Aussie retailer aims for better global customer picture and segmentation

Push notifications and building out nuanced journeys and segments and getting a full picture of global customer are now in the sights of Australian fashion brand, Dissh, after taking the plunge and purchasing a new martech platform.  

Dissh is a women’s clothing retailer founded by women in the Gold Coast in 2001. And it’s one building its business with strong sustainability and social credentials. As well as more sustainable fabrics and products, these include several partnerships with social change organisations such as Thread Together and Suited to Success as well as paid placements for women re-entering the workforce under it’s the Encoreship program.  

In 2020, when the pandemic dramatically began impacting the retailer’s traditional brick-and-mortar business model, Dissh pivoted to online and cultivated a global presence. What quickly followed was a desire to build a better understanding of such global clientele through data and engage in a more personalised way. So Dissh made the decision to adopt Emarsys’ marketing technology platform earlier this year.  

Dissh digital marketing manager, Kellie Pembroke, noted global sales lifted from 1 per cent to 40 per cent of the business alone. Today, 85 per cent of total customers are shopping online.    

“For us to continue this momentum in 2022, we needed our data to be stored in one place. With Emarsys, we are prioritising user segmentation across all channels to fully understand our customer lifecycles,” she said.

Dissh launched phase one of the rollout in February to link up all email, social advertising and customer data. Prior to this, the team faced siloed data sets and a batch-and-blast approach to digital communications.  

Adopting Emarsys is expected to deliver greater customer visibility by automating and integrating of audiences across all channels, while built-in test-and-learn capabilities will eventually be extended across all touchpoints to bring personalisation into business processes.

“We are now working through phase two, which includes Web push notifications, building out customer journeys and segments and integrating SMS,” Pembroke told CMO. “Phase three will be where we begin to test, learn and optimise based on the customer data we’re gathering.”  

Dissh also uses Shopify as its core ecommerce platform, which Pembroke said has proven a rich source of customer data. The company then previously used Klaviyo for email marketing and to engage with its subscriber database. However, this proved limiting in terms of connecting the dots with transactional data across Dissh’s multiple international websites. The team had some insight into what customers were buying, for example, but didn’t know how frequently they purchased.  

There’s a clear orientation towards retention and reactivation of customers in Dissh’s early technology use cases.  

“However, better understanding of our current customer and better first-party data will help us find similar customers to acquire across channels,” Pembroke said. “Previous to Emarsys, we had light touch customer lifecycle marketing, but found we needed a more powerful segmentation tool to help us understand and engage our customers internationally. 

“Having the tools to analyse customer behaviour across all channels in one place will lead us to unlocking the next stage in solidifying and nurturing our one-to-one relationships with new, existing and legacy customers.”  

Emarsys regional VP for Asia-Pacific and Japan, Kristyn Wallace, emphasised how important segmentation is for marketers to develop effective and personalised marketing campaigns.

“Having insight into how, when and why customers shop, all in one platform, creates a foundation that allows marketers to nurture customer relationships and home in on the customer lifecycle. It is such a pleasure to welcome a female led and run brand like DISSH into the Emarsys community,” she added.

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