Personalization tactics in retail are basically cheat codes. Don’t just take it from us (well, not yet at least); the data and results are in, and the brands that leverage personalization simply see higher performance than their competition.

According to McKinsey:

Personalization marketing has real advantages for companies: it can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase marketing ROI by 10 to 30 percent. Personalization has also been shown to improve performance and provide better customer outcomes. Companies with faster growth rates derive 40 percent more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.

And despite these mouth-watering, positive statistics in favor of personalized marketing, McKinsey has another piece of data that’s the real kicker:

Our research indicates that only 15 percent of retailers have fully implemented personalization strategies. More than 80 percent are still defining a personalization strategy or have begun pilot initiatives. [emphasis ours]

The way you see the terms personalization and clienteling thrown about in the retail space would have you believe these customer strategies are ubiquitous, but clearly they are more the exception than the rule.

Here at Endear, we are lucky to have front-row seats to our clients who strategically employ smart personalization tactics, and reap the benefits. Let’s dive into a few examples of what we are seeing in the apparel space when it comes to personalization, and the results these apparel brands are seeing.

BuddyLove is a designer brand that offers bold prints, bright colors, and trend-driven designs. And because they are distributed and sold in over 1,000 boutiques across the US, they have an ever-growing list of new customers.

Using a personalized welcome email is good, but BuddyLove’s team prefers to use SMS welcome messages when they can and sees an unusually good success rate at starting up a conversation (and thus a relationship) with new customers.

First off, a text message just is more personal than an email. Research has shown that because it arrives on one’s smartphone, it feels more intimate and personal. Of course, brands like BuddyLove have to make sure that each new customer has opted-in to receive SMS messages. They do so with an enticing offer for new users on their homepage:

BuddyLove’s welcome text message uses the customer’s first name, introduces a BuddyLove personal stylist by name, and makes it clear that this specific stylist will be available to help or answer questions at any time via text. The tone is friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable.

For a constantly-running SMS campaign (they’ve sent north of 8,000 of these welcome texts!), BuddyLove is seeing a reply rate of nearly 3% and can attribute over $36,000 in sales just from their welcome text!

The success of BuddyLove’s welcome texts have inspired us here at Endear to suggest it to other retailers who want to see this same level of ROI.

Mizzen + Main claim no one makes a better performance dress shirt, and judging from their slew of customer testimonials, it’s a hard point to argue. And because they are always releasing new styles and products, their team uses personalized email campaigns to keep their customers informed and intrigued.

One of their recent campaigns focused on customers located in Houston, letting them know that their local store had new arrivals. But this particular campaign didn’t target every customer in Houston. Mizzen + Main decided to segment the recipients of this email even further.

Their team chose to target Houston’s recent shoppers, using an Endear filter: Last Order Date is between 0 and 14 days ago. This and other filters narrowed down the target audience to just 200 email addresses.

But the point was to quickly re-engage recent shoppers. Mizzen + Main’s team knows that if a customer purchased one item, they’ll be thrilled with it enough to purchase another. So, did this personalization tactic work?

Because Mizzen + Main understands the shopping cadence of their customers, they crafted a highly successful personalized re-engagement email that worked. By using the right Endear email filters and smart compose options, they rode the momentum of one sale into multiples.

It’s always incredible to see our apparel brand clients use our CRM platform in so many creative ways to provide a clienteling experience to their customers. Did you know that the average ROI on an Endear subscription is 64X?