As a retail content marketing agency with 45+ years of experience in customer loyalty, we help clients of all sizes and budgets maximize the benefits of retail content marketing to:
- Build and grow customer loyalty to your brand
- Add value to customer interactions with your brand
- Encourage customer engagement and improve retention
- Nurture consumers throughout their purchase journey
- Build emotional connections to strengthen relationships
- Improve ROI by encouraging repeat purchases without promotions
This is incredible! Customers are calling the stores asking when their next issue of the ‘Exclusively Yours’ newsletter will arrive!
Julie Houk
Loyalty Manager, Dillard’s read more
What is the benefit of content marketing for retail?
Retail content marketing — whether it’s educational, informational or entertaining — helps brands boost recognition, establish credibility and, ultimately, increase customer loyalty. It’s about providing value to your customers without being overly promotional. Yet, content marketing in retail still has the power to drive engagement and sales.
Another benefit for retailers? Content marketing has proven to be a cost-effective way to capture a customer’s attention, deliver relevant information and influence how customers feel about and interact with a particular brand.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates approximately three times as many leads per dollar.¹
Growing customer loyalty with content marketing isn’t a new idea. But it’s becoming more essential — as shown in the content marketing statistics below — as an effective way to strengthen customer relationships in today’s competitive retail environment.
In addition, 59% of B2C marketers say content marketing has helped them build loyalty and achieve other goals:4
Get more strategies and insights for using content to build customer loyalty. Read more >
What are the essential elements of customer loyalty content marketing?
Today’s shoppers have more choices than ever before, and content marketing can help you stand out in the crowded playing field. But it takes more than randomly dropping copy into an email. In fact, when we’re asked, “What are the steps of customer loyalty content marketing?” we focus on four essential elements.
Retail loyalty content marketing starts with a strategy.
A solid content marketing strategy is based on a deep knowledge of your customers and knowing what they want — and expect — from their experience with your brand. It’s about knowing what topics they’re interested in and developing a plan to distribute that information on the channels where your customers are. If you have a loyalty program, then your strategy should also encompass loyalty content, such as member newsletters and emails.
Research and data analysis drive content that encourages customer loyalty.
When you combine transactional, online, offline, loyalty program, survey and other types of data, you quickly get to the heart of customer behavior and interests. This customer-focused approach allows you to identify gaps in your current content marketing, create new relevant content that grows devotion to your brand, and complement your existing communication and loyalty marketing goals.
Content marketing provides a benefit to the customer.
Customer loyalty content marketing isn’t overly promotional. Rather, it builds brand loyalty by using content to add value to the customer’s life. This can include answering a question, solving a problem, educating customers about certain products or services, or even showing appreciation. If you have a loyalty program, content marketing should also be used to convey the program value and help members understand how to maximize their participation.
The best retail content marketing is relevant to the customer.
Using data to segment audiences and enhance messaging leads to higher engagement with your content marketing. This can include hyper-personalization based on a geographic location, purchase history, lifestyle or even loyalty program tier. Creating a preference center for retail content marketing is another effective way to let customers tell you what type of content they want from you, how often they want it and through what channel.
What are popular types of retail content marketing?
The most successful content marketing adds value to a customer’s interaction with your brand and inspires action. As a retail content marketing agency with a particular focus on customer loyalty, we develop custom content for multiple formats, including:
- Newsletters and blogs
- Look books, checklists, listicles and other visual content formats
- Videos
- Non-promotional emails, including trigger campaigns
- SMS/text messaging
- In-app messaging
- Podcasts
- Social media messaging
- Interactive content, including quizzes, surveys and contests
- Customer stories
- Microsites for customer loyalty programs
- Benefit-oriented collateral and more
What does a retail content marketing agency do to build customer loyalty?
As a retail services marketing agency, CCG’s roots have always been in loyalty, and we’re laser focused on using content as a tool to help retailers build customer loyalty.
As retail industry experts with four decades of experience, we understand consumer behaviors, the different stages of the customer purchase journey, and how to communicate and engage with customers before, during and after every transaction.
We get that you have sales and revenue goals to meet. We also know that content marketing — specifically, content that engages and converts — is the secret sauce to achieving stronger, more loyal and more profitable customer relationships. It’s one key to boosting your bottom line.
Our Services and Solutions
We’re a full-service agency offering our retail clients everything from content strategy to development to deployment. We also test, measure and optimize loyalty programs and content, helping ensure your customer relationship efforts are poised for maximum impact.
Our team has the knowledge and experience to handle the most complex of customer loyalty content projects and communications pieces, including those that mandate geo-targeting, versioning and extensive levels of customer personalization. For more details, see our online services and solutions page.
Here’s an overview of what makes our retail customer loyalty content marketing services unique.
Strategy and planning
- Understand your brand, culture, mission and objectives
- Lead strategy sessions with client stakeholders
- Conduct research and analyze data to understand your audiences and enhance messaging
- Develop omni-channel loyalty communication roadmaps
- Create custom content plans tailored to your customers’ interests and designed to meet your customer loyalty objectives
- Conduct content and loyalty program communication audits to evaluate the effectiveness of messaging, design, channel mix and other elements impacting customer engagement and loyalty
Integrated creative, digital, editorial and implementation
- Develop informative and entertaining content that inspires action
- Create content that complements your brand image while capturing your customers’ attention
- Provide complete content marketing development, including writing, graphic design, coding, deployment, print production and quality control
- Leverage dynamic and variable content to create highly relevant messaging for each customer
Customer data, analytics and research
- Increase content relevance with a data-driven approach
- Provide actionable insights and identify unique opportunities to drive customer behavior through custom content
- Use data analysis and segmentation to incorporate personalization and further engage audiences
Testing, measuring and refining
- Create and implement testing plans for email, multi-channel and format
- Advise on other content measurement and KPIs
- Conduct surveys, focus groups, interviews and other research methods
- Revise content marketing approach based on data and results
Retail Client Case Studies
We gauge our success by our clients’ success. Here are some of the ways we’ve used content marketing to help retailers address challenges, solve problems and achieve customer loyalty objectives. You can find more client success stories on our website.
PETCO loyalty program: Rewarding best customers and encouraging sales with data-driven content in the form of personalized direct mail, newsletters and additional communication touchpoints.
Macy’s loyalty rewards program: Breaking ground to improve customer retention and profits with exclusive content, including newsletters and one-to-one communications, that allowed Macy’s to recognize their best customers and motivate them to increase spending levels.
Kohl’s strategic CRM program: Increasing customer loyalty and boosting ROI with value-added content to educate customers about Kohl’s and its merchandise.
Talbots loyalty program: Communications audit and recommendations improve loyalty program messaging and channel alignment to boost customer engagement and store profits.
Your Partner for Better Customer Loyalty Content Marketing
CCG’s retail content strategists and creatives aim to exceed your expectations with quality work in every area of retail services content marketing and customer loyalty: innovation, efficiency and results. Our team understands how to connect customer behaviors and insights with relevant content across multiple touchpoints to deliver the highest rate of return.
Ready to improve your retail customer loyalty content marketing?
If you’re ready to take your retail customer loyalty content marketing to the next level, let’s talk. Complete the form below to schedule a no-strings-attached discussion of your needs and goals — and how CCG can help.
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1 “Content Marketing Infographic,” Demand Metric, https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic, accessed Sept. 2, 2022
2 “3 Ways to Build Brand Loyalty with Content Marketing,” Kristin Savage, SendPulse, posted July 21, 2020, https://sendpulse.com/blog/building-brand-loyalty, accessed Sept. 6, 2022
3 “38 Content Marketing Stats That Every Marketer Needs to Know,” NeilPatel.com, https://neilpatel.com/blog/38-content-marketing-stats-that-every-marketer-needs-to-know/, accessed Sept 1, 2022
4 “12th Annual B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends,” Content Marketing Institute, published 2022, https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/b2c-2022-research-r3-1.pdf, accessed Sept. 1, 2022
