Retail marketing has a data problem. Campaigns live in one system, transactions in another, loyalty data in a third—leaving retailers with fragmented insights and fuzzy ROI. At NRF 2026: Retail’s BIG Show, Celerant Technology is positioning itself as the antidote.

The retail commerce platform provider will showcase an expanded Customer Engagement Suite (CES), a tightly integrated marketing hub designed to let retailers manage campaigns, messaging, and automation from a single interface—powered directly by real in-store and online sales data.

The pitch is straightforward but increasingly urgent: stop stitching together marketing tools, and start running engagement from the same system that runs the business.

Marketing Meets the Core Retail Engine

Unlike standalone marketing platforms that rely on APIs and periodic data syncing, Celerant’s Customer Engagement Suite is built directly into its core commerce platform. That means email, SMS, live chat, social media management, online reviews, and customer communications all draw from a single, centralized retail database.

Every campaign is tied to actual transactions—point of sale, eCommerce, mobile apps, loyalty programs, and customer profiles—without manual exports or reconciliation.

“Retailers don’t need more marketing tools; they need one connected system,” said Michele Salerno, Celerant’s Chief Growth Officer. “CES becomes the central command center for marketing, powered by the same data that runs the business both in-store and online.”

It’s a clear response to a broader industry shift: retailers are under pressure to personalize outreach, prove ROI, and coordinate experiences across physical and digital channels—all while dealing with tighter budgets and leaner teams.

From Behavior-Based Campaigns to Built-In Automation

At the heart of CES is behavior-driven marketing. Retailers can build campaigns based on what customers actually do—what they buy, browse, return, or ignore—rather than relying on static lists or third-party data pipelines.

Because CES is natively connected to the product catalog, marketers can pull SKUs, images, and inventory data directly into campaigns, reducing friction between merchandising and marketing teams. Automation rules ensure messages are timely and relevant, triggered by real shopping activity instead of guesswork.

The benefit isn’t just personalization—it’s operational simplicity. By collapsing marketing and commerce into one system, retailers gain cleaner data, faster execution, and fewer points of failure as campaigns scale.

Closing the Online-to-Offline Gap With Geo-Fencing

Celerant is also using NRF to spotlight its geo-fencing capabilities, which push CES beyond digital channels and into physical retail environments.

Through branded mobile apps, retailers can trigger automated push notifications when customers enter predefined geographic zones near stores or key locations. The goal: influence purchasing decisions at the exact moment customers are close enough to act.

Once configured, these proximity-based campaigns run continuously, driving foot traffic and incremental sales without daily intervention from store teams. In an era where physical retail must justify every visit, location-aware engagement is becoming less of a novelty and more of a necessity.

Why This Matters Now

Celerant’s expanded CES lands at a time when retailers are rethinking their MarTech stacks. Best-of-breed tools once promised flexibility, but often delivered data silos, rising costs, and limited visibility into performance.

The alternative—unified commerce platforms with embedded marketing—is gaining traction. By tying engagement directly to transactions, platforms like Celerant aim to give retailers something many still lack: a single source of truth for customer behavior and campaign impact.

Competitors across the retail tech landscape are moving in a similar direction, but Celerant is leaning heavily on its single-database architecture as a differentiator—especially for mid-market and specialty retailers that don’t want enterprise-level complexity.

See It in Action at NRF 2026

Celerant will demo the Customer Engagement Suite at booth #4232, positioning it as a core pillar of its broader all-in-one retail platform. That platform already spans point of sale, inventory, eCommerce, mobile apps, fulfillment—and now centralized marketing.

For NRF attendees, the message is clear: the future of retail marketing isn’t another dashboard. It’s fewer systems, tighter data, and marketing that’s inseparable from how—and where—customers actually buy.

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