Digital Retail Summit

I really enjoyed this event. A room full of fantastic marketers sharing their wins and challenges.

The first panel on Aligning your Digital Strategy was incredibly interesting with a very vast array of businesses and marketing goals. 

The session was moderated by John Preston from Tryzens with Tim Snape from Heaps Normal, Lauren Crawley from Kimberley Clark, Zhoe Low from July and Katherine Mamontoff from Estee Lauder. 

The conversation started with global market trend predictions for the 2025 customer and the consensus was that ‘IRL’ would make a return. Brands are looking to invest in physical and in store customer experience. Zhoe went on to highlight how July look for Brand moments, they are focusing on partnerships, collaborations and brand to brand - something we love to hear! She did include that it is essential to pick the right platforms… and I have to agree. There are so many different vendors for all different solutions, it must be hard on the brand side to know what is going to be the right choice. 

Katherine agreed it’s all about experience over transaction. She described how for Estee Lauder brands, storytelling continues to be powerful for digital and that the rise of social commerce just proves her point. They follow trends on social media on a category level (social listening) and predict the next purchase through data. 

The trap can be that when there is so much data it can lead to surface level analysis. This was a topic that came up a lot throughout the day. Other sessions were around personalisation and the benefit of utilising customer data and quite often, brands are at the early stage of how to get the most of tools. 

A few retailers - talked about end of day sheets and being able to draw meaningful insights directly from them. I found this incredible and quite 'grass roots'.  Post purchase surveys came up a handful of times as well. 

Heaps Normal described brand tracking and actually being in pubs to understand and be inspired for their marketing ideas. 

Everyone agreed it is important to get your tech stack right (something I love hearing!) and crucial to invest in the post purchase journey. Katherine continued that they are committed to fixing pain points as a way of retaining customers. 

It was really amazing as well throughout the day that other marketers echoed what the panelists had said about - there being a certain level of flexibility in a “digital strategy” and that brands simply look for a way to connect to their customers. My favourite quote came from Katherine when she spoke about how deep connections make consumers choose one brand over another. 

It always brings me back to partnerships. If you have strong connections with your customers AND you leverage off your chosen partner’s strong connections, you have a win win scenario - effectively engaging with your customers and potential customers at any given moment. 

Overall - a great event with some fantastic takeaways for me personally and feeling rather inspired!