customers from receiving the same message twice or too many messages in any given day.</p><p>‍</p><h3>"Was Peviter using something separate for the appointment scheduling element or is that through Endear as well?"</h3><p>Peviter shared that the Rhone team used Calendly for their booking software, and customers could book a time directly on their website. We also recommend using Calendly because their linking options are seamless to incorporate into Endear emails and texts. </p><p>‍</p><h3>"Has Endear been used with any digital or e-commerce teams aside from retail teams?"</h3><p>Endear works with both online-only, store-only, and omni-channel sales teams. The most important thing to know about the platform is that it's designed to serve any sort of sales team, whether they serve online customers, in-store customers, or both. We think both is best!</p><p>‍</p><p>If you're interested in learning how you can launch your own virtual concierge program to match the needs of your customers, reach out to us at sales@endearhq.com so we can help you get started!</p>

Find out how athletic apparel brand, Rhone, counted on Endear to launch their virtual concierge program during COVID-19

Case Study: Rhone's Virtual Concierge Program

How Rhone Used Endear to Launch their Virtual Concierge Program

<p>Koio is a New York-based sneaker brand delivering Italian craftsmanship to modern consumers  looking for comfort, quality, and style that can go anywhere. All this at a fraction of the price of traditional luxury sneakers on the market.</p><p>Since their inception in 2014, <a href="https://www.koio.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Koio</a> has quickly become a social media sensation, recognized around the world as the footwear of choice for influencers, jetsetters, and busy working professionals alike. The digitally-native brand has since expanded to five permanent brick-and-mortar locations and two pop-up stores across the U.S.</p><p>One of Endear's inaugural customers, Koio has augmented their strong digital presence through store-based marketing efforts. A steady stream of associate-driven follow ups, personal product recommendations, and thank-you messages has helped Koio maintain and boost their customer engagement and extend their brands' voice via a personalized and memorable in-store experience.</p><p>In anticipation of the launch of the brand's newest style, <a href="https://www.koio.co/collections/collection-men" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Tempo</a> this past July, the Koio team developed a marketing strategy combining social media, e-mail, and IRL in-store engagement. To promote their new shoe to their stores' local customers, select Koio locations implemented an event-based marketing campaign using Endear's segmenting and bulk messaging capabilities to target shoppers in each store's neighborhood and invite them to their store's launch event.</p><figure class="w-richtext-figure-type-image w-richtext-align-floatleft" data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align="floatleft"><div><img alt="kio store facade with balloons" src="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5cf17e0d3f8865521700e6bc/5d60434ae511028f1a15068b_koio%20launch.jpg"></div></figure><p>These messages touted the launch of their newest silhouette and extended an invitation to celebrate in-store or, of course, make a purchase online. Messages sent as part of this campaign had a 36.2%* open rate, more than double the industry average, and 10.7% of in-store sales over the shoe's launch weekend were attributed to associates' outreach through Endear. </p><p>While the brand has been using Endear to connect with shoppers for almost a year, this was Koio's first event-focused campaign implemented through Endear. But beyond directly attributable sales, this campaign and others like it serve to reinforce a sense of Koio community and open the door for further storytelling opportunities via physical retail locations and, most importantly, the teams that work there. Fostering a conversational relationship rather than a purely transaction one is invaluable when building a loyal and valuable customer base and an essential part of what Endear offers to its users.</p><p>*vs. an industry average of 15% for U.S. retailers</p><p>‍</p>

Sneaker brand Koio upped its marketing game for its new Tempo sneaker by leveraging Endear to invite customers to shop the new product at their local Koio store.

Koio upped its marketing game for its new Tempo sneaker by using Endear to invite customers to shop the new product at their local store.

How Koio Recently Increased Sales Using Endear

How Koio stores used Endear to increase sales for the brand's latest sneaker drop

<p>The power of gratitude has long been espoused as a golden rule by your parents, teachers, and, now, favorite Instagrammers. But beyond the emotional impact a simple “Thank You” can make, we wanted to take a closer look at how it influences customer sentiments and ultimately the bottom line for retailers.</p><p>To help assess this influence, we dove into some of our Endear messaging data. We trust you will find the results as interesting as we did!</p><h2>The Figures</h2><p>Messages that included a “thank you” amounted to 8.67% of messages sent through Endear. In analyzing this subset of messages, we found a conversion rate of 10.29% , compared to a rate of 4.86% for messages that did not include a “thank you.” Overall, messages sent through Endear showed a conversion rate of 5.33%, compared to an industry average of 0.05% in <a href="https://performance-na1.emarketer.com/channel/58f4ec8cdc030c036839cd16/59e6714dbfce890eb411eb7b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2018.</a></p><h2>What it Means</h2><p>Customers who have already made a purchase, and thus receive a "thank you," are a self-selecting group of your best customers. If their purchase is a signal that they love your brand, then reminding them of that and and pointing them towards your e-commerce offerings is more likely to pay off. Data shows this audience has an above-average conversion rate, so go ahead and grab that low hanging fruit!</p><h2>Best Practices</h2><p>In fact, we think “thank you” messages are a great way to get started using a personalized messaging platform like Endear. Beginning with these small steps can help you build towards more advanced strategies as you learn what capabilities and use cases best complement your business.</p><p>Below are some examples of great "Thank You" messages for your inspiration:</p><blockquote>Hey ________!</blockquote><blockquote>Thanks for visiting us today! We're so glad we got to introduce you to our brand and give you an opportunity to explore what we have to offer IRL. If you'd like to continue your journey you can find us at www.brand.com or check us out at @brand_IG. Hope to see you back at the store soon! </blockquote><blockquote>Best, ________</blockquote><p>We love the addition of inviting the customer to participate in the social media conversation as a way to get to know the brand better. </p><blockquote>Hi ________,</blockquote><blockquote>Thank you for popping into the store the other day.  I’m so glad we were able to find you the perfect piece for your upcoming event - what an absolutely amazing addition to your wardrobe! If you have any questions about your purchase or anything else about Brand, you can reach us at 555-5555. Have an awesome day!</blockquote><blockquote>Warm regards,</blockquote><blockquote>#BrandHashtag</blockquote><p>Providing a contact method creates more opportunities for follow-up visits and product exploration</p><blockquote>Hi ______,</blockquote><blockquote>Thank you again for coming in today! I'm so happy you settled on the Dress! I am attaching links to the other styles that you tried on, in case you want to give them another look online. All the styles today were in a size 4. Let me know if I can be helpful with finding you anything else! </blockquote><blockquote>Best,__________ </blockquote><p>We love incorporating clickable content of other items the customer enjoyed during the store visit, and inviting the customer to engage in conversation over trackable email. </p><p>So whether you're already utilizing a personalized messaging strategy, or just starting, we encourage you to see how far a simple "Thank You" can take you in your efforts. Chances are it will only serve to enhance the brand-client relationship and open the door for further engagement, conversation, and future purchases.</p><p>‍</p>

Learn about personalized messaging strategy and how the expression of gratitude can create measurable results in retail clienteling. 

Growth through Gratitude: The Power of Thank You

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Customer Case Studies

Customer Case Studies

How Luxury Retailer Kirna Zabete Conquered COVID Through Clienteling

Learn how luxury retailer Kirna Zabete overcame the challenges of Coronavirus by focusing on an omnichannel clienteling strategy.

Customer Case Studies

How ettitude Used Endear to Optimize Their Pop-Up

Learn how organic home essentials brand ettitude used Endear to build brand loyalty and customer retention at their LA pop-up.

Customer Case Studies

How Rhone Used Endear to Launch their Virtual Concierge Program

Find out how athletic apparel brand, Rhone, counted on Endear to launch their virtual concierge program during COVID-19

Customer Case Studies

How Koio stores used Endear to increase sales for the brand's latest sneaker drop

Sneaker brand Koio upped its marketing game for its new Tempo sneaker by leveraging Endear to invite customers to shop the new product at their local Koio store.

Customer Case Studies

Growth through Gratitude: The Power of Thank You

Learn about personalized messaging strategy and how the expression of gratitude can create measurable results in retail clienteling.

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