In this whitepaper we cut to the chase - and talk about how to win the hearts and minds of customers in a world of overloaded messaging, big data run-amok, and decreasing customer attention. In this whitepaper we outline: How best to target your audience What tactics are needed to become a trusted resource for your customers How to fluidly connect the in-store experience to the offline experience

1. 1 YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
Gaining, growing and maintaining customer loyalty in
the new world of personalization and social technology

2. 2 YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
Gaining, growing and maintaining customer loyalty in
the new world of personalization and social technology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT MARKETBRIDGE ................................................................................................................. 3
INTRODUCTION: 3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail ............................................................... 4
PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction .................................................................................... 7
PART 2: Connect with their Interests..........................................................................................10
PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience........................................................................ 13
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................17
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ....................................................................................................................18

3. 3 YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
ABOUT MARKETBRIDGE
MarketBridge is a leading technology enabled
services firm, providing digital marketing,
sales enablement, and customer analytics
solutions for Fortune 1000 and emerging
growth companies.
We help companies improve sales productivity by increasing
digital customer engagement and building robust customer
analytics engines that focus marketing investments and sales
activity on the right customers, with the right messaging and
solutions, through the right marketing and sales channels.
Our unique RevenueEngines™ and SMART™ Analytics solutions
deliver data-driven digital customer engagement by connecting
marketing and sales to increase pipeline volume, velocity, close
rates and customer loyalty. Our solutions are powered by best-
of-breed technologies including social, marketing automation,
CRM and business intelligence, all of which dramatically improve
revenue performance, cost efficiency and customer experience.
Corporate Website:
www.market-bridge.com
MarketBridge Community:
www.the-digital-bridge.com
Phone:
1-888-GO-TO-MKT
Corporate Headquarters:
4350 East-West Hwy, 6th Floor
Bethesda, MD 20814
San Francisco, CA
49 Stevenson St., Suite 660
San Francisco, CA 94105
New York, NY
79 Madison Ave, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10016

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INTRODUCTION
Every 20 to 30 years, retail goes through a
seismic change that transforms the way we
engage and service our customers. There
was the shift away from one-on-one, highly
consultative sales of the 1950s and early 60s
to the world of big-box and multi-category
retailing in the 70s and 80s, followed by the
radical shift to e-tailing that emerged with
Amazon and eBay in the early 1990’s.
Today we’re witnessing retail’s next
transformation: where the power of data,
social media, and omni-channel delivery
are rightfully empowering our shoppers
to demand personalized, customer-centric
experiences in return for purchasing products
and continued loyalty. This new reality is
being driven by three paradigm shifts.

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Our customers are smarter and
more empowered than ever before.
Gone are the days where shoppers relied purely
on marketing and the word of in-store associates
to make decisions. Now recommendations from
friends on Facebook, trends on Twitter and
Pinterest, video reviews and other interest-based
content guide their decisions.
Google recently studied the entire path buyers
take when making a purchase and found that
shoppers typically conduct 6 searches before
finding the product that best matches their
needs, and consume 12 sources of information
before making a purchasing decision. Even
more interesting? 50% of shoppers are now
using their mobile phones to guide in-store
purchases. And that number is as high as
70% for the increasingly powerful millennial
customer.
The customer experience
transcends online vs. offline.
We’ve become accustomed to thinking of offline
and online as separate worlds. Many top retailers
still have one marketing team for dot-com
activities and another for in-store, with different
strategies for both. But customers now live and
shop in a world where they don’t want to choose
between online and offline. They want it all—a
seamless experience where they can engage,
research and purchase when, where and how
they want.
This symbiotic relationship between online and
offline purchasing behavior is causing noticeable
reverse trends. Formerly online-only retailers
like Warby Parker Eyewear and Bonobos, who
once declared brick-and-mortar to be dead,
now have physical flagship stores in New York.
This year a Google Shopper Research study
estimated that over $2 trillion of offline retail
spend is influenced by experiences online. In
other words, what happens online does not stay
online. Your customers continue to exist outside
of boundaries convenient to your business. It’s
up to you to go to them.
Customer expectations are
higher than ever.
With new technology, a connected world and a
rush to convenience, customers demand and
deserve more. Our customers want us to know
them. To understand what is important to them.
To know their pain and present a solution.
Businesses that embrace the dynamics of the
empowered customer and leverage technology
to solve consumer friction points will be the
winners. Those that don’t will join the ranks of
Blockbuster and other dying retailers.
3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail
1 2 3

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3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail
So how do you build mindshare and loyalty from
customers who expect more than ever before?
At MarketBridge, we work with some of the biggest names in
retail to improve sales associate productivity and marketing
effectiveness by combining the best digital engagement programs
with the latest data analytic modeling. Read on to learn the three
core principles adhered to by organizations that are adapting
most successfully to the new world order in retail—and driving
customer loyalty along the way.

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PART 1
Be Relevant at Every Interaction
It’s 2014. By now we’re supposed to be living in the world of
the Jetsons and hovercrafts and face-recognizing virtual store
associates à la Tom Cruise in Minority Report. And let’s face it. We
are starting to walk around with computers on our faces. So how
is it possible that retailers are still doing the same old thing to
attract attention, mindshare and loyalty?
Last year, 5.6 million tons of direct mail advertising ended up
in landfills – 44% of which was unopened. Similar figures exist
for email marketing. What passes as “new” is often just old content
being pushed through a new medium. Taking an old-school
coupon and using it as an app just won’t cut it anymore.
Solution: Use the power of your data to define the
customer segments that actually matter. This means
going beyond Geo, Store, and Category analysis,
and instead looking at granular groupings that cut
across multiple variables to give you actual personas
to target. These groupings could include things like
product usage or shopping preferences.

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PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction
We recently helped a large office supply store develop new
buyer persons by defining attitudinal dimensions through focus
groups and other qualitative studies. This gave depth to the buyer
personas we developed and a perspective on why customers
were actually making a purchase. We developed persona-
based messaging and incorporated it into all marketing and
engagement tactics for the rest of the year. Our client saw a 2%
annual revenue lift from deploying the new segmentation strategy
and a 167% increase in lead volume when using the tailored
segmentation messaging.

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PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction
Walgreens is another great example of an established
retailer getting it right—solving for pain points in every customer
engagement. When Walgreens invested in its mobile app, the company
made the conscious decision to think outside the box. They looked at their
data to see what it was about their buying process that gave customers
the most problems. What are they upset about? What are the big friction
points? And then Walgreens build an app to solve these problems.
It turns out none of us enjoy standing in a long, slow-moving line after
work to refill prescriptions. The Walgreens mobile app allows customers
to seamlessly fill their prescriptions, anywhere, anytime. To date the
Walgreens app has 15 million downloads.
One of the biggest winners? Starbucks! They built the #1 consumer
app. The retail giant realized that while customers were standing in line
to order their Caramel Macchiatos and Decaf Vanilla Lattes, they were
fiddling with their phones. Almost without fail, every customer moves up
to the register with phone already in hand. So Starbucks built an app that
lets you pay with your phone—no need to put the phone away, get out
your wallet, get your card, swipe and pay. While this may seem a small
convenience for many of us, for millennial customers it’s a bigger deal.
These apps are changing consumer behavior on a grander scale, and
altering expectations for every retailer.
To grow customer loyalty with today’s new consumer, don’t
waste a single interaction. Use data and technology to solve their
unique pain points every time you engage with them.
15 MILLION DOWNLOADS!! #1 CONSUMER
APP!

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PART 2
Connect with their Interests
Retailers exist to service their customers. And sometimes that
means going beyond ‘the sell’. Today’s customers are asking us to
understand who they are and what they are interested in, in order
to deliver them what they want.
Solution: We’ve found that programs focused on
connecting with customer interests, and on what
really inspires those customers, ultimately drive results
and long-term loyalty.
PERSONA-BASED MESSAGING!
Contact!
Name!
Email!
Demographic!
Age!
Gender!
Address!
Reach!
Impressions!
Traffic Sources!
Site Activity!
Page Views!
Visits & Unique Visits!
Repeat Visits!
Visit Duration!
Bounce Rate!
Device Usage!
Browser Usage!
Click Paths!
Outbound clicks!
Email!
Opens!
Clicks!
Client Usage!
Site Activity!
Conversion!
Cost Per Lead!
Sales!
Interactivity!
Comments!
Shares!

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PART 2: Connect with their Interests
We recently worked with a Fortune 100 healthcare company
who wanted to engage with Baby Boomers on a topic no one
really wants to discuss—health care. So we helped our client
develop a community of over 700,000 members that connects
their target audience to free content and tools around the topic
of health and wellbeing. By doing this, they have seen a huge lift
in customer engagement, lower cost of acquisition, and most
importantly a higher conversation rate from these members to a
sale. In fact, because they have an established relationship with
the company, members of the online community are four times
more likely to buy than net-new prospects.

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PART 2: Connect with their Interests
Here’s another success story. We worked with a Fortune 100 credit card
company to beef up their social media channels, get their followers more
engaged and grow their volume of followers. We closely monitored what
their key segments were talking about outside of the corporate website—
our “metal detector” approach to uncover trends and signals. We found
an abnormal leap among target customers whenever a specific topic
came up: paying for college. When we delved deeper, we found a few key
influencers for this demographic around the topic of paying for college—
and we partnered with them.
These partners started Tweeting for us on their own sites, which were now
part of the master site. The chart above tells the tale. If you really want
consumer mindshare, speak to their interests, not your brand.
When you offer content and creative that is topic-specific and tailored
to a particular audience at a certain point in the customer journey, you
provide a convincing incentive to engage with your business. You not only
stay top-of-mind for prospective customers but you also remain a trusted
advisor for current customers.

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PART 3
Democratize the Customer Experience
Your customers should define the customer
experience on their terms. And consumers generally
tell us what they want, but too often retailers tune
out their feedback.
According to Accenture’s Seamless Retail study, not surprisingly,
about 9 out of 10 shoppers said they want retailers to let them
shop on their own terms, ultimately in an omni-channel manner.
That same data rings some alarm bells. For example, 3 out of 4
respondents said they want consistent pricing across channels, yet
only 16% of retailers deliver on that expectation.
There may be valid internal reasons for a bifurcated experience—
for example, economic realities related to pricing differ across
platforms—but in a world of increasingly empowered customers,
with greater expectations than ever, it’s on us to shield them from
that complexity.
Solution: Empower your customer-facing assets to
deliver an experience that wins. For most retailers, that
means looking to your store associates. They are your
brand stewards at the final mile of consideration and
purchase for many customers, and your associates
should be equipped to not just sell product, but to be
your experience and brand ambassadors.

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PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience
We’ve worked with several retailers to enable their sales associates
to have better, more targeted conversations about loyalty programs
and credit offerings. This loyalty spin on associate enablement builds
stronger relationships with customers, and ultimately increases program
membership that really impacts the bottom-line.
Crate & Barrel is a good example of a major retailer who has leveraged
data and technology to democratize the customer experience and allow
their customers to shop where and how they want seamlessly. Whether
customers are shopping through their site while sitting at home, at work
or using their mobile app, their browsing history and cart are saved from
channel to channel.

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Even more interesting was an online program Crate & Barrel
launched a few years ago that was highlighted in a Wharton School
of Business case study. The company piloted a buy online, pick
up in-store promotion. The results led to some counter-intuitive
insight. Online sales decreased 7% and cart abandonment
increased 1%. On the face of things, not a successful pilot
program. But in-store sales increased 6%, which showed Crate &
Barrel that, with certain products, customers want an experiential
interaction. They want to touch, see and feel certain products.
They want to talk to the product experts—store associates. In the
end, Crate & Barrel developed a relationship with customers that
says: We're okay with you shopping with us wherever and however
you want and we promise to make the experience simple
and consistent.
Another way to democratize your customer’s experience is to
enable your sales associates to build brand loyalty and delight the
customer—whether at your brick-and-mortar site or out in the
field. Your sales associates are your brand ambassadors. Enable
them by teaching them not just how your loyalty program works,
but why it’s important to establish lasting customer loyalty and
even change customer behavior.
PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience

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If we go back to the major shifts in retail, we see the move from
a highly personalized one-on-one experience in the 50s and 60s
to big box stores in the 70s and 80s, to e-tailing in the 90s. The
Internet has upset the balance and today’s customers want it all.
Accustomed to a personalized online experience, savvy shoppers
increasingly expect that retailers will deliver the same level of
personalization in-store. Retailers ignore this trend at their
own risk.
The most effective way to personalize the customer experience
is through clienteling. Clienteling is the set of business processes
retailers use to increase customer lifetime value through delivery
of a personalized shopping experience. Fortunately, the tools
needed to create a personalized in-store experience now exist,
and they are increasingly affordable. Technology is replacing
note pads and address books as a means of storing key client
information. Today’s clienteling software can deliver rich data
to an associate’s fingertips, allowing him or her to provide a
personalized experience that will improve customer satisfaction
and increase revenue.
PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience
Click here to read more about clienteling and
our five key steps to clienteling success.

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CONCLUSION
As you use these three core principles to build loyalty among
customers who know more and expert more than ever before,
we’d like to leave you with a few parting tips.
Tip #1: Always focus on the customer experience.
How much do you focus on your role in the customer’s experience
versus focusing on the sale? Make yourself or someone at your
organization the Chief Experience Officer. In the new world
of retail, we can’t afford to think about marketing and sales
separately, but about a complete customer journey.
Tip #2: There is no silver bullet.
Be willing to experiment. Find a new way of talking to your
customers. What are the five things you’ll be willing to test this
year? Give yourself a little room to try and fail. Be willing to take
risks and be open to change. Be the next Starbucks.
Tip #3: Look for new organizational heroes.
This is the new age of retail. That means your organizational
heroes of today won’t be the same for tomorrow. Maybe it’s your
Data Scientist or the IT Director willing to try new programs or the
22-year-old Social Media Coordinator. Whoever they are, your new
organizational heroes will be the ones who set you up to succeed
by embracing seismic change.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Johns // VP and Head of Retail & Consumer Solutions
Becky Johns leads the Retail and Consumer Solutions Practice and works
with clients to improve marketing and sales productivity by developing
and executing integrated data-driven marketing and sales strategies. At
MarketBridge her experience centers primarily on building brand loyalty
through customer acquisition, engagement and retention programs and
developing online and social media communities. In addition, she has
expertise in enabling sales associates through innovative training and
sales readiness programs. In her 8 years with MarketBridge, she has
managed accounts and initiatives across the Retail, Financial Services,
Healthcare, Telecomm and High Tech industries.
Prior to MarketBridge, Becky’s background in marketing and advertising
includes both client and agency positions working in both B2B and B2C
engagements.
Most recently, Becky led her teams to win back-to-back Gold Stevie Awards
for the 2012 & 2013 Sales Training Program of the Year for their work
enabling sales associates for a large retailer, as well as the 2012 & 2013
Brand Experience of the Year by the American Business Awards for their
work building online communities for a large health insurance provider.
Becky’s list of client experience includes MasterCard, Expedia, Saks Fifth
Avenue, Humana, Guitar Center, Neiman Marcus, Capital One, Microsoft,
Symantec, SAP and Neustar.