Large businesses are constantly seeking new successful strategies to attract and retain consumers, and perhaps the most promising trend today is omnichannel marketing. This approach involves creating a unified system of all customer touchpoints to build personalized communication with them. Fifteen years ago, most buyers used only one or two channels before making a purchase, but today, they typically engage with a brand through an average of six touchpoints. According to research by The Wharton School, companies that effectively implement omnichannel strategies can increase order volume by 494%, retain nearly 90% of their customers, and annually boost revenue by 9.5%. Naturally, specialists proficient in this marketing methodology are in high demand globally.
A new loyalty program for customers will soon be launched at NetCost Market, a chain of grocery supermarkets and online stores in the USA. This program was designed by Yana Mosina, who recently joined the company as the marketing director. She is a recognized global expert in sales and marketing with a vast experience of driving customer's loyalty and sales via better customer experience. However, these are not the only capabilities Yana brings, as she draws from her extensive experience in FMCG market.
Yana's career is a shining example of the effectiveness of universal skills in various national markets. Before joining the top management of the American supermarket chain, Yana spent 12 years working at Mars Inc. in the CIS region, an international FMCG company. She started as the Account Development Director, responsible for the two largest clients with a sales share of over 15% in Russia, and eventually headed the Customer Marketing department, managing all promotional campaigns in the CIS.
Among her achievements at Mars, she developed a strategy that doubled the seasonal business with top retailers. She then led the Business Development department at L'Oréal Russia as CEO-1, where she implemented a comprehensive omnichannel strategy for cosmetic retail. Her innovative offline corner concept was recognized as a best practice in Europe and implemented in countries like France, Turkey, Greece, the UK, and CIS countries. This strategy led to over 200% growth above the category, significantly enhancing online and offline customer engagement. She was also directly involved in developing an innovative Contactless Skin and Hair diagnostic tool globally recognized as a best practice.
This innovative solution dramatically increased sales by 200% and achieved a 40% conversion rate for the Haircare franchise, demonstrating a breakthrough in customer interaction and product recommendation technology. She played a key role in accelerating e-commerce growth by 50% and engaging professional pharmacists to support sales, creating gamified training platforms, and establishing a professional pharmacy award and a professional network of 30,000 pharmacists across all regions, recognized as Russia's most reliable professional community. Thanks to her strategy, L'Oréal moved from 8th to 2nd place among the most recommended brands in Russia.
In 2023, shortly after moving to the USA, Yana, already having the reputation and status of an international expert in marketing and sales in the retail and consumer goods sectors, was appointed Marketing Director (CEO-1) at NetCost Market. Today, she leads several strategic initiatives: expanding the store network by 30% over the next year, implementing an innovative loyalty program, developing an E-commerce Strategy to double the company's E-comm Business within the next 3 years, and launching several private label brands.
"The US market is highly competitive. Finding a job for a candidate without experience here is a challenging task. My job search was no exception," Yana says. "It took some time to prove to the company's top management, with concrete results, that the expertise I had accumulated over years of working in the Russian market could be applied here in the United States. My leadership qualities and soft skills, honed while working at Mars and L'Oréal Russia, are highly valuable here, with adjustments for local mentality and corporate culture. "
What exactly did she do to achieve this? She elevated the department's work to a new quality level of analytics, conducted in-depth research on the network's customers for the first time, identified all drivers and barriers to purchase, and created a profile of the target audience the retailer wanted to attract in the next five years. Additionally, she developed a plan for the network's expansion into new states and implemented an omnichannel system strategy for the first time.
Yana's preferred approach to marketing strategy is omnichannel: integrating all customer communication channels into a single system that retains the history of interactions and purchases, creating a consistent user brand experience. She recently published a scholarly article on "Creating and Implementing Omnichannel Loyalty Programs for Retailers" outlining the essence of this approach. Сompanies in general rarely have an omnichannel strategy and Yana's approach was novel for the industry.
In NetCost Market different teams managed marketing for physical stores and online without always synchronizing activities. Similarly, the loyalty program had two separate customer databases – physical and online. After conducting research, Yana discovered that over 30% of customers were omnichannel clients, making offline and online purchases but not benefiting from their membership. There was also no way to track their customer journey because one customer was perceived as two entities. Yana proposed a new approach for the first time in the company's history. She integrated key seasons and marketing activations in both offline and online stores, creating more tools for simultaneous customer engagement. She is currently working on a loyalty program that will unify both channels, allowing the tracking of customers' shopping paths and providing them with a highly engaging personalized service.
Her previous work experience has given Yana other skills that she now adapts to the new field. "The US is a different market," she explains. "Customer behavior at the point of sale here differs from that in Russia or Europe, but the value of universal skills – conducting qualitative and quantitative research, working with large data sets to gain actionable insights, and converting them into real solutions – lies in their applicability anywhere in the world."
Within her first months at NetCost Market, Yana developed a media strategy and key marketing messages, identified unique advantages of the network to capitalize on and attract additional traffic, and built strategies to retain the current audience and attract new customers. Her experience working with leading marketplaces in Russia helped her identify opportunities for online business growth by optimizing the interface, forming the catalog, and improving content on the website.
"My experience at L'Oréal showed me the importance of innovative and quality service when working with customers," Yana says. "Today, in most global markets, price is far from the only factor determining a customer's choice in favor of a particular retailer. Long-term loyalty is built on personal experience and the emotions we get during and after the purchase. Our lives are not getting easier, processes are accelerating, and it is especially important for the customer to have as many solutions as possible in one place."
Therefore, Yana effectively used non-obvious solutions inspired by her experience developing dermatological beauty corners for L'Oréal. For example, she introduces additional services to offline and online stores, modern coffee kiosks and coffee zones, flower and gift shops, personal degustation of premium caviar, catering menu, and service, parcel delivery options, and more.
Another important aspect of building a strong brand is a positive contribution to local communities. At NetCost, Yana leads the company's charitable programs that strengthen brand reputation, such as the annual Police and Community Soccer Day (NetCost has supported and developed relationships with the NY Police Department for many years). Last year, under Yana's leadership, key directions for supporting the local community were identified – children's sports and creativity, senior citizen care, and creating comfortable working conditions for the company's employees. Together with NYPD, they launched the first annual Soccer Championship between children's soccer teams and teams from NetCost Market & NYPD. This year, at Yana's initiative, the match will be accompanied by fundraising for the PBA Widows and Children Fund. Yana proposed the Great Minds & Innovators Award in July of this year as an internal initiative. It aims to motivate company employees to share business ideas with management. The five best ideas will be implemented, and the winners will receive valuable prizes.
Based on her long and varied experience, Jana has articulated a few key factors that influence a particular marketing challenge. Here they are.
Factor#1: Quick Experiment. To understand if your idea will be more effective, it's better to quickly create a prototype and test it on a small audience. This allows you to identify all the pros and cons without investing time and resources in long-term product development that the consumer might not need.
Factor#2: Cross-functional Team. This is especially effective in the initial stage since the vision of tasks and opportunities by colleagues from different departments with diverse backgrounds always enriches the project, allows you to foresee bottlenecks, and simplifies implementation due to initial overall involvement.
Factor#3: Regular Customer Interaction. This allows for assessing their dynamic profile and observing long-term and short-term trends in their purchasing and consumer behavior, tracking the emergence of new brands and services in their repertoire. A mix of research tools works perfectly here—focus groups, qualitative and quantitative interviews, accompanied shopping, social listening, etc.
Factor#4: KPIs. If you want a strategic initiative to be realized, the team responsible for the final implementation should have a clear understanding and vision of the goal, all the tools to achieve it, and regularly tracked KPIs.
And, of course, leadership skills and team motivation cannot be forgotten. "These skills acquired over years of career in Russia are just as relevant in the US market," says Yana. "Undoubtedly, the multinational New York and the corresponding corporate culture within the company have their characteristics. But people remain people everywhere, and regardless of the country, they need a manager capable of recognizing their strengths, setting the right tasks based on strong competencies, providing competent feedback, forming a vision of career paths and opportunities, and supporting team members on their way to new achievements."
