NEW YORK ? A Macy?s executive at the Mcommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2015 discussed how the retailer?s marketing and technology departments work closely together, enabling it to bring innovations such as visual search to market while making the organization more comfortable with testing new solutions that may not be perfect yet. 

During the presentation, ?Macy?s: Focusing on Advances in Social Marketing and Technology through the Omnichannel Lens,? the executive also pointed to the importance of mobile in the convergence of the digital experience and the physical store. Examples include a new feature in the Macy?s shopping application enabling users to send a product home while in the store and the testing of different mobile devices to support store associates. 

?I think that marketing and technology are converging,? said Martine Reardon, chief marketing officer at Macy?s. ?They are so reliant on each other because we are living in such a digital world. The consumer is demanding that. 

?When you want to try new things, it is hard to do in a company as big as we are,? she said. ?We are getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

?There has to be a germ of an idea and we will see what happens. It doesn?t have to be perfect.? 

Mcommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2015 was organized by Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily. 

Media agnostic
Macy?s has been focused on providing an omnichannel experience for several years, with mobile integral to that strategy. In recognition of Ms. Reardon?s significant contributions in evangelizing mobile within the retail industry and at forums nationwide, she was inducted into the Mobile Hall of Fame at yesterday?s event (see story). 

In order to insure that Macy?s is always supporting the digital, mobile and physical experiences, it never thinks about one media versus another. 

One important way the omnichannel strategy has evolved is how Macy?s is thinking mobile first when designing digital programs whereas four years ago, the retailer was designing with desktop in mind. Taking a mobile first approach makes sense because 50 percent of traffic now comes from mobile. 

In-store assistance
In the store environment, Macy?s is equipping store associates with mobile devices so that they are as informed as consumers, who are increasingly using their phones while shopping in store. 

Macy?s is testing a variety of different devices, including the iPod touch.

When the retailer embarked on renovating its flagship Herald Square store in New York, one of the first projects was to build one of the largest shoe floors in the country. Because the floor is so large, the retailer wanted to make sure the associates are always on the floor instead of in the stockroom looking for shoes. To accomplish this, Macy?s equipped associates with iPod touch devices that communicate with the stockroom to inform employees there about what size shoe to search for. This insures that the associate on the floor never leaves the consumer. 

Macy?s is also experimenting with tablets in the jewelry departments in stores around the country to present shoppers with a wider assortment than what they can find in the store. The tablet makes sense here because it provides a much richer experience than a smaller device. 

Personal assistant
The Macy?s shopping app is also used to help in-store shoppers. For example, shoppers can use the app to check prices instead of having to find the price-checker kiosks that are placed around the stores. By scanning a bar code on an item using their phone, shoppers can access information about what sizes and colors are available, view customer reviews as well as check the price. 

The newest capabilities for in-store shoppers include the ability to ship an item home if they do not want to take it with them. 

The idea is to make the phone a personal assistant for shoppers. 

Omnichannel transformation
Ms. Reardon also addressed the transformation the organization had to go through in order to provide an omnichannel experience with a mobile focus. 

Until the beginning of 2015, Macys.com and the store business were two separate entities. 

However, the retailer recognized three years ago the need to be omnichannel or else risk confusing consumers. It also realized that the two organizations should and could work together. 

As a result, when it moved to blend the two organizations in January, the process was easier than it might have been if this groundwork had not been done. 

Making social shoppable
Four years ago, Macy?s partnered with Shopkick to use mobile as a method of communication and to reward customers for walking into stores. Going forward, the retailer is trying to leverage geotargeting and geolocation to push notifications that are very relevant to consumers. For example, if Macy?s has a special offer from a brand it knows a customer likes, the retailer can send the customer a notification when he or she is nearby a store. 

Macy?s leverages social media for when it is thinking about keeping the brand top of mind more so than for urgent events. The challenge is making the experience shoppable. 

The retailer tries to be on every social channel that it possibly can, but uses each for a very specific reason, with different reasons assigned to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and others. Some of the stronger social channels for clicking back to the Macy?s site include Pinterest and Facebook. 

Beyond making social transactional, another challenge in social right now is the metrics, per Ms. Reardon. However, she is worried about social becoming more about another venue to stick an ad in and not about conversations as the metrics improve. 

Roadmap for the future
One example of how Macy?s is getting more experimental is visual search, which was an idea that came out of the retailer?s technology office in San Francisco. The idea built from Macy?s previous use of QR codes in its print catalogs, enabling mobile shoppers to scan a QR code to find out more information about an item. 

While the strategy worked well, it was not available in the Macy?s app, so it was not sending traffic into the app. 

Visual search was launched in beta in the app store. Macy?s did not market the offering but let people play with it and provide feedback. Then it was refined and put in the Macy?s app last fall. 

Early results show that consumers are using visual search to photograph items they notice on others while walking down the street to find a similar item at Macy?s. 

Others are using it to search items in the store. 

Macy?s is also using beacons in all of its stores, with placement in a couple of departments the retailer knows shoppers are passionate about. 

The beacons help Macy?s begin to address learning more about what shoppers are doing when they are in a store. 

For shoppers who opt in to receiving beacon messages, Macy?s is looking to send an offer to someone who picked up an item in one department, then moved onto another, as a way to bring that shopper back and maybe make a purchase. 

?If we can help the consumer more while she is in the store browsing, it is definitely a very important part of what is on our roadmap for the future,? Ms. Reardon said. 

Final Take
Martine Reardon is chief marketing officer at Macy's