Modern Retail Podcast: Marketers sound off on tariffs and retail strategies, plus how Hanna Andersson built its loyalty program

First up, executive editor Anna Hensel and senior reporter Gabriela Barkho talk about what was top of mind for executives at the Modern Retail Marketing Summit. Tariffs, and how to respond to them, were a hot topic of discussion. Marketers batted around ideas like adding a tariff surcharge to orders, pressing pause on some collaborations to save resources and taking a surgical approach to cutting SKUs. In some cases, they are still pushing forward on marketing spend while competitors pull back.

Speakers from brands like Oura, Chobani and Bark also talked about their approach to growing their retail businesses, as they use insights from their DTC business to inform their pitch to retailers and use their wholesale businesses to introduce themselves to new types of customers.

Then, in this week’s featured segment, Hanna Andersson’s chief customer officer, Lisa Perlmutter, talks about how the premium children’s apparel brand built its first-ever loyalty program.

Here are some highlights from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length:

Why Hanna Andersson decided to launch a loyalty program
“We really stood up the loyalty program right before I joined Hanna — some people had foresight into it and really wanted to get after that. [It was] very important as a heritage brand, in particular — and heritage just means ‘old’ — to really make sure that we are speaking to those longtime customers as well as engaging a new demo every year, every day. … The company was really at an impasse and thinking, ‘How do we continue to encourage this very loyal customer base?’ Grandparents buy it and pass it down to their kids, who pass it down to their kids. And yet, how do we really activate new customers, and how do we really attract and retain the best customers for our brand? And so we really wanted to set out and build a loyalty program from the ground up that was truly, uniquely Hanna.”

What KPIs Hanna Andersson looks at
“We’ve learned a lot — and I would say we are really strict on having core KPIs. Because if you try to measure a million things and you try and do a million things, it’s just not going to cut through. So we look at a few things: Are we getting the right new customer acquisition? … We look behind the scenes of their spend level, when in the calendar year are they joining and what their shopping frequency is. And [we ask], ‘Are we driving her to come more often, and are we driving a larger share of wallet within this competitive children’s apparel market? And are we doing that in a really personalized and brand additive way? We don’t want to do it through discounting. … And the last one we are really passionate about is our NPS score.”

How the customer journey has changed
“I would say customers are researching [more]. It doesn’t even matter what demo of customers — they are making very active purchasing decisions. So where they used to have to see your content out in the wild four or five times, it might be 10-12 times now. Where they used to come to the website two to three times, it might be up to four or five times before making a purchase. A lot more, I would say, add to carts, in general, versus … how do we really drive that conversion? I would say they are thoughtful. We feel we are really well-positioned in this, because our products are the top quality in the industry. We feel really good about that, and as moms and customers do their research, they learn that.”