Retailers have experienced an ecommerce boost over the past few months, as a result of the pandemic and the overall change in consumer shopping behavior.
We recently spoke with Dan Marques, vice president of global digital marketing for growth and analytics at Crocs, about the shift to ecommerce and how the brand is working to engage new and existing customers.
How has Crocs had to pivot its business these past few months?
At the onset of the pandemic, we positioned the business for both short- and long-term success via a defensive and offensive playbook that we began to implement in early March globally across channels.
Most notable was our Free Pair for Healthcare program, which had a significant digital activation and, over the course of 45 days, donated more than 860,000 pairs of shoes to healthcare workers worldwide on the front lines of COVID-19.
Have you seen a fast-tracked shift to digital and ecommerce?
Like the ecommerce industry overall, we have seen a significant acceleration in consumers shifting to online shopping due to the pandemic. So, we focused more of our efforts on capitalizing on this shift and meeting our consumers where they are via digital marketing.
You must be seeing an uptick in new customers.
We are. As a result, we’re accelerating our plans around retention strategies—specifically around data, segmentation, and personalization—and around the tools and platforms to execute those strategies. We’re working to deliver highly relevant and engaging experiences to retain those customers.
What do those tools and platforms look like?
We are building out expanded capabilities around our data lake, customer data platform (CDP), identity resolution, and personalization tools across on-site and marketing touchpoints. They’ll deliver orchestrated campaigns utilizing our global segmentation model and retention playbooks.
As we approach the holiday season, do you think consumers will continue to rely on ecommerce?
The recent acceleration toward digital has shown many consumers the benefits and ease of shopping online, particularly in categories they previously might not have considered.
This year will also be one of the most promotional holiday seasons ever, due to excess inventory in stores that were closed, especially in the apparel industry. These two factors should translate to the largest online holiday shopping season we’ve seen to date across the ecommerce industry.
