Fostering community through emotional connections
California lifestyle brand Jenni Kayne stands out as a beacon of inspiration, encouraging women to embrace a life well-lived each day.
The brand has a loyal following, including celebrities like Courtney Cox, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Emma Roberts, and Emma Stone, and has seen significant growth in its customer base, from 10,000 active customers to 180,000 active customers in recent years. With the jump in active customers, Jenni Kayne more than doubled their revenue from $24 million to over $50 million from 2021 to 2022.
Jenni Kayne isn’t just about fashion; it’s about a lifestyle. The brand is a firm believer in creating personal connections with its customers. By understanding and embracing the brand’s philosophy, clients become more than just customers—they become part of a community that shares a vision for a life well-lived.
In this blog post, we will delve into the heart of Jenni Kayne’s success—its commitment to enhancing the customer experience through clienteling, omnichannel strategies, and the marriage of old-school and modern techniques.
Clienteling at Jenni Kayne
At its core, clienteling is about transforming customers into clients through authentic connections. Jenni Kayne excels in this practice, creating genuine relationships with its clientele through clienteling.
Jenni Kayne customers receive highly personal service from the brand’s associates that go beyond transactional relationships. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor sharing information about everything from their color and fabric preferences to the lifestyle they follow. The associates make notes and leverage this detailed information to help them foster emotional connections where the customer and the associate truly know and understand each other.
The impact clienteling has on customer shopping frequency and long-term retention is profound. And so, clienteling has become fundamental to Jenni Kayne’s business strategy for enhancing the overall customer experience.
Leveraging technology for an omnichannel experience
Technology also comes into play in Jenni Kayne’s retail strategy for creating an omnichannel experience for customers. By leveraging technology at the store level, the brand can track customers’ cross-channel activities, such as purchases and wish lists. This allows associates to stay informed about the customer journey, enabling them to react quickly and efficiently to the savvy customer in front of them.
The brand’s technology provides valuable data that helps strategize for the future. For example, by analyzing which products perform best in specific stores, Jenni Kayne can optimize inventory, ensuring that each location caters to the preferences of its unique customer base. Additionally, having the entirety of their customers’ information— including purchase history and average AOV— enables them to identify and target their high-value customers.
The marriage of old-school and modern techniques
While technology plays a pivotal role in Jenni Kayne’s customer experience strategy, the brand still recognizes the value of old-school techniques.
Clienteling, once reliant on pen and paper, becomes a digital system where associates can make personalized notes in customer profiles, combining the reliability of tried-and-true methods with the efficiency of modern technology.
Customer profiles, detailing likes, dislikes, and personal styles, serve as a one-stop-shop for all customer information. Associates can use the purchase history of a customer to send a personalized outreach, recommending complementary items or exclusive previews to their newest product drop.
Let’s take the return of a previously sold out cashmere cardigan. The associates know that these sell like hot cakes, so they want to let everyone know that they’re back before they sell out again. So, they can scroll through their client book and search for anyone that prefers cashmere and an oversized fit. Then they can send a quick, personal message to everyone letting them know that they thought of them when they saw this cardigan come back in stock, and they can send a link for the customer to purchase it right from their phone.
Bringing it all together
Jenni Kayne’s approach to enhancing the customer experience is a harmonious blend of personalization, technology, and a commitment to authentic connections. By prioritizing clienteling, leveraging technology for omnichannel experiences, and merging old-school and modern techniques, Jenni Kayne has set a standard for crafting meaningful relationships in the dynamic world of retail.
Learn more
To learn more inside secrets from Jenni Kayne, check out this webinar with guests Rissa Jarratt, Executive Vice President of Retail at Jenni Kayne and Lauren Mucci, Manager of Omnichannel Customer Development at Coach, hosted by Wynne Elmitt, Global Director of Retail Excellence at Tulip.
You will get 50 years of combined retail expertise, in a roundtable discussion that will provide universal insights that you can customize to your enterprise, regardless of retail vertical.
Watch it now: Powering world-class customer experiences— an inside look at Coach and Jenni Kayne
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