Grocers of All Sizes Can Win With Personalization

The pandemic has accelerated adoption of all things digital over the past 18 months. The surge of e-commerce created new digital engagement and monetization opportunities for retailers of food and consumables, but also fueled uncertainty about the optimal path forward. To make sense of the rapidly evolving digital world, Progressive Grocer spoke with Randy Crimmins, a 25-year retail loyalty and digital marketing executive who has recently taken on the role of president and chief customer officer at Relationshop, a Magnolia, Texas-based provider of personalized digital engagement and commerce solutions.

Progressive Grocer: What does it mean to be a provider of personalized digital engagement and commerce solutions?

Randy Crimmins: Everyone has a different perception of what personalization means. To us, it’s about how do we make the shopping experience, the digital experience for the shopper, more convenient, more curated, more relevant and more valuable to them as an individual. If we’re not driving value and convenience, then we’re probably not being very effective on behalf of the retailer. We know the metrics important to grocers are sales, transactions and basket size. We make sure that whatever we’re doing and however we define personalization, it’s to support those fundamental metrics.

PG: Are there other metrics you’re looking at further upstream in the shopper’s path to purchase that are indicators that a retailer is on the right track with sales, transactions and basket size?

RC: Customer data is the foundation of personalization and how you ultimately measure the performance and the value of personalization within the experience. We focus on incrementality and what are we adding that drives incremental behavior, whether that is a purchase or a trip. We do that by looking at the incremental impact of a retailer’s digital engagement and personalization activities. Incrementality is key.

PG: Let’s talk more about convenience. How shoppers define convenience can vary widely. How are you thinking about making shopping more convenient?

RC: Traditionally, convenience was about proximity to the store. And if you look at the top reasons why people shop in store, it is convenience and value or savings. Those drivers of consumer choice haven’t really changed. However, the definition of convenience has moved beyond proximity, because in the digital world, convenience is how easy do you make it for me to shop with you? For example, with the mobile apps we design for clients, it is all about creating less friction, whether shopping in store or online. This blended shopping experience is really the new definition of convenience.

PG: As an industry veteran, you’ve seen a huge increase in the types of shopper data that is available as well as how it is used, with increased targeting, personalization, being the biggest change. Would you agree?

RC: I started out as a direct marketer, and a lot of those fundamentals still apply today. In the pre-digital world, direct mail was the only channel available to reach individual consumers, but the principles – targeting, segmentation, predictive analytics – are still relevant. That has made it easier for direct marketers to transition to the digital world, where we are fulfilling the vision of engaging with shoppers on an individual basis in real time. It is a good time to be a marketer.