Canadian distributor to capitalize on online growth through personalized interactions driven by omnichannel customer engagement

Indianapolis IN  Omnichannel customer engagement powerhouse Emarsys today announces its partnership with footwear specialist Rubino Shoes, helping the family-owned distributor to migrate and scale its local-community ethos into the digital sphere.

The Emarsys platform will underpin Rubino Shoes’s approach to customer relationship management, helping to better segment customers and develop more sophisticated individual profiles. This analysis will inform customer engagement strategies in email and SMS messaging, as well as social engagement and seasonal, event-based mobile marketing and advertising.

With fewer than ten people in the company headquarters, an omnichannel platform was prioritized by Rubino Shoes as a means of centralizing data, ensuring that the company remained as agile as possible. The ability to drive engagement on digital channels will enable a better informed, more efficient decision-making process at the senior level, and allow the company to continue to improve on a 15x increase in online sales since the beginning of the pandemic.

At the same time, Emarsys’s introduction is key to the process of upscaling the business without losing its familial ethos. Rubino Shoes remains committed to a real estate portfolio that has served provinces in Eastern Canada, in tight-knit communities with a 95% French-speaking populous, for almost half a decade. The ability to personalize one-to-one engagement across multiple channels is fundamental to upscaling that community feel.

Angelo Rubino, vice president, Rubino Shoes: “Our business success has only been possible by valuing our local community. We’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to modernize and digitize without losing that community feel, and the pandemic has ultimately provided that opportunity. People always need shoes, and we’ve seen a huge increase in online sales in the past year.

“Emarsys will allow us to deliver on our community promise in a digital environment. We’re able to dig deeper into the preferences and behavior of our customers so what we see as a responsibility to our community. Emarsys’s existing relationships with collaborators of ours, such as Puma, were a big comfort in that regard.”

Sara Richter, CMO, Emarsys: “The last 12 months have seen organizations that are entirely new to ecommerce investing heavily in their digital infrastructures and online capabilities. For businesses like Rubino Shoes that are historic, trusted retailers, this has meant prioritizing omnichannel capabilities that don’t compromise on personal one-to-one interactions. By driving online sales, these retailers will generate revenue to reinvest into their brick-and-mortar real estate. This will not only benefit them when COVID restrictions lift, but also open up new opportunities to expand their online footprint.”