John Hazen, chief digital officer at western wear retailer Boot Barn, shares how the company is reaching customers through multiple channels to drive a personalized customer experience.
Photo: Adobe Stock.
Boot Barn, a leading retailer in western wear and work-related footwear, is getting personal with customers these days, and that’s not such an easy proposition given that it has four major retail brands (Boot Barn, Country Outfitter, Shepler and Idyllwind) as well as 30 e-commerce sites and more than 200 physical stores across 33 states.
As John Hazon, Boot Barn’s chief digital officer, shared in an email interview the personalization strategy is focused on providing personalized messaging while also navigating in-person customer and online customer interactions.
In undertaking a unified personalization approach Boot Barn brought on a partner, Cordial, and its cross-channel marketing platform.
Now Boot Barn is crafting a personalized experience across email, text messaging, social media channels, push notifications and more. As Hazon explained the strategy requires an understanding of cross channel marketing tech and that personalization is not just about sending tailored messages but knowing customers more deeply.
Q. Can you detail the challenge Boot Barn was facing that prompted the move to drive a personalized message strategy and then how you went about putting that into motion?
A. At Boot Barn, we have a stores-first business, with roughly 90% of our business occurring in stores. With a database of over 6.5 million contacts across our four major retail brands — Boot Barn, Shepler, Country Outfitter and Idyllwind — our primary communication method with our customers was via email. We wanted to create a more tailored and personalized cross-channel messaging experience, encompassing SMS, email and push notifications.
As a multichannel brand with multiple sites and 380 physical stores, we had a wealth of customer data from our online and offline sources but needed help to fully leverage this data to inform our marketing strategy. This lack of actionable insights made it difficult to effectively segment our customers and create personalized content for our diverse consumer base.
Finally, we needed to phase out our previous cross-channel messaging platform by the end of 2022, so we required a platform we could onboard quickly and easily to serve our growing digital marketing needs.
Q. Are you working with a tech partner or provider to inform the strategy, and if so, how did you go about choosing the partner? If not, what has it required in terms of internal resources?
A. Yes, we’re working with Cordial as our tech partner. We actually found them through word of mouth. Several of my peers who were digital leaders at other retailers mentioned Cordial over two to three weeks, and I picked up the phone and called Jeremy (Swift, Cordial CEO and co-founder.)
Several key factors informed our decision to work with the Cordial team. Cordial’s enterprise platform offered superior data management and analysis capabilities, which form the backbone of our marketing approach. Building campaigns in our previous cross-channel marketing platform required substantial internal and external technical resources and lengthy, costly development cycles. Cordial’s quick and easy bi-directional data transfer through robust APIs has made us more agile in strategic decision-making and action-triggering.
In addition, Cordial works for non-technical team members, enabling our marketers to gain self-sufficiency quickly in building cross-channel segments, orchestrations and message templates. The company’s platform seamlessly integrated with our entire suite of tools, syncing bi-directionally without data loss.
The ease of integration was one of the “make or break” factors, along with Cordial’s robust onboarding process and support. Not only did Cordial’s ongoing support ease our minds about the timeline we were following — it also boosted our confidence in a smooth transition to the platform so we could hit the ground running to achieve our digital marketing goals more quickly.
Q. So how are you being ‘personal’ with customers — can you provide some examples?
A. Regarding personalization, we see a perfect marriage between where we want to take our customer communications and what Cordial does. Our communication relies heavily on the ability to segment our millions of contacts based on their interests. Cordial’s platform allows us to execute this segmentation effectively. We’ve been able to segment our audiences like never before, and we’re planning for a ton of highly personalized outreach — anywhere from 2 to 3 billion emails a year.
Q. Why is the personalization strategy so critical for Boot Barn?
A. Personalization is critical for Boot Barn as it allows us to engage more meaningfully with our customers, who have diverse tastes and needs. We work in a sector that’s always prioritized in-store try-ons and same-day needs, especially for workwear, so it’s crucial that we can connect with customers. Activating all available data means we can exceed customer expectations through everything from personalized deals to brick-and-mortar opening hours.
By personalizing our messages, we deliver relevant and appealing content to each customer segment, enhancing the customer experience, boosting customer engagement and driving customer loyalty.
Q. Can you share some ‘wins’ from driving such a strategy — maybe a boost in customer engagement, etc.?
A. Most of our customers participate in our Boot Barn loyalty program, so Cordial’s ability to surface real-time insights about what does and doesn’t work for our customers has been vital to strategy and decision-making.
The powerful combination of data, loyalty and outreach is a major win for us. Because Cordial’s platform fully integrates across our tech stack, we can activate all our data — no matter its source — to inform more effective behavior-based automations. The one-two punch of remarkable segmentation abilities and a clearer holistic view of our business and customer data across all channels has enabled more agile marketing, so we’re responding to what customers want at the moment they want it.
Q. What tips/advice/lessons learned can you share with other retail leaders in putting personalization to work as a retailer?
A. Investing in the right technology partner is crucial. Look for a partner who can provide full tech stack integration and powerful data management and analysis capabilities. Consider the time and ease of onboarding with that partner — and the support they’ll provide during that critical period. Transitioning to a new platform can be complex and daunting; a partner who can guide you through the process and provide expert help when needed is invaluable.
Remember that personalization is not just about sending tailored messages but about understanding your customers more deeply. With a holistic view of your customers across all touch points and channels, you can better understand their preferences, motivations and behaviors. These insights will enhance the customer experience, driving loyalty and revenue.
Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Rewards That Matter. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.
