From the Web to the Physical Store with RetailTune

Interview with Claudio Agazzi, CEO and Founder of the company founded in 2018 that became the leader in its segment within two years. Retailers across many sectors have trusted it,
from fashion to food to services

Touchpoint.news

RetailTune was founded in 2018 to help the retail world increase in-store traffic and manage all the digital touchpoints at points of sale. How do you position yourselves in the market?

The idea for RetailTune goes back to 2015, when I was strategic consultant for an Italian fashion brand with directly-operated stores and wholesale operations all over the world. That's where I understood how difficult it was for companies to oversee all touchpoints and use them to offer the consumer a unique shopping experience, wherever they are. Now, as then, we're aware of how much, despite the digitalization underway, many retailers have neglected the importance of communicating directly with the local user at the most crucial moment of their purchase journey: the moment they search for the brand online. An extremely decisive phase for retailers, who must seize the opportunity hic et nunc to interact with and engage the user, with the aim of shortening the user's purchase process and bringing them into the store. In this context, RetailTune has developed a series of innovative tools to communicate with users on the most widely used digital channels — from the brand's website, the largest CRM the company has at its disposal, to third-party touchpoints such as Google My Business listings and Facebook location pages, but above all more elaborate customer-centric tools such as reserving a product in store, being notified when a missing product becomes available again in store, the ability to start a conversation via WhatsApp, and the ability to book an appointment in store. We like to highlight how our company actually has a dual function: on one hand, it aims to help retailers make the most of Local Digital Marketing; on the other, to make the user's browsing easier by providing the right information in the right place at the right time.

Two years later, the sector finds itself facing an unforeseen situation, partly due to the recent health emergency. In a scenario like the current one, how has the role of a company like yours changed?

A scenario like this has made it even clearer to us how much the RetailTune platform can be a strategic player for retailers. During the health emergency, retailers faced a truly extraordinary event — the lockdown made stores and services inaccessible for a long period. It wasn't easy to manage the closure of points of sale online; the variable openings and special hours; the new home-delivery services; the new phygital ways of buying products.

Thanks to RetailTune, managing all of this was made easier and in real time.

Centralized data distribution allowed the status of stores to be updated promptly across all touchpoints, giving our clients the great advantage of accurate, timely communication.

During the lockdown we launched two very important services: the booking an appointment service, which makes it very simple to book an appointment in store, and e-Store Light, a tool that lets the store close out an order coming from different channels (a WhatsApp chat, social channels, on-site chat, email, phone call).

These are services born out of the health emergency, but they nonetheless have a universal value, as they are part of that customer-care process that is at the heart of our philosophy. Market gurus talk to us about the evolution of traditional retail, about the digitalization of physical stores; for us, the retailer of the near future is the one who will know how to survive uncertainty, skillfully combining physical and digital, being found by the consumer and offering them a rewarding shopping experience — online, offline, onlife!

What are RetailTune's strengths?

RetailTune positions itself as a point of contact between users and the brand, facilitating smooth communication between the two parties involved. We systematically work to teach and make retailers aware of the importance of the behavior of users who actively search for the brand. Thanks to our precise geolocation, we're able to intercept users in real time at the hottest moment of the Local Customer Journey, engage them, and guide them toward the nearest point of sale. Centralized data distribution across all touchpoints lets retailers keep information always up-to-date, consistent, and accurate online, avoiding inconsistencies between channels. In addition, RetailTune assigns a dedicated contact person to each client, both for strategic support on Drive to Store communication and for the operational phases of implementing and updating information. In our vision, this is only the beginning of Drive to Store — the true drivers of traffic at the point of sale are user Loyalty&Care services aimed at delivering an extremely personalized purchase experience. Knowledge of the data generated by these activities (geolocation, products most viewed by geolocated users, product distribution across stores), the ability to interpret it, combined with the entrepreneurial spirit that sets us apart, lets us offer brands a guideline for all their Local Marketing strategies.

Who are your main clients today?

Our client portfolio is cross-sector: from fashion to consumer packaged goods, from large-scale retail to cosmetics. In fashion we have well-known brands such as Pinko, Gaudì, Momoni, Attic&Barn, Oof Wear, Liu Jo and Dan John. In large-scale retail we have Gruppo Gabrielli with the Tigre, Oasi and Tigre Amico supermarkets, and Ceetrus shopping centers. NaturaSì is a very important client for us in the organic sector. In personal care, our client is Nashi Argan. In services we work with Sky, in home décor and gifts we collaborate with Thun, and in fair trade with the company Altromercato.

Today's consumer moves in a "continuous" flow between the physical and digital worlds, without interruption — what challenge will retailers have to face in the years ahead?

The evolution of retailers is now, and will be even more so in the future, a direct consequence of the evolution in how users interact with brands. We'll see the development of increasingly personal and immediate communication between brands and users, marked by a significant closing of the gap between the two.

Retailers' challenge will be their ability to "shorten" these distances, aiming to offer excellent, fast, and above all one-to-one customer service. It won't be an easy or immediate path, but what we expect is that users themselves will guide us toward the preferred channels to work on. That's why our roadmap includes integrating the multi-brand store, which is very often overlooked. With an increasingly omnichannel approach, the goal is to make multi-brand stores increasingly visible on the corporate website, making them an integral part of the consumer's purchase experience, and thereby providing an immediate tool for dialogue and promotion with the customer.

We started from studying user needs, which today more than ever are constantly evolving and changing, and we focused on how to interact with the user at the decisive moment of their purchase journey. The result was the creation of a smart widget, but we didn't stop there — we'll be giving multi-brand stores greater attention in the future, providing users not only with drive-to-store information such as hours, address, and contacts, but also with a range of services dedicated to customer care and support. Among these, already active, are the Booking service and the ability to sell products through messaging apps such as WhatsApp.