Retailers are spending millions on every promotional campaigns—new season launches, holiday discounts, festival offers. The creative is polished, the media plan is solid, and HQ feels confident about the buzz.
And yet, at the end of season they see only 50% of the ROI that could have been. From what I’ve seen across retailers, the culprit usually isn’t the campaign itself—it’s the execution at the store level.
We have to understand that promotions only work if every store team delivers them exactly as intended. The window display, the signage, the shelf talkers, the in-store offers—all need to land right, every time. And that depends on one backbone: communication.
Where most retailers are going wrong ❗:
If you’re sending campaign instructions to your store teams through chat groups, long email threads, or SharePoint links, sorry to break it to you—that’s not enough. Here’s why:
1) Information overload - Working with 200+ retailers, we’ve seen these communication channels to be highly ineffective. Store managers get bombarded with instructions from different teams that they end up doing just 1/4th the tasks.
2) No space for clarity. Most of the times, the store staff has follow-up questions on how/why of promotional campaigns. If you do not give them an accessible space with HQ where they can freely clear the doubts, the store execution will not match the intended HQ vision.
What is actually working for smart retailers ✅ :
We see a clear shift in retailers realising that they have to spend equal time & effort on communicating with their store staff as they do on building campaigns. Because at the end of the day, store teams are the ones realising your vision on the shop floor. What has been working for them so far →
a) Send clear, role-based instructions. Break down responsibilities by role and priority so stores know exactly who does what.
b) Follow up with proof. Always ask for photos or reports to confirm execution—not just “we got the message.” (VERY IMPORTANT)
c) Use dedicated retail task management software. Chat groups, sharepoint, emails will not do the job. Retail task management software gives retail teams a single dashboard to send communication, track execution, and see store-level compliance to give 100% visibility and control.
Promotions don’t fail in the marketing deck—they fail on the shop floor. If you’re serious about getting full ROI, spend as much effort on how you communicate as on what you create.