During the chaos of the holiday season, is it possible for small retailers to turn their fragmented customer data into a perfectly timed, personalized marketing, or are they destined to just add to the noise?
Agility requires not just collecting customer data from every channel, but having the insight and tools to act on it in the moments that matter most. It’s the ability to translate a customer signal into a relevant experience, instantly.
Today, we’re going to talk about how small and mid-sized retailers can punch above their weight during the critical holiday season.
We’ll explore the challenge of turning fragmented customer data from online browsing, email clicks, and even in-store visits into a cohesive strategy that drives precision-targeted campaigns, creates loyal customers, and, most importantly, delivers measurable ROI in a complex, multi-channel world.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Diana Williams, VP of Product Management at Intuit Mailchimp.
About Diana Williams
Diana Williams is VP of Product Management at Intuit Mailchimp. She is a dynamic leader who excels at turning concepts into revenue-generating products in fast-paced environments. Her experience includes launching e-commerce and business platforms, with expertise in product strategy and accelerating high-quality product execution. Previously, she held leadership roles at technology startups and companies like Meta and eBay. She resides in the Bay Area.
Diana Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianalwilliams/
Resources
Intuit Mailchimp: https://www.mailchimp.com
The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow
Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Palm Springs, Feb 23-26 in Palm Springs, CA. Go here for more details: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:00)
During the chaos of the holiday season, is it possible for small retailers to turn their fragmented customer data into perfectly timed personalized marketing, or are they destined to just add to the noise? Agility requires not just collecting customer data from every channel, but having the insight and tools to act on it in the moments that matter most. It’s the ability to translate a customer signal into a relevant experience instantly. Today, we’re going to talk about how small and mid-sized retailers can punch above their weight during the critical holiday season.
We’ll explore the challenge of turning fragmented customer data from online browsing, email clicks, and even in-store visits into a cohesive strategy that drives precision targeted campaigns, creates loyal customers, and most importantly, delivers measurable ROI in a complex multi-channel world. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Diana Williams, VP of Product Management at Intuit Mailchimp. Diana, welcome to the show.
Diana Williams (00:56)
Thanks so much, Greg. I’m excited to be here today.
Greg Kihlstrom (00:59)
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Definitely a timely topic here in the in midst of the peak holiday season. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Intuit Mailchimp?
Diana Williams (01:11)
Yeah, sounds great. So I lead the product teams here at Intuit Mailchimp covering all the ways that we help small and mid-market businesses get and grow customers. Before that, I was at Meta for many years, kind of leading a good portion of their advertising and their business interfaces. I’ve been at eBay, I’ve created startups as well. So this is a very true passion area of mine when you think about the combination of marketing, commerce, and how you bring those together to help businesses be successful.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:41)
Yeah, yeah. And so I’m sure a lot of people listening are familiar with the MailChimp name and brand and know it for for email. But the platform has evolved significantly over the over the last few years. So for those that may not, you know, maybe may have been a minute since they saw it or are not as familiar. Could you describe, you know, what’s the company’s core focus today and the primary customers you aim to serve?
Diana Williams (02:06)
Yeah, so we do target and we focus on small and mid-market businesses. We think that’s an important part and we want to make marketing really easy for them, almost done for you in ways that help them scale to achieve their objectives. I think Mailchimp grew up being kind of an email marketing provider. And of course that remains true today, but we’ve also scaled to support things like SMS and we have a lot of automations and we do a lot with our customer data profile and supporting integrations.
So really that our small and mid-sized businesses can operate like larger businesses in today’s marketing world.
Greg Kihlstrom (02:41)
Yeah, yeah. And so let’s let’s dive in here and talk. And I want to start with, you know, whether you’re a very large or a very small retailer, one common challenge is understanding customers and customers continue to seemingly use more and more channels. It seems like every every month, if not, if not year or so. And so unifying that view of the customer becomes incredibly important. And so, you know,
We have a fragmented view, Shopify sales, website visits, email opens, even foot traffic to stores. From a strategic standpoint, what’s the crucial first step that these businesses need to take to just start unifying this data into a single actionable view of their customer?
Diana Williams (03:27)
Yeah, maybe to even start, I mean, it’s a real challenge for businesses. mean, most small and mid-market businesses I talk to, they use anywhere from like seven to 25 different apps. Now talk about data fragmentation. That’s kind of insane. And you’re juggling across all of these different apps, trying to get an understanding of their customer. mean, think about like sales on Shopify, your emails on another channel, ads over here. And so no wonder things feel really scattered.
And the truth is as businesses kind of grow, marketing teams are still pretty lean. The recent marketing equalizer report found that over half of even mid-market departments, about 51%, have 10 or fewer employees, right? And they’re investing heavily in marketing, about 54 % dedicate about 11 % of their operating budget. So they’re working hard. And so that’s mid-market businesses. Smaller businesses are even smaller. So you think about how much they’re trying to do with really lean teams across a pretty big scattered landscape. People think AI is gonna bridge that gap, but they feel like right now they don’t always have the expertise to do it. So the one thing that is true, like whatever that first step is, it has to be simple. So at Mailchimp, we’re focusing on making it really, really easy for small businesses to bring in their data into one place. It’s about like creating that customer profile, having that in the customer data platform, it becomes your like single source of truth.
And so we make it easy to integrate from your website, your Shopify store, any booking apps that you have, Google Analytics, bring that data together. Because then from there, you can start automating the right marketing touch points, making it feel much more personal, and really re-engaging with those customers over and over. And so I do think the critical first step is bringing the data together, not buying more tools, bringing it together so you can action on it better making it feel smarter and more personalized and definitely a lot more sustainable for you as an operator.
Greg Kihlstrom (05:24)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s amazing how many tools even, you know, regardless of the size of the company, you know, it could be one a one person marketing team or, you know, 10 or way, way more. They’re using way too many tools, it seems like, to to to do their to do their work. And, you know, the the goal, as you were saying of this this unified view, it’s it’s how can we get past the the one off sale to building
long-term loyalty and loyalty driven by us really understanding our customers and being able to give them what they need. know, assuming that a business is, you know, they’ve taken at least the first steps there towards getting, a more unified view. You know, how should a small business think about that way of, you know, trying to get repeat purchases versus simply acquiring new customers, especially, you know, we’re here, we’re, in the holiday season, you know, what’s
How should they try to approach that?
Diana Williams (06:25)
Yeah, it’s a pretty different mindset. So you’re no longer just thinking, my gosh, I got to get as many people as I possibly can to buy right now, right? You do want to get customer acquisition, but you really want to start thinking about how do I make sure the people who have already bought from me also come back again and again? And so instead of just relying on just costly customer acquisition channels, you also can start re-engaging with your customers on your owned and operated channels from email to SMS really increasing lifetime value. And then over time, that actually lowers acquisition costs. Like for example, right, you could blast out a generic holiday promotion, or you can use all of this data that you now put into the system to customize it more. For your VIP members, you might give them early access, right? Or someone who’s recently purchased a thank you note that then rewards them with another type of campaign. And all of those small touches cut through all of that holiday noise and they make customers feel more seen and more valued. And that payoff goes well beyond the holiday season. So you might do a lot this holiday season. I mean, it’s definitely true. Q4 is very, very important for every business, right? But you have to start thinking about building the understanding now, even with those first initial interactions. And so whether or not they’re buying something, leaving you a review or just joining your mailing list, that’s the start of a connection point. And you want to be able to maximize on those.
Now, one thing that’s important when you think about these event type of engagements, there’s different tools that can do that. And obviously email has been one that has been around for a while. But SMS and even transactional are important points that kind of strengthen those relationships. So on SMS, retailers might want to reach their customers across US, UK, and Australia, or even across many other jurisdictions in Europe. But now you can send SMS campaigns across multiple countries customize that message per customer ⁓ per country. And you see when you’ve just been using email, once you start even using on Mailchimp, we started seeing like Mailchimp customers who use SMS are sometimes seeing about 16 and a half ROI multiplier, right? After launching their first SMS campaign. Cause you’re communicating with your customers across the different channels where they’re ready to engage. And Mailchimp transactional and that’s both email and SMS is kind of like the go-to engine for like reliable event triggered quick messages.
And so that gets them, you hit those touch points when the customer’s looking at it, when they’re browsing, just when they abandoned a cart. And so that makes it feel more personalized and it re-engages with them on the right channel when they need it.
Greg Kihlstrom (09:02)
Yeah, yeah. So let’s let’s talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of moving from the strategic process to more tactical. And how can a small business use richer data like purchase history from an e-commerce to create omnichannel campaigns across email and SMS that feel personal and helpful rather than just yet another generic kind of holiday email type that I’m sure we’re getting all of us getting 100 times a day right now. Right.
Diana Williams (09:36)
You know, it’s funny because like, I guess for me, this is where the fun just begins, right? Because now you have so much more information. you know, almost every business already has so much powerful data sitting with them. And so you got to think about things like what a customer bought, how often did they purchase, even like which products did they view, but didn’t even buy. That’s like gold from a personalization standpoint. And so maybe we’ll start with email first, you know, instead of sending that big, broad glass holiday message.
my gosh, thank you so much for supporting us this season. Here’s a special kind of promotion for you. Another different type of message for a first time shopper or a buyer. These are all just smaller touch points that makes it feel much more personal to a group. But maybe then you wanna go beyond that and you wanna bring SMS into the fold. Think about it, like you might have had someone coming to the site, but they didn’t do it and they left it in the car. You could actually trigger, we save this one for you.
And so it’s not just about hitting them, they were obviously very interested. And so the magic kind of happens when you start connecting these channels together. Maybe you send something via SMS and you might even want to trigger a follow-up from a retargeting campaign on different advertising channels. And this is where that power of that data and how you bring it together allows you to meet the customer wherever they are at the time that they’re looking for it. So when you layer on these behavioral signals, you get to start to see patterns.
and you get to build the learning for not just this holiday season, for post holiday season, for the next holiday season. So it becomes creating those right customer touch points all year round. And those benefits are seen. So we’ve had like this, a Swedish e-commerce retailer and they kind of sell like different types of uniforms and scrubs to healthcare workers. Now they adopted like the segmentation tools. They did some tagging plus the automations and API integrations and they allow them to scale from B to C and B to B. And they started seeing 30 times the ROI when it comes to revenue from email. Their click through rates started multiplying. I think it was like 315 % maybe above what industry benchmarks are. And so the key here is like personalization works, right? And once you start building those automations and you have those events, as a marketer too, it doesn’t become one-offs, right? You can create that scaled system, right? And those learning and insights continue to feed it.
Greg Kihlstrom (11:58)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, certainly a key part of the the the e-commerce and the retail process is cart abandonment. You know, anyone that’s been doing this for a while is certainly either they’re doing it right or they’re feeling the pains of not doing it right. So, you know, it sounds like, you know, there’s there’s some integrations with Shopify, you know, a lot of a lot of retailers using using Shopify.
So with those integrations, can go beyond a simple like you left something in your cart kind of email and use some more nuanced data points. you talk a little bit more about that?
Diana Williams (12:34)
Well, first I’m gonna say I love the cart abandonment email. It is, you know, tried and true and it worked. 70 % of customers abandoned. That means, you you can reach out over and there’s actually a lot of value in that. But let’s be clear, that’s not the only thing that you should be doing, you know, and at MailChimp we’ve gone beyond the basic, like you’ve left something behind, right? You can use a lot more richer data, like which products customers recently viewed, like collections that they’ve engaged with and browsed and spent time on.
how often they purchased before. And so that means you can tailor your recovery messages ⁓ and maybe something more low, get something else, different verticals might have different messaging, the type of products you’re then promoting because the automations work across email and SMS. You can also reach the customer on that right channel at the point that they’re engaging. I am a mom, so sometimes I might scroll before bed and do a little shopping from my phone. I’m so busy at work, I’m not one of those people who get to engage on my email at work and do my shopping then.
But this is the idea, this is the opportunity. Using those signals and then hitting those customers on the right channel is kind of how you want to leverage that data. So it’s not just about the cart reminder, right? It’s about the personalized conversations that you’re building with your buyers or your considered buyers, right? And your long-time customers. And that’s where the value starts really getting unlocked.
Greg Kihlstrom (13:54)
And so, you know, speaking of value here, you know, one of the challenges really for any company is, is always to prove that return on, on investment. Right. And so retailers trying to connect the dots between their online marketing and their offline results, you know, certainly has, has traditionally been a challenge. What kind of analytics or data signals should a small retailer with a physical presence look for?
to connect those dots and really understand how their digital campaigns are influencing the in-store sales.
Diana Williams (14:34)
Yeah, mean, connecting online and offline continues to be a challenge. remember years ago, even when I was still at eBay, was like, how do we connect offline and online data together to really kind of power the ecosystem? And that’s still true today. And it’s a challenge that people face. And I think the first thing is to just approach your data as one connected ecosystem. And the more you can pull those pieces together and not live as if they’re two separate worlds, I think the more power you’ll have in understanding your customers, and how to actually leverage the online and offline engagement and the way your customers engage with you. We have an example, I think it was a Toronto-based restaurant group. They have like 13 different locations. They’re known for their amazing Italian restaurants, but during the pandemic, they also stepped into e-comm and they started selling groceries and like wine subscriptions. And then using Meltzim Shopify integration, segmentation and automation, they started building the bridge between online and offline their Welcome Journeys and their win back campaigns, they boosted sales and it actually drove people back into the restaurants and shops too. And so they built that ecosystem together because they started pulling that data together. And the impact’s been huge. mean, email marketing now drives, I think about two thirds of their online revenue, their Welcome Journeys see what I think 39 % click through rate. They have a 77 % open rate it’s amazing how it actually supports their business. And I think it’s around like 8,000 a month in recurring revenue. And so that data kind of coming together, but I think that first step is understanding and choosing to pull all of that data together and then leveraging it and continuing to put that feedback loop in the system to understand your customers.
Greg Kihlstrom (16:14)
Yeah, yeah. And I think a key part there also is, you know, budgets are always going to be tight for I mean, again, no matter big, big, small, anywhere in between, you know, we’re always being asked to do more with less and to squeeze every every dollar as much as we can. How can better understanding of customers, better analytics tools, all of that help business owners make smarter decisions about where to invest?
the limited resources that they have, especially when a customer’s journey is everywhere. Right. So there’s a lot of potential places to invest. know, how, how, you know, how does a business owner make, the best decisions using data?
Diana Williams (16:57)
Yeah, I mean, when budgets are tight, Every dollar has to earn its place, right? I do that even now with the product teams, which one delivers the most value? Where should we kind of invest resources? And so we have to make sure and we have to help businesses see what’s actually driving results and driving conversions. You know, with our Mailchimp’s new advanced reporting features and also AI powered insights, you can now optimize like more real time trends across email, SMS, plus behavioral patterns optimizing for ROI and faster campaigns. It’s about what’s knowing what’s working, like looking at your insights, creating those learnings and building the tactics with confidence. On top of that, we wanna push just beyond that. Over time, we’re pushing so businesses can see their true gross revenue from campaigns, even automate invoice reminders so you get to faster cashflow. It’s about improving ROI in real dollars so they can make faster and smarter decisions.
Also on the Intuit platform with Intuit’s new AI agents, we’re taking those insights even further, right? We have customer agents that are helping source leads to drafting personalized message, to tracking those opportunities and where we’re going with our marketing agent, we’re gonna automate a lot of the audience management understanding that you need, the campaign execution as well as content creation. And so the idea here is like the first foundation is that data, right?
And then you want to layer in and look at the insights, the attribution, which channels are paying dividends right now and leverage those, but also kind of optimize over time to understand where your customers are. So you’re meeting them where they’re likely to be found.
Greg Kihlstrom (18:33)
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I know a lot of people listening right now are pretty focused on the holiday season and, just all that’s involved. But trying to think a little bit ahead, you know, how does a retailer do this kind of going back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, building the longer term value in the relationships? You know, what what can a retailer do now that obviously addresses the short term, but also builds that that data foundation so they can have more sustainable growth in the year ahead.
Diana Williams (19:06)
Well, I do think first is like, work hard. I mean, it’s very easy on MailChimp. It’s like pretty much a couple of flicks and your data starts flowing together and you want to create those integration points so the foundation is there. But it’s to your point, it’s not just about winning in Q4, right? It’s about creating that foundational understanding so you become smarter. It is tracking your results, understanding your customer loyalties over time. That becomes the most valuable asset. So take the time to set that up.
And it’s not hard in today’s world, it’s just that, you know, doing those few pieces and then you’ll be able to better over time and even, know, MailChimp will support you over time and being able to better predict those right engagements, setting up those automations once they’re set up, it automatically triggers without a lot of oversight or engagement on your end. And so that personalization piece will start paying out over time too.
So if you’ve done the early testing during the holidays to set that foundation, test meta-strategies and channels and create those automations, when people come back in 60, 90, pending what type of products you sell, the re-engagement messages will kind of be there. And the beautiful approach of all this, it just compounds.
Right now, all of a sudden, that engagement that you had with that high value customer and you knowing who they are, engaging them with the right way, making them feel seen, heard, and kind of valuable within your ecosystems, I think that’s really important. So every campaign, every click feeds back into your longer strategy. So my recommendation is begin this holiday. Don’t wait. It’s not that hard. Start utilizing a lot of the capabilities that we talked about here.
But do pair the combination of your marketing with your automations. Leverage the events and the data to make it more personalized for your customers so you get to sustainable growth, but also that you’re delivering to lifetime value with that too. And so it’s not about the first sale, it’s about the second, third, and fourth sale too. Like get that marketing rhythm, right, if you think about it.
300 different integrations. So the chances of what you need to integrate, there’s probably a strong probability we have something there for you. So like start connecting those pieces. Take that first step, see the data come through, try a couple automations, get the first two set up and then take five. You know, it doesn’t have to be everything on day one, but if you take those first couple of actions when you first started engaging with the platform, it’ll pay back to you.
Ooh, I don’t know, maybe what we kind of talked about in the very beginning, AI is going to change the dynamics. I actually think it’s going to become the equalizer. you know, smaller, leaner teams are going to be able to operate at, you know, greater scale. Maybe even larger teams, you know, will wind up being able to get to certain throughputs or they might become leaner as well. so, you know, finding ways that those done for you experiences allow you to scale.
like a larger company, have those personalized messages, get the done for you experiences that are really customized to those customers. It’s not just gonna deliver workflow efficiency. It’s actually gonna result in performance optimization and real gains that really impacted businesses bottom lines. And so I think we’re just starting on that journey. And I think a year from now, it’s gonna be game changing. And I think it’ll be felt by the businesses versus pontificated upon like it is today.
While one I consume a lot which is you know, I engage with a lot of different tools I’m constantly meeting with a bunch of different companies I love learning and so I think if you’re one of those people who just love to consume and learn and nothing feels scary The idea of what you can do with that really energizes you because it becomes like this is really confusing to like I can do this And so I think some of that really is personally energizing for me
And I think the second thing is when I see, you know, small businesses and mid-market businesses change the trajectory from the tools that we provide and it helps them connect better with their customers, I really get a lot of energy from solving real problems. And so those are probably maybe the two that come first top of mine. Yeah.
