5 trends reshaping retail marketing in 2025

The retail landscape is experiencing a seismic shift. At this year’s NRF Big Show and our recent Cordial Connect event in New York, I had the opportunity to engage with more than 50 retail innovators from brands like Levi’s, Boot Barn, PacSun, and Maybelline. These conversations, combined with insights shared in our recent webinar, revealed compelling patterns about where retail is headed.

Let’s dive into the 5 key trends that are transforming retail marketing in 2025.

1. Growth patterns are breaking down

Growth at all costs is long gone as profitability takes center stage. Sucharita Kodali shared at Cordial Connect that 40% of retailers are experiencing negative growth as winners and losers have become more pronounced over the holiday season. This bifurcation presents an opportunity: the other 60% of retailers are finding innovative ways to drive profitable growth while meeting increasingly higher consumer expectations.

The winning strategy? These successful retailers recognize that customer acquisition costs have skyrocketed. With Temu and Shein buying up a disproportionate amount of Facebook’s ad inventory and election year dynamics driving up costs, smart brands are focusing on harnessing the power of their loyal shoppers to create a more seamless and personalized shopping experience. They’re treating customers who willingly share information (both implicitly and explicitly) as true partners and, in turn, increasing lifetime value.

2. Unified commerce is transforming the shopping experience

At NRF’s Digital Council meeting, which gathered more than 70 digital executives, the conversation consistently returned to unified commerce. But this isn’t just about connecting channels – it’s about fundamentally rethinking the customer journey.

Research shows that consumers typically have 9 different touchpoints in any given shopping journey, spanning digital and physical spaces, both on and off a retailer’s property. The key to success isn’t just in mapping these touchpoints, but in breaking down friction between them.

Leading retailers are focusing not just on checkout efficiency, but on revolutionizing the “check-in” process as customers enter the store. Similar to a hotel experience, they empower store associates with access to previous marketing, service, and loyalty interactions (and data) via handhelds to engage customers on the sales floor.

3. Marketing moves beyond guesswork with AI-driven decisions

The era of marketing guesswork is ending. As one retail executive at Commerce Next pointed out, we can no longer afford to have channel-specific strategies when customer behavior is channel-agnostic. With email click-through rates declining 46% over the last decade, retailers must engage consumers where and when they prefer – often on their phones – to optimize marketing spend and increase loyalty.

The solution lies in moving beyond traditional segmentation to true 1:1 personalization. This isn’t just about using AI for efficiency – it’s about using it to understand and act on customer signals in real-time. Leading retailers are using AI to create closed-loop communication processes, learning from what works and what doesn’t to continuously improve their marketing effectiveness.

4. Customer lifetime value overtakes traditional metrics

While metrics like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) remain important, they’re no longer sufficient on their own. The focus is shifting to Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) as the north star metric.

Take Levi’s, for example. At Cordial Connect, their CDO, Jason, Gowan, shared how analyzing CLTV revealed surprising insights: their female customers show higher purchase frequency and a higher share of full-price selling, despite the brand’s historical focus on men’s denim bottoms. This kind of insight only becomes visible when you look beyond traditional metrics focused on channels to understand customer value and profitability.

5. Emotional connections become the competitive edge

In an age of digital efficiency, creating emotional connections remains both a challenge and an opportunity. At Cordial Connect, Levi’s shared a powerful insight: in ten years of weekly customer feedback meetings, only once did a customer write about their website. Every other piece of feedback focused on emotional moments and human interactions.

This underscores a crucial point: AI should enable, not replace, human connections. The most successful retailers are using AI to humanize digital experiences, whether through personalized communications or by empowering store associates with the right information at the right time.

Looking ahead

These trends point to a clear future: success in retail will belong to those who can combine technological innovation with human understanding. It’s no longer about choosing between efficiency and experience – it’s about adopting intelligent and intuitive technology to deliver both.

The retailers seeing prof growth are adopting AI not just for automation, but to create more meaningful, personalized, and profitable customer relationships.

Want to learn more about how your organization can adapt to these trends? Take our 9-question AI assessment to identify your biggest opportunities for eliminating marketing guesswork.