Retailers Drive Consumer Engagement and Business Growth with Salesforce

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, is empowering major retailers to transform shopping across every touchpoint and connect commerce everywhere. Next week at NRF 2019, Salesforce will host a community of customers and partners exhibiting on the EXPO Floor at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, showcasing innovative shopping experiences from Rituals Cosmetics, Brunello Cucinelli, The Container Store, Crocs, Mulberry, Shinola and more.

For retailers to compete effectively and win the hearts, minds and wallets of modern consumers, they need a single view of customers across commerce, marketing and customer service. Salesforce provides retailers with a unified platform designed to drive integrated, intelligent and innovative shopping experiences wherever consumers interact with a brand—including mobile, web, social and store.

"The world of retail has become democratized," said Rob Garf, VP of Retail Strategy and Insights at Salesforce. “It’s not just about driving transactions within the physical and virtual four walls, but it's increasingly about pushing the brand to wherever consumers are shopping. Salesforce allows retailers to be where their consumers are."

Here’s how Brunello Cucinelli, The Container Store, Kroger, Michaels, Mulberry, Net-a-Porter, Overstock.com, Rituals Cosmetics and Shinola are transforming shopping with Salesforce:

• Brunello Cucinelli—an Italian luxury ready-to-wear brand—moved its ecommerce business to Commerce Cloud in 2016 to extend its luxury shopping experience online and has since quadrupled its ecommerce revenues. The company also uses Marketing Cloud to give every customer communication a personal feel, and Service Cloud empowers Brunello Cucinelli employees to deliver the luxury service experiences expected by its clientele. With customer order history and automated workflows, store managers are able to expedite customer service needs, enabling employees to spend more time building relationships with shoppers.
• The Container Store—a leading retailer of storage and organization products in the United States—uses Service Cloud and Sales Cloud to provide its service agents and sales team with a unified platform for customer engagement. With Service Cloud, The Container Store built a guided framework for agents to create custom closets, an important part of The Container Store’s business. The company also rolled out Field Service Lightning to help dispatchers quickly allocate contractors for installation jobs based on their skills. Thanks to the integration, The Container Store found itdecreased the time it took to schedule installations from up to five days to just minutes, and eliminated 100 percent of installations not paid for.
• The Kroger Co.—the third largest retailer in the world—is using Marketing Cloud to hyper-personalize the grocery experience for its millions of customers. With Marketing Cloud, Kroger can access rich online and offline consumer data to better segment audience types and deliver more than a billion emails annually that include personalized, localized offers. The company has found it increased clicks by 40 percent as a result, leading to increased engagement, conversion and loyalty.

• The Michaels Companies, Inc.—North America's largest specialty provider of arts, crafts, framing and more—is deploying Marketing Cloud to engage and inspire its customers with personalized content, promotions and offers; and Heroku and MuleSoft Anypoint Platform to quickly build apps and create integrated, omnichannel shopping journeys. Together with Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud, Michaels is bringing its commerce, service and marketing onto one platform to deepen engagement with its tens of millions of customers across every touchpoint.
• Mulberry—a British lifestyle brand—is deploying Salesforce in partnership with Tulip to create a seamless shopping experience between online and in-store. Tulip will provide Mulberry store associates with clienteling and a mobile point-of-sale that is integrated with Service Cloud, giving them an in-depth view of shopper preferences. Mulberry is also deploying Marketing Cloud to deliver personalized customer engagement across every channel including email, digital advertising and social media.
• Net-a-Porter—a premier luxury fashion destination—turned to Datorama, a Salesforce company, to unify more than 270 data streams into a single view, resulting in a better understanding of sales impact and ROI across its global marketing programs. Now, Net-a-Porter has transparency into marketing and sales KPIs with the speed and granularity required to improve advertising against all shipped orders. As a result, Net-a-Porter is able to optimize and report on all of its marketing investments and activities at a global scale. As a result, the company has seen an annual time savings of more than 2,000 hours (that equates to more than 40 hours per week across approximately 25 team members) and now has the ability to report on an “always on” basis—plus smarter decision making across every campaign, creative, keyword, post and audience.

• Overstock.com—a billion-dollar retailer serving tens of millions of customers every month—deployed Service Cloud to empower hundreds of associates to deliver consistent, personalized customer service across multiple channels. With Lightning Flow, Overstock.com built guided engagements, giving associates a step-by-step process for interacting with customers, partners and vendors. The company also rolled out Lightning Service Console, a hub for associates to access all relevant customer information from a single platform, resulting in a more personalized customer experience. Overstock.com transitioned approximately 1,000 associates across multiple facilities to Service Cloud in a matter of days.

• Rituals Cosmetics—a fast-growing European cosmetics brand—has doubled its U.S. business year-over-year, with plans to launch 10 standalone stores and multiple points of sale with travel, retail and wholesale partners annually. Online is a big driver of that growth—with Commerce Cloud, Rituals Cosmetics grew its online business by 70 percent in just one year, providing a rich digital experience that comprises click-and-collect data capture, real-time inventory availability, next-day delivery, local payment options and dynamic brand content. Unifying the shopping journey on one platform, Rituals Cosmetics also uses Marketing Cloud for smarter, more targeted marketing and Service Cloud for fast, personalized service. In addition, Success Cloud helps Rituals Cosmetics realize the full potential of Salesforce features and integrations.
• Shinola—a brand that serves as a symbol for Detroit’s revival and commitment to making American-built products—integrated Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, MuleSoft and its clienteling app, built on Service Cloud, to get a 360-degree customer view. As a result, Shinola has seen an increase in brand recognition, sales, customer loyalty and store traffic. By creating a foundation for seamless future integration, Shinola can continue to service its customers with a consolidated view of order history, repair status history and VIP service for top customers.