Retail businesses are constantly seeking to drive growth among myriad challenging conditions: from the competitiveness of the market, the saturation of advertising and marketing spaces, and even customers’ economic concerns, all pose significant challenges for retail businesses that are trying to grow, or even just maintain. Thus, even small retail businesses must be eager adopters of the latest technology in order to stay ahead of the game. This is why, for many retail businesses, 2025 has been the year of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, driving innovation, creativity, efficiency, and success, particularly in their marketing efforts.

In fact, 70% of retail executives aimed to have AI capabilities in place by the end of 2025 in order to help personalize customer experiences– so how are small businesses in the retail sector echoing that call? How are they implementing these critical technologies in their marketing strategies, and what sort of results are they seeing?

Automating outreach

While relationships are at the heart of any retail business’s success, every SMB owner or marketer will tell you that the larger their audience becomes, the harder it is to maintain those relationships. Limited time and budget can make managing those connections at scale seem impossible, but this is where many retail SMBs are implementing automation to fill the gap.

Brad McInerney, Marketing Director for Ontario-based Wellington Brewery, shares his view of building relationships at scale with email marketing automation. “It’s interesting to see how things have changed, but they’ve also stayed similar because underpinning that is the idea of building a community around your brand and really treating your customers in a way that could build a much deeper relationship with them.” To meet that challenge, Brad and the Wellington team employed multiple email automations integrated with their ecommerce platform in order to help streamline and personalize their communications. One such automation this integrated approach enabled was their automated abandoned cart email, which has resulted in more than $36,000 in additional revenue for the brewery.

Other automations, like scheduled social media posts, automated welcome emails, drip campaigns, and automated SMS text messages, are all designed to help businesses save time and build those relationships, even if they aren’t sitting in front of their computers or phones right at that second.

McInerney sums up the benefit to his business succinctly: “Now we spend a lot less time for a lot more impact.”

Using AI to save time and serve fresh content

AI is transforming retail marketing all the way from customer-facing touches like personalized customer experiences and chatbots to behind-the-scenes capabilities like AI-powered analytics and insights platforms. On Main Street at the small business level, retail businesses are benefitting from these tools and technologies, as well, letting AI help augment their entrepreneurial skillset with marketing, content creation, and data insights.

Making time

Boston-based Sky Candle Co. co-owner Albert Feldman knows the value of visual platforms like Instagram, but when it comes to getting the word out verbally, he and his team lean on email. But as Albert explains, finding the time can be tough… or it was before AI.

“Finding the time to sit down and send an email is really difficult to come by. One of the things we have loved about Constant Contact is how intuitive it is to use. Literally within 30 seconds, I could send an email. The last time we were doing a big sale on puzzles, I just logged on, used the AI feature, said ‘write email sale puzzle’ and generated something. Then I changed a few images and a few lines and sent it out to our customer base.”

Crafting clarity

But saving time isn’t all that an AI content generator can do, and retailers are finding that it can help clarify or diversify their messaging, as well. Retailers are tasked with finding new and engaging ways to position their products and offerings to customers, another area where AI excels.

Lunya, a London-based restaurant with a small retail deli, has seen success from using AI to clarify their messaging. “It’s interesting because when you’ve written something, sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees,” says Lunya owner Peter Kinsella. “It’s interesting what AI options focus on really well."

Tying it all together

The inclusion of AI and automation in retail businesses’ marketing strategies may have its roots in single channels, like email, SMS, or social media, but a trend that is on the rise with businesses across industries, retail included, uses AI and automation to create full-scale, multichannel campaigns.

Digital marketing tools like Constant Contact are launching and evolving the ability to craft and automate campaigns with a few simple inputs from small businesses; the campaign topic, tone, and goal are enough to give an AI-powered tool what it needs to return a fully written campaign that includes email, SMS, social media, and even virtual events tailored to the SMB and its unique needs.

Regardless of whether you’re ready to take the plunge or trying to start small, however, the truth is clear: retail businesses must embrace AI and automation in order to stay relevant, save time, and achieve success.

Running a multi-location retail business? Learn how Constant Contact’s tools help retail businesses achieve their marketing goals here.