In the world of retail, there aren’t very many brands that carry a sense of tradition and holiday nostalgia quite like Macy’s. From the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to its rich history of festive decor and shopping experiences, the retailer has become synonymous with the holiday season.
However, Macy’s is more than just parades and festivities: it’s also a market leader in e-commerce. Macy’s Marketplace spotlights high-quality brands, from the most recognizable to the hidden gems, and works to drive traffic, sales, and conversions for those businesses. In just a year, it’s become one of the fastest-growing retailer marketplaces, making it an enticing option for brands who want to make the most of the upcoming holiday sales.
By combining Macy’s selling power with Cymbio’s automation possibilities, you have a winning formula for excelling during this peak selling season. Read on to learn more about Macy’s Marketplace, the retailer’s tips for selling more this holiday season, and how Cymbio can help you tie it all together.
Not Yet Connected to Macy’s? Here’s Why You Should Be
Macy’s Marketplace is a relatively new platform that’s invite-only, but at only one-year-old, it’s quickly become the fastest-growing retail marketplace. This is thanks to a few factors:
- Quality and trust: The marketplace’s curated invite-only business model makes them committed to high-quality brands, making them a trusted destination for shoppers.
- Integrated experience: Placing your company on Macy’s website next to recognizable brands like DKNY, Steve Madden, L’Occitane, and others helps elevate your brand to a higher status by integrating your products into the same shopping journey.
- Brand ownership: Macy’s ensures you own your brand’s integrity by offering tools that help you manage your catalog, pricing, and end-to-end customer experience
- Loyal customer reach: In 2022, 70% of Macy’s sales came from its loyal Star Rewards members. These shoppers are always on the lookout for new brands and styles.
Macy’s Helps You Grow Your Brand
As a household name for 160 years, Macy’s has evolved to become a customer-centric, multichannel retailer. No matter the size of your company now, connected with Macy’s can undoubtedly help you grow and elevate your brand. Here’s a look at some numbers:
- In 2022, Macy’s had $24 billion in annual net sales
- The retailer saw 31% digital sales growth from 2019 to 2022
- macys.com had 5.9 million daily visits in 2022
- Half of Macy’s clients shopping with the company online in 2022
- In 2022, 42 million shoppers made purchases through the retailer
Macy’s 4 Tips for Selling More This Season
The best way to maximize sales this holiday season is to start early so that your different strategies are prepared and your entire team knows how to execute them. Macy’s has shared four key areas that brands should focus on for selling more this season.
1. Pricing
The price of a product is one of the most important factors that’s going to influence a customer’s purchase decision. As such, it’s essential to always stay on top of pricing changes. This means monitoring your products’ prices as sales come and go and also monitoring competitors’ prices to ensure you’re staying competitive. Additionally, you want to make sure you’re checking all the small details, like:
- Double-checking price types and color-way pricing
- Ensuring advertised prices match your promotional offers
- Reporting any issues or pricing discrepancies to your account manager immediately
An error in pricing can lead to a poor customer experience, which can have an overall impact on the success of your Q4 sales.
2. Promotions
Retailers like Macy’s put a lot of marketing effort into advertising promotions in order to increase traffic during this peak shopping season. Macy’s shared that it sees a strong correlation between an increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) and promotion inclusion. To make the most of these opportunities, there are two things to make sure of:
- Make sure you’re participating in different retailer promotions. For example, Macy’s has a ‘Friends and Family’ sale around the holiday season that brands can take advantage of.
- Plan your promotions in advance and schedule them throughout the holiday season. You can even create a promotions calendar that includes important dates like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as all the other unique promotional events the retailers and marketplaces you’re connected to are offering.
Rather than looking and promotions as a way to cut down on inventory, view them as a key strategy you employ to move more products, attract more customers, and create positive customer experiences.
3. Inventory
Make sure you’re constantly monitoring your inventory levels across all your connected retailers and marketplaces throughout this busy period. You always want to make sure you strike the right balance of having enough inventory available to clients, but not too much that you won’t be able to move the excess after the holiday season.
You never know when the sales of a certain product might spike, so it’s important to remain diligent in checking inventory levels. Additionally, you also want to ensure you’re not overselling an item, especially during boosted promotion events, so that you don’t create a negative customer experience or even impact your relationship with the retailers you work with.
4. Product Listings
Macy’s emphasizes that enhancing your product listings with specific content can help you ensure shoppers have all the information they need to make a purchase decision and reduce your return rate. Some of these details include:
- Product titles
- Product details
- Imagery
- Size and fit
- Enhanced content
- Exclusive content
In addition to these data points, Macy’s believes that product reviews are one of the most important things to include on a product listing. The retailer syndicates reviews across different platforms since these testimonials help your products stand out and build customer trust. Even if you’re just launching your brand on Macy’s Marketplace, a good quantity of recent, high-quality, and in-depth reviews can help you boost conversions quickly.
How Can Cymbio’s Automation Tools Help?
Managing all the different factors of selling through a retailer, especially when connected to more than one, can seem daunting. Delivering an excellent customer experience requires a lot of manual work behind the scenes, which is why major retailers like Macy’s partner with Cymbio to help associated brands automate repetitive tasks.
Cymbio allows you to interact more intuitively with Macy’s Marketplace by putting certain actions on autopilot, such as:
- The process of listing products
- Inventory management and syncing
- Order processing and fulfillment
- Order tracking
- Cancellations and refunds
- Product content such as imagery and descriptions
With Cymbio, you can ensure you have an easy and seamless holiday sales season by employing automations to cut down on time and resources you’d otherwise need to spend on juggling multiple manual tasks. Not only does Cymbio streamline the onboarding process to a new retailer or marketplace like Macy’s, but it also helps brands continuously throughout the sales process to make your day-to-day operations more efficient so that your focus can be on your sales strategy rather than managing orders or inventory.
Sell With Macy’s, Streamline With Cymbio
The combination of Macy’s Marketplace and Cymbio for automation and control over retailer operations is a winning recipe for success this holiday season. Now, before the holiday rush begins, is the perfect time to begin onboarding new retailers and marketplaces so you can be prepared to push your sales when the holiday season kicks into full gear. With Cymbio’s support, you’ll never have to worry about managing it alone when your team is at its busiest time.
Chat with one of our retail experts to learn more about selling on Macy’s Marketplace and preparing your business for the holiday season.