Making Deeper, Emotional Customer Engagement Connections at New York & Co.

New York & Company wants to forge deeper, emotional customer connections.

Customer engagement that includes an emotional connection can lead to brand loyalty. New York & Company CEO Greg Scotton has made this one of his four imperatives for 2015.

“The quarter included progress toward our four keys to success,” Scotton said during the company’s Aug. 20 earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “First, develop our sub-brand strategy to satisfy more of our customer need as we continue to evolve our lifestyle brand beyond our core in wear to work to increase our share of wallet. Second, create a deeper emotional connection with our consumer to drive traffic and new customer acquisition. Third, evolve as an omni-channel retailer. And fourth, execute project excellence, which will make us more efficient and generate increased long-term profitability.”

New York & Company’s sub-brand strategy allows it to expand its reach to new consumers and, at the same time, serve more existing customer needs. “Our Eva Mendes side-by-side stores, which were adjacent to our New York & Company locations, continue to drive traffic and improved productivity in these locations,” Scotton explained. “Given the strong results from these side by side stores, we plan to expand this test to approximately 20 shop-in-shop locations in the third quarter.

As we look ahead, we will continue to build on the success of Eva Mendes. To this end, in Q3, we added two additional Eva Mendes deliveries to the fall.” Seventh Avenue, Scotton said, is “making us more dominant to further differentiate our stores and drive sales. This fall, Seventh Avenue will take on a new name, Seventh Avenue Design Studio, bringing the sub-brand back to its original heritage.” We’re certainly excited about the changes taking place in our largest sub-brand and look forward to updating you on this performance on our Q3 call. Soho Jeans is our second most important sub-brand, which addresses our customers’ casual lifestyle. Soho Jeans delivered a strong second quarter driven by strength in denim and our Soho soft shirt. We were also excited about the performance of our Jennifer Hudson Soho Jean launch in the last two weeks of July, which contributed to our strong comps in July.

We saw strength in our denim category driven by flare, boyfriend and high-waist leggings. New York & Company has had great success with its expanded assortment of dresses online. “The dress business was positively impacted through a successful July dress event, which was an incremental to last year,” Scotton said. “We were able to chase back into our best sellers to meet demand, which really validated our supply chain and its speed. Turning to our second key to create a deeper emotional connection with our customer, we also have positive news to share.

In fact, this second quarter marked our fifth consecutive quarter of positive traffic for our total company and our third consecutive quarter, where we delivered positive traffic in our core New York & Company stores.” Scotton believes these increases speak to the effectiveness of company marketing campaigns. “During the quarter, we continue to effectively leverage Eva Mendes as a traffic driver to our brands,” he said. “In the quarter, we saw growth of our multichannel customer base. This growth was driven by increases in our private label credit card or PLCC loyalty program, our email database, and our overall multichannel customers.”Read more at:graduation dresses