Key Takeaways from Glossy’s NYC February Forum

The ActionIQ team joined an impressive group of fashion, beauty, and luxury marketers at the Glossy Forum in New York City on Feb 28, where attendees spent the day exploring pioneering ways to compete in the digital age.

Glossy is devoted to evolving fashion and beauty through the lens of digital and technology. The event feature brands that are “engaging in dynamic ways, often using storytelling as a hook, and scrapping any plans to stick to seasonal campaigns promoted through a handful of channels,” write the event’s organizers.

Start with HVC Relationships

Tamara Gruzbarg, head of industry insights at ActionIQ, was invited to present an expansive new approach to capitalize on high-value customer (HVC) relationships.

And it begins by clearly defining who these customers really are.

“Who is more valuable—a customer who buys twice a season with a high order value, or a customer who shops monthly with a more modest spend per transaction? A customer who prefers online experience or the one who shops in store?” Gruzbarg asked attendees.

“They might be equally valuable—and you need to recognize these behavioral differences in order to provide relevant experiences to every customer,” Gruzbarg concluded.

Brands that can leverage rich data they already collect about these customers, they can “lift all boats,’ Gruzbarg told the Glossy audience, by:

• Deepening their current relationship with current HVCs.
• Discovering new revenue opportunities among current customers who share key traits with these HVCs.
• Acquiring promising new customers who also share these traits.

Key Topics

Here are a few of the other key topics that we found particularly engaging:

• Content strategy. Presenters discussed how to deal with a seemingly endless appetite for fresh content, and how best to integrate content into customer journeys.
• Testing and learning. Innovation is critical, and so is being first to market. However, that means willing to fail at times.
• Direct-to-consumer vs. wholesale.  The old divisions between in-store, online, and wholesale are dissolving, and brands are finding countless ways to navigate this transition.
• Influencers. Brands are really embracing the influencer community as a way to tell the brand’s story.

In short, the Glossy event was a fantastic way to explore innovations in the rapidly evolving world of fashion and beauty marketing.