Take-Aways from this great event include solution examples for Personalization and Customer Loyalty
eTail Boston 2024 took place August 12-15 at Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston. The event was well attended and packed with thought-provoking content that frankly blew the minds of the Wise Marketer team in attendance. It was a refreshing opportunity to venture beyond the "loyalty echo chamber" that too often characterizes some core events in our space.
The attendees at eTail Boston were fresh and bright. They attacked many of the same topics that interest loyalty marketers, just approaching them from a more natively digital angle. Presenters provided examples that shed light on subjects ranging across Zero-Party Data, Personalization, Community building, and—yes—customer Loyalty.
Here's a sample of highlights that will give you an idea of what you missed if you weren't there:
Juliet Scott-Croxford, President of North America, Brompton Bicycle shared the growth story at the UK bike retailer known for its unique folding bike. She caught our attention when she stated that one hour of cycling was so powerful that it was equivalent to 15 hours of meditation. We need to more fully research that one, but as she talked about how the community of devoted cyclists Brompton has built led to participation and referral, we noted these strong proof points:
- Community members spend 43% more than less engaged customers
- 48% of Community members have referred friends
Brompton leverages open-source tools like Meetup to organize social gatherings and bike rides among its community members.
Emi Witt, Global VP Marketing, Optimizely and Muqtadaa Miandara, Sr. Optimization Specialist, Upbound Group shared their experiences in pursuing true digital optimization at Upbound through organizational wide collaboration, personalization-based testing, and robust revenue attribution.
Upbound Group is the parent company of Rent-A-Center and Acima Leasing. Working with Optimizely, Upbound stood up an experimentation program to determine the strategies and campaigns that would encourage positive customer behaviors and unlock new sources of revenue. In the study they highlighted, their work returned a “Conclusive rate” of 31% and a “Win rate” of 16%, opening up massive runway to put effective offers in front of rental customers.
This culture of experimentation muted any risk of decision making based on HIPPO (highest paid person's opinion), mapping outcomes to a customer journey pattern of "visit, shop, transact, retain". Unbound did not allow encouragement of any "dark patterns" in customer behavior and shared that a machine learning fueled set of product recommendations resulted in a 189% CTR increase.
Muqtadaa shared that in his opinion "any test with an audience segmentation is a movement towards personalization" and postured that brands need to challenge themselves to determine which metrics are the most indicative and reliable. Possible measures of success that he mentioned included Customer Satisfaction, Voice of Customer, NPS, Conversion. The biggest challenge to all retailers was said to be defining revenue attribution in such a way that the C-Suite can gain confidence in marketing efforts.
Dana Mattioli has been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal since 2006 and held one of the WSJ’s highest profile beats covering mergers & acquisitions for 6 years. She released her new book "The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power" earlier in 2024. Interestingly, you can buy that book through this Amazon link (not affiliate).
Mattioli made herself available for a book signing after her talk, and we are just digging into the book ourselves. Based on what she shared in her main-stage interview, we recommend adding this to your reading list. As she said, "By 2019, every CEO in America was worried about Amazon," and advisedly so, as founder Jeff Bezos was known to have stated to a group of retailers that "your margin is my opportunity."
The book closely examines the impact Amazon and its Prime program have had on all forms of retail. With 60% of all Amazon sales coming from 3rd party sellers and Amazon commissions rising from 19% to 45% over the years, she asserted that Amazon policies have not only put pressure on retailers but have led to higher prices for consumers.
A keynote group discussion covered Mastering the Art of Customer Engagement and ROI. The topic was focused on transforming your First- and Zero-Party data strategy for best results. Panelist Max Satter, Founder Unveild predicted that Google will continue moving towards the retirement of Cookies and that in the future, accepting cookies will be a default option for consumers, with only about 10% choosing to opt-in.
Hydrow founder Bruce Smith commented that every company must have "good and actionable data" to succeed and that adherence to data management practices was a big key to success. Panelists agreed that the proprietary data held by each brand is a brand's most powerful and unique competitive differentiator. Phillip Jackson compared the potential power of ZPD to the impact of insider trading - if insider training were legal of course.
With the cost of creating content "trending towards zero", the ability to trial an unlimited volume of messages to consumers based on their personal data is bringing "personalization at scale" into focus. The group agreed that understanding customer intent can best be accomplished with ZPD.
Our Managing Editor, Bill Hanifin, had the opportunity to host Bruce Smith, founder of rowing machine retailer Hydrow, in a Fireside Chat. Bruce launched Hydrow in 2018 and the company grew quickly to serve hundreds of thousands of customers by 2023. Bruce shared his "founder's story" and talked about the journey to date including how the company successfully navigated the pandemic related boom/bust cycle that plagued other connected fitness companies, notably Peloton. Bruce talked about how the company balances its investment in acquisition and retention and, shared important insights into how they keep their enormous community of rowing fanatics engaged and active.
Anna Esrov, VP Customer Experience & Loyalty, Boll & Branch talked about their mission to create customer loyalty outside of traditional approaches, eschewing discount driven rewards programs. The eTailer is creating loyalty through a hospitality lens, doing "live listening" into customer service interactions and other tactics intended to "elevate ordinary transactions into unforgettable experiences through human-to-human connections".
Anna shared that the omnichannel customer is 3x more valuable than a single channel customer and said they represent 3x in AOV, 5% higher referral rate, and (30%) higher purchase frequency in 30-day cycles.
One other highlight worth including was a panel focused on TikTok marketing. Acknowledging that TikTok is a unique social platform and that only certain content made by certain creators will succeed, the panel of Julia Waldrow, Modern Retail, Krysta Lewis, Cakes, and Melissa Yeung, Duolingo talked about how "creative leads growth" and that constant ideation and iteration was core to planning new content creation.
One interesting comment (among a vibrant session) was that strong TikTok content translates well to use on Meta and that YouTube shorts and IG Reels were nearly as powerful in producing results and conversions as TikTok content. For that reason, panelists confidently answered the question about the impact of a possible TikTok ban by US regulators, saying they were fully prepared to shift their existing content creation methods to these alternate channels to maintain their momentum.
There were many more sessions equally informational and powerful, but we couldn't attend them all. We walked away with a notebook full of ideas, examples and proof metrics that translate well from e-commerce to customer loyalty. This is an event that you should strongly consider attending next year. But don't wait for Boston in 2025, the next eTail is February 24-27, 2025, in Palm Springs, CA.
