CSA Exclusive: Organic food retailer keeps marketing relevant

Pressed is automating its marketing activities across multiple channels, with an eye on personalization.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Georgia Price, director, digital and CRM, Pressed, about how the omnichannel specialty retailer of organic food and beverage products stays focused on the customer in its marketing automation strategy.

“Pressed needed a marketing automation tool that would allow us to reach customers in multiple ways; email, SMS, in-app, and push, as we as integrate our various customer sources,” said Price. “As an omnichannel retail operation with over 100 storefronts and a robust e-commerce channel, it was essential that Pressed partner with a marketing automation technology provider that offered a customer-centric approach to multiple channels.”

Pressed decided to implement the Braze for Commerce solution from cloud-based customer engagement technology vendor Braze. According to Price, the company based the implementation decision on Braze’s customer-centric marketing tools, which it felt were the best fit for Pressed as a large brand with a small, nimble marketing team.

"As an omnichannel retail brand, customer communication and digital presence is critical to both growth and retention,” stated Price. “We run 100% of our marketing campaigns, including transactional messages, through Braze. New features, such recurring orders and consumer lifecycle campaigns, are all built with Braze technology and channels in mind.”

Specific capabilities of the Braze for Commerce solution a catalog feature that can help streamline message personalization by seamlessly infusing product data into messages across any campaign on any channel. This enables Pressed to quickly build branded recommendations from catalog data and reuse them across multiple campaigns, pairing individual shoppers with the most relevant products, offers, and updates.

Other features include SMS click tracking, which allows Pressed to retarget users based on their actions; as well as an advanced segmentation tool and a machine learning (ML)-based predictive suite that helps identify customers who are more or less likely to make a purchase or churn in the moment. And by linking native Braze email, two-way SMS, mobile, and web marketing messages with paid social channels, Pressed can reduce ad spend by immediately shutting off Facebook or Google ad campaigns the moment a shopper converts elsewhere.

“Braze has played a key role in our customer engagement strategies as we’ve seen a 10% increase in engagement and almost 40% increase in open rates year-over-year since onboarding with Braze, Price said. “This year, we will continue to focus on a personalized digital experience for the Pressed consumer, including recommendations and ingesting consumer preferences like flavor profiles and wellness goals. We're excited about the personalization potential the new Braze for Commerce offerings will provide.”

Retailers place value on AI and ML
A recent survey from multi-cloud technology solutions company Rackspace Technology confirms just how important retailers view artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). About two-thirds (65%) of retail respondents said AI and ML are technologies that are among the most mission-critical to their business strategy. Almost six in 10 (58%) respondents in the retail space said AI/ML technologies are a high priority for their industry.

In addition, more than seven in 10 respondents said AI/ML has had a positive impact on revenue generation (72%) and on expense reduction (72%), while 69% reported AI/ML has had a positive impact on brand awareness, and 67% said these technologies have had a positive impact on brand reputation.