Tailor your promotions

The RSR recently released their latest merchandise survey results. The RSR survey is heavily weighted to the tier and tier two retail segments. There’s lots of stuff about assortment planning, price optimization and inventory life cycle management. I’m not suggesting that these concepts aren’t important but the typical independent retailer doesn’t operate at that level of sophistication. But there was one good take away from the survey that independent retailer can embrace. It was titled “Better incorporation of customer segmentations and preferences”. Put another way, it is knowing more about what your customers likes. The segmentation refers to breaking your customer base into groups so you can design offers and promotions that are specifically tailored to each group. As more and more marketing is becoming digital it’s essential that you have relevant sales data on your customers to assist in designing those programs. If you not communicating with your under 30 year customers digitally and making them offers that are relevant you’re probably not reaching them.