With RetailTune, digital marketing services for stores are evolving

Increasing foot traffic in stores, managing all the digital touchpoints of points of sale, and providing detailed, up-to-date information to the end customer. These are the foundations of RetailTune's business, a company founded by Claudio Agazzi in 2018. A company that became the leader in its segment within two years, trusted by retailers across many sectors, from fashion to food to services. All united by one great need: to bring order to the babel of information about their points of sale, refine their geolocation and, above all, drive traffic in store — which has always been the main goal of anyone operating in the market.

Fashionnetwork.com

Thanks to the RetailTune platform, which centrally manages data about physical points of sale and organic, zero-cost drive-to-store campaigns, brands are able to oversee and manage all digital touchpoints and be found in the right place at the right time. Claudio Agazzi helps us understand the potential of digital marketing tools even in this era of fragility for the physical store system.

FN: Can you explain in detail how digital marketing tools can become strategic or essential during this period of health emergency, with stores closed in various parts of the world?

CA: For retailers, timeliness has become a distinguishing factor: being able to react by transferring information from the point of sale to the web in real time has become strategic. Just think how quickly opening hours and in-store services have been changing during this emergency period. But timeliness alone is not enough — retailers also face fierce competition on flexibility: in understanding worldwide social changes and in locally implementing strategies to satisfy the consumer, wherever they are, through whatever channel they want to interact with: e-commerce, chat, WhatsApp, phone call, video call, social profiles, physical store... Another emerging aspect is the ability to create tools that can assist customers remotely and finalize orders received from the consumer remotely. We are seeing a growing number of offerings in this space, but they are not always functional and complete.

FN: Full or partial lockdowns have hit the fashion sector particularly hard. Has 2020 been a year that has accelerated the digitalization of fashion retail?

CA: We could say yes, but with some reservations. If on one hand lockdowns have accelerated awareness of the need to offer more and more digital dialogue tools, on the other this rush is not sustainable within company budgets. We're talking about cuts and reductions, not budget increases. At RetailTune we are moving with full awareness of the moment we are living through, trying above all to help our clients by proposing solutions that involve affordable, and therefore viable, investments.

FN: Are all fashion companies investing in digital marketing? How? Which areas are still underexploited?

CA: Yes, I have to say that companies have continued to invest in digital even during this period, which has been not very fertile in terms of economic return, and they did well! Those who could afford to have shown their substance. Where there still isn't enough investment is precisely in Local communication — and by local I mean personalized across digital touchpoints. Let me give a few examples to clarify the concept: many companies keep their store locator hidden or don't make use of channels like Google My Business to communicate events at their points of sale; others don't listen to the local audience, its needs, its tastes. The tools and the data are there — what's still missing is the awareness that you can do refined work on the data to improve communication and service to the local audience.

FN: RetailTune works with small and large international fashion groups — can you tell us about a case study that has given you the most satisfaction from an innovation standpoint over these two years?

CA: I like to mention Gaudì, a brand with a more commercial positioning than others we work with, but one that followed us into a forward-looking project supporting the multi-brand store. The project will launch in spring 2021 and will mark a revolution in the relationship between brands and wholesale clients: for the first time, a brand is making its digital assets available to promote the product purchased by its own client. Something that seemed like a pipe dream until recently is now possible.

FN: Based on the data you have, how much can a good digital marketing strategy be worth to a brand's revenue in percentage terms?

CA: If I may, I'd slightly rephrase the question: how much a good digital marketing strategy can contribute to consolidating brand awareness. What we've seen is that sufficient budgets to launch a brand from scratch on the web rarely exist. It's much easier and more useful to leverage web marketing to first consolidate the brand and then increase results. Today we have very sophisticated tools that let us communicate with extreme precision: we know the local audience, its tastes and preferences; we have highly effective organic and paid channels available; we monitor results. By feeding all this data into our process, we're able to maximize returns by improving communication performance.

FN: Give us your point of view on the retail of the future.

CA: I prefer to talk about the retail of today — less futuristic, more concrete. A quality store necessarily depends on well-trained sales staff, able to assist the customer even before they arrive in store, on the phone for example. A transparent store, that tells the end customer they can buy anywhere but that it's always by their side. A store that knows its audience and integrates the data collected online. A store increasingly capable of telling a story to its audience.