Digital customer engagement among consumers has never been higher. Brands now need a strong online and mobile customer experience to attract and retain these segments. This is especially true among millennials, but they are by no means unique in this respect. Nearly all consumers maintain an online presence, and brands seeking their loyalty must wade deeply into these waters as well.
QVC is one brand that is making a lot of headway in this area. In order to take a multigenerational approach to engage its core customer base, QVC has cast an even wider net across the digital sphere.
This expansion comes via the acquisition of zulily by Liberty Interactive Corporation, QVC’s parent company. Through zulily, QVC will strengthen the brand’s relationship with legions of millennial and “digital-only” online shoppers.
“QVC can leverage zulily’s sophisticated personalization technologies, which use historical and real-time data to customize offerings for tens of millions of customer touch points every day, to offer greater relevancy to our customers,” QVC CEO Mike George told Loyalty360.
Created in 2010, zulily is a leading ecommerce retail site for millennial customers and young mothers shopping for a vast assortment of online items. By searching through more than 10,000 vendors, zulily customers can purchase regularly updated collections of clothes, accessories, home décor, toys, and more.
Of course, QVC is also a world leading video and ecommerce retailer in its own right, and it sees zulily as a complementary brand. Now QVC’s analytics expertise and zulily’s personalization capabilities will combine to provide an even better overall digital customer experience.
“We also see opportunities to leverage zulily’s extraordinarily agile and efficient digital content production and asset management systems,” George said. “zulily will be able to leverage QVC’s deep video merchandising expertise, as well as our flexible customer finance systems. Our combined ecommerce and mobile know-how will put us squarely at the forefront of digital innovation.”
Both QVC and zulily are expected to retain their unique identities, while also building upon the power of various cross-collaborative efforts to maximize the strength of each brand.
“QVC and zulily share a passion for creating a unique shopping experience that is rooted in discovery and brings carefully curated products to life,” said George. “Together, we will further engage modern women who love to shop in new and compelling ways. We look forward to welcoming the talented zulily team to the QVC Group as our shared values and beliefs create an incredibly strong foundation for us to transform how we serve customers in new, digital-first ways.”