Is rue21’s CRM-”Relationship Goals”?

We analyze the CRM tactics of American retailer rue21. See how the brand’s CRM strategy ranks compared to other fashion retailers and household name brands

Adebisi Adewusi

November 18, 2021

rue21 is a fashion retailer known for offering stylish clothing at an affordable price. How do you think the brand scores when it comes to CRM practices?

1. Be Transparent 8/10

For younger generations, gone are the days of loyalty to brands based on name recognition or marketing dominance. Consumers now rate brands based emotional connection. And this is largely based on what information the brand disclose publicly.

rue21 probably gets it, as it seems to be quite open with its operations. On LinkedIn, the brand posts about store openings and even announces new hires.

Keeping customers in the know, the most recent news we saw was about the brand’s new gaming streetwear collection and opening a new store. From where we’re standing, rue21 does a great job of making openness a part of their culture.

They would get two more points for sharing a little more about the inner works/decision making of the company.

2. Incentives and Perks 10/10

rue21 caters to customers looking to save money. Here’s what we got when we landed on the website:

30% off our entire purchase

80% off clearance sale

20% off for referring a friend

15% off if we signed up for the brand’s newsletter

rue REWARDS program where customers earn points for shopping in stores and online.

15% student discount

Free shipping for orders over $50 and lots more!

We love how rue21 builds relationships with consumers using incentives and perks that are timely, relevant, and communicated correctly throughout the customer journey.

3. Be Relevant 10/10

rue21 builds relevance by offering customers products and services that meet their needs and lifestyles, also in accordance with global trends. These include:

Bloom Beyond and Infinite Woods fragrances made from and packaged in sustainable materials.
Acknowledging the diversity of its customer base, rue21 released an exclusive Pride collection.
Convenient and flexible delivery such as a “Buy Online, Pickup In Store,” service, Next Day, 2-Day and Overnight shipping options.
The brand also has a gift giving guide. Nice!

For finding new ways to enrich the lives of consumers, rue21 gets a 10 from us.

4. Be Helpful 10/10

It’s no longer enough to have great products or help customers save money; you’ve got to give back.

rue21 supports a lot of nonprofits including The Trevor Project, the Humane Society of the United States, and Threads for Teens. The brand also established rueRelief to provide a cash donation and/or merchandise donation to Associates who experience a personal or financial hardship.

From where we’re standing, rue21 is committed to making a positive impact on the lives of its customers and employees. This is an incredibly powerful way to strengthen customer relationships.

5. RealTime Personalization 3/10

Every customer wants to be treated like royalty. That’s why realtime personalization is a super important customer relationship building strategy. To test rue21’s realtime personalization effort, we signed up and placed a Chenille Knit Sweater in our shopping cart. Sadly, we discovered that realtime personalization isn’t part of rue21’s customer relationship strategy.

rue21 didn’t personalize our website experience in realtime to reflect our product selection or site behavior. We only got generic upselling in the form of “Complete the looks”.

Also, we weren’t retargeted with sponsored ads or items in our cart on social media.

In all, we got a one size fits all experience:(.

rue21 missed opportunities to personalize our shopping experience. For instance, we spent a lot of time looking at cozy boots, rue21 could easily have used our site behavior to offer us relevant personalized product recommendations.

rue21’s CRM strategy takes a hit for not delivering realtime personalized experiences to consumers.

6. Master UX 6/10

Let’s assess how rue21’s site stacks up when it comes to the user experience.

rue21’s website is clean and easy to navigate. The product categories are visible at the top level of the main navigation and the categorization structure isn’t overwhelming. This helped us browse the website easily and save time.

The product page has descriptions and imagery but we couldn’t find user reviews or ratings to help us select the right product. The FAQ section was easy to find and properly structured.

rue21’s website is decent but not innovative. And the absence of a product review section is a major UX fail. So we take off a couple of points here.

7. Leverage Social Media 5/10

On Facebook, rue21 has 1.5M followers, almost 1M followers on Instagram and a little over 30k followers on Twitter.

The brand posts regularly on Facebook. The content is a mix of product promotion, sales announcements, event-related content and giveaways.

Moving to Instagram, rue21’s posts are mostly promotional and products are sometimes showcased by influencers.

rue21 uses branded hashtags #rueplus #YOUinrue #rue21 in its posts to drive engagement. This is useful for community building. We also noted a decent use of Instagram reels to drive engagement.

On Twitter, the content is similar to what we saw on Facebook.

We think rue21 should optimize its social media strategy to fully engage its customers. Consumers want different things on each social media platform. Also, the lack of any educational content was apparent. Its important rue21 modifies its content for Twitter and Facebook instead of cross posting.

Overall, rue21 is getting 52/70 here (74%), enough for joint 28^th out of 60 (!) brands we analyzed so far – right in the middle of the pack. And so, the affordable brand isn’t giving us relationship goals envy – yet. rue21 needs to fix its realtime personalization and social media strategy to increase its customer relationship. A more modern site experience is also in demand.

We recommend rue21 adopts realtime personalization to generate personalized and relevant customer recommendations using a customer’s demographic or contextual data. Read more about how to deliver realtime personalized customer experiences here.

We hope rue21 takes our CRM improvement tips and gives customers the realtime 1:1 experience they deserve.