• by Dianna Dilworth , November 21, 2019

The retail business has been undergoing massive changes over the past few years, and this even applies to specialty companies with niche markets.

Long Tall Sally, which specializes in clothing and footwear for women over 1.7 meters in the UK, US, Canada and Germany, was founded as a cataloger in 1976. In recent years, the brand had 30 stores globally. Earlier this year, the company closed up the last remaining shops to focus on its online business.

Focusing on its CRM strategy has been key to the company as it looks to convert retail customers into online shoppers. And it can be tricky. 

“You can’t really buy data that somebody is tall, which makes some level of what we do really quite difficult,” said Frankie Deane, head of performance marketing at Long Tall Sally, at the Email Insider Summit in Europe earlier this year.

The retailer relies on its large loyal customer base and CRM strategy, because acquisition is quite difficult and expensive. And nowadays a lot more of the high street brands are serving tall clients, which has not always been the case, raising the competition. The company sees CRM, email, website and catalogs as channels to learn about customers. Like other brands, attribution can be a challenge for the company.

“We are trying to spend out money wisely, whilst growing the business and invest in customers differently based on what the commercial objective is for them,” Deane explained.

A big objective for the company is to take on a business obsession with customer data and testing, something they are taking on as they transform from retail outlet to online. “Every business would like to think that they are obsessed with customer data but to be obsessed with it means that most of your decisions internally are based on customer data,” said Deane. “It is a massive cultural shift for that to be at play.”

With holiday marketing plans well underway, other marketers can take a note from Long Tall Sally and embrace customer obsession. We will learn more tips and tricks from leading brands  on stage of our Brand Insider Summit in Kitzbuhl, Austria 3-6 February 2020.