Retailers rely on a variety of marketing channels to engage customers. But identifying the most effective channels is a process, which requires establishing clear objectives and key performance indicators.

“People are always trying to measure ROI [return on investment], and it's such a difficult question to answer because it depends on where you're trying to measure the ROI,” said Danielle Brown, CMO of women's intimates company Knix. “The question is, which point of the funnel are you in? A channel that works really well for increasing awareness at the top of the funnel might appear really bad for ROI when you look at it from a conversion perspective. But it's necessary in order to hit the actual conversion below.”

Looking at a certain channel through the wrong lens can present incorrect results, Brown said. “For us, we work with highly measurable channels. We have really clear objectives about what we want to achieve at different points in the funnel. It makes it easy to attribute budgets to different channels that way.”

For our "Industry Voices: A Focus on Retail" series, we spoke with several retailers—including Thinx, Article and Natori—about their marketing efforts, their thoughts on first-party data and how they define digital transformation. In our first video, they discuss the marketing channels they rely on most and why. View the full video below, made possible by Bluecore.

Article, a D2C furniture retailer, takes a holistic approach to its marketing mix. “We think about the whole plan of how we're going to bring a customer into our environment and how we're going to help them find the furniture that they love,” said Duncan Blair, the company's director of marketing. “Each part of our marketing mix is doing something different, starting at early-on discovery and awareness through to purchase and reminding people that we're here. So it's really hard to compare the importance of, say, a TV campaign that's trying to build reach and awareness with our target customer to a remarketing campaign at the very bottom of the funnel. Everything works together in harmony and helps to build the profile of Article."

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