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The customer experience is at the heart of retail success. Every aspect plays a part in driving conversion and lasting loyalty. This includes everything customers see before stopping by, like ads and the storefront, as well as the experience of shopping itself and all the communications that come after. What’s the one thing that can make all of these experiences extraordinary from end-to-end? It’s a truly personalized experience—one that’s powered by enthusiastic and professional associates.
One of the unique features of our Platform is that it enables deeper, more memorable interactions between brands and their shoppers. A prime example is the personalized, seamless, and trackable clienteling experience we’re able to offer by leveraging Endear’s clienteling platform.
Clienteling is an essential part of modern retail. Originally, store associates kept books full of notes on customers that they helped to aid their clienteling efforts. But while shopping and buying have become ever-more digitized, so too has the customer-brand relationship. With new channels and solutions, modern digital clienteling has become a crucial tool for building deep connections between sales associates and in-store shoppers long after they’ve left the storefront. 80% of companies’ revenue comes from just 20% of customers, so finding and engaging those key shoppers with personalized messages is more crucial than ever, especially over digital channels.
We leverage Endear as our clienteling platform of choice because it makes it easy for our brands and associates to build strong, loyal relationships with shoppers. Whether it’s to promote an upcoming event, give exclusive access to an upcoming sale, or just follow up to say thank you, Endear’s seamless integration into our platform and POS systems makes it easy to create meaningful outreach with minimal effort.
To take a Platform-wide example, Leap employees all take part in “Thank You Thursdays”, where they log into Endear and personally thank the customers they helped the previous week. We also run frequent internal competitions around driving sales and interactions with Endear, like the recent “Leaplympics” sales challenge. Because Endear allows associates to set reminders for themselves and compile all their notes in one place, they can deliver high-touch, customized follow-ups asking about specific purchases, bring up topics they discussed like upcoming vacations or holidays, and create memorable moments like reaching out to shoppers on their birthday or wedding anniversary. During less busy days, store teams use Endear to build relationships and drive sales with customers directly—sales which would have otherwise taken place on the brand's website rather than in-store. No longer confined solely to the in-store experience, Leap’s salespeople have full access to the resources they need to reach shoppers, and to receive full credit for all the sales they are able to complete.
The result is a huge benefit for all the brands on our Platform. Via our trained salespeople and brand-approved communications, they are able to build tight-knit relationships with high-value customers while having a measurable impact on bottom-line sales. Because we have proven ways of working that drive clienteling success, as well as valuable insights we can share across our teams at all of our stores, brands don’t need to dedicate resources and distract themselves with a hands-on approach to clienteling training and execution. Instead, they can focus on national marketing and brand building, while Leap-powered stores follow their lead to deliver incredible experiences on a personal basis with shoppers.
In 2021, Endear has driven a real impact for all the brands that have opted-in to clienteling on the Leap Platform. 79% of customers say they only engage with personalized offers, and with Endear we’ve been able to send a massive volume of personalized offers and messages Platform-wide.
Endear attributes all sales made at Leap-powered stores by comparing the messages users send to customers via Endear's centralized email and SMS platform to the sales that occur after those messages are sent. Using Endear’s attribution model, we found that in 2021 we sent nearly 100,000 messages to shoppers, with an average 40% open rate and 10% conversion rate. The average order value of sales made through Endear was also 7.69% higher than Leap’s overall 2021 average, demonstrating the direct impact 1-1 clienteling can drive for brands of all shapes and sizes.
The results are clear. The centralized, digital-first clienteling approach Endear powers doesn’t just drive bottom-line sales, it helps all our brands build deep, meaningful connections between shoppers and associates. It’s a huge win for Leap, Endear, our brands, and their shoppers.
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