With over 7,000 stores globally, Luxottica is the world's leading eyewear company. One key to the company's success is the ability to analyze and understand their customers' purchasing behaviors and use that knowledge to deploy the best engagement strategies.

According to Ryan McGuire, a CRM leader at Luxottica, his team in particular is focused on how to use CRM data to help transform Luxottica into a customer-centric organization. McGuire stated that there is "a ton of data out there that can link to customers that goes beyond their purchase" and that they are "just scratching the surface of where [they] can go." Luxottica recognizes the need to constantly innovate how they connect with and learn from consumers.

One of the ways they're doing this is through combining their email efforts with the power of advertising. Luxottica's CRM has grown in marketing spend over the past few years and the company had previously been looking for a way to truly activate their first party data to engage customers and drive sales. The company has been able to accomplish this through a recent series of tests using Advertising Studio. By creating audiences, Luxottica is using their first-party data to create audiences on Facebook and Twitter to activate across their advertising campaigns. Relevancy and targeting are key to Luxottica because not only are they competing against small business optical shops, but also big players such as Wal-Mart and Costco. Their main goals are to acquire new customers and also engage inactive email subscribers.

During Connections 2016, Gabe Joynt, Director of Product Marketing at Salesforce, had the opportunity to discuss Luxottica's digital marketing strategy with McGuire. Joynt suggested during the session that the "least sexy area of marketing is attempting to reawaken the inactive email subscriber -- yet the potential is huge." However, by combining email and advertising, Salesforce and customer tests have shown a $13:1 ROI amongst inactive subscribers. Joynt went on to say that combining e-mail and advertising has seen great results across the board. In tests, marketers have reached 119% more of their email list and there reached subscribers were 22% more likely to purchase.

McGuire noted that their biggest hurdle with combining their email and advertising is their partnering of internal groups. For example, the Luxottica e-mail team and the Luxottica advertising activation team need to be talking to each other to combine their marketing efforts more seamlessly. He said that the company needs to "break down silos and work with those that are knowledgeable in the display space, the social space to better work together." This seems to be a common theme across customers, especially as the blend of marketing and advertising becomes more commonplace.

According to McGuire, last year was a "step on the gas" year for how Luxottica uses Salesforce. He said that through his tenure at the company, the business has grown its e-mail channel, entered into the social marketplace, and started mobile campaigns. The company is looking forward to truly using Salesforce to its max potential to continue reaching and engaging with their customers and future prospects.

To learn more about the exciting things customers are doing with Advertising Studio today, check out our Capital One customer story video.