Beatrice Ellefsen – Dotdigital

The real benefits of implementing a loyalty program

Beatrice Ellefsen — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One such success story is our client Cellar One, an exclusive invitation-only online store for Australia’s second-largest wine company, Accolade Wines. The brand redefined its customer engagement by integrating Dotdigital’s recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) value model tool. The aim was to identify and target top-tier buyers who were not part of the C1VIP club and invite them to join by implementing an advanced segmentation process. Here is their story.

Automated loyalty campaigns

Thriving on customer retention and rewarding customer loyalty, the brand created the C1VIP club to reward the most loyal and valuable customers with special offers and giving them access to highly exclusive wines. In June 2021, Cellar One launched the C1VIP invitation program inviting loyal customers to join the club. The invitation was a way to let them know that they have achieved elite status with the brand and make them feel special.

The program was a huge success, achieving a 72% click-to-open rate and saw an increase of 30% to the high-value customers within the C1VIP club. It further witnessed a 58% increase in average customer spending, with a large segment of the targeted customers purchasing wines featured only in the VIP area and on sale.

Advanced segmentation and personalization

The RFM deployment helped Cellar One analyze the data and segment customers into different personas, using spending behavior as a crucial parameter. With Dotdigital’s RFM tool, Cellar One could segment their customers and identify the frequent spenders who are likely to spend again, inviting them to join the exclusive VIP club.

The C1VIP invitation program has been a huge success, yielding great results. The brand used Dotdigital marketing automation capabilities to target existing and new C1VIP customers through tailored emails that reflected their specific interests with an exclusive 20% discount. The exceptional results achieved from this campaign were the first of their kind and a clear example of the effectiveness of the loyalty programs.

Stellar customer engagement

The campaign drove excellent customer engagement, recording an 80% conversion rate. While several customers added an extra item to the cart, others that didn’t shop from the VIP sale browsed through to the main website and picked something else. The brand is looking forward to using more of Dotdigital’s email marketing tools, including the re-targeting functionality for optimized campaigns in the coming months.

Need more inspiration to take your marketing journey to the next level? Check out some of our other awesome client success stories here.

8 tips for making sustainable travel choices

Beatrice Ellefsen — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Folks – I forgot to pack my shampoo bar. This felt like such a small thing at the time… But when I arrived at the hotel and saw all those miniature shampoo and conditioner bottles lined up ready for me, it hit me: my forgetfulness was going to lead directly to more landfill waste. On that trip I spent time thinking about what other sustainable choices we can make to reduce our footprint as travel becomes an option again. When I got home, I reached out to Anna, Sustainability Strategist and co-founder of The Purpose Agents. Together we came up with the below checklist. We understand that not all of this is going to be possible 100% of the time. But we hope this helps you identify areas where you can make a conscious choice to take more sustainable action.

Review your travel needs

First, Anna suggested reviewing whether that trip is necessary before committing to it. She explains: “Unfortunately in Australia business trips between major cities almost always involve taking a flight. The carbon footprint of one short return economy class flight from Sydney to Brisbane is 0.5 tons of CO2e, a quarter of the monthly carbon footprint of the average Australian. If the pandemic has proven one thing, it’s just how much is possible via Zoom! Doing meetings digitally is not only giving the environment a breather, but also saves valuable time!” Work out your carbon footprint here.

Offset your time in the air

If it’s important for you to make the trip and hop on a plane, please look into carbon offsetting your air travel. Many airlines will offer an attractively cheap offset as part of your ticket price. But rather than buying those, Anna recommends offsetting all flights taken by staff as part of a company-wide carbon offset at the end of the year and buying some quality certified carbon credits (e.g., Gold Standard) instead. “When doing so, this will ensure the carbon footprint is fully covered and the team can even choose which projects the company should support – yay!” Check out how to offset more than your carbon footprint, here.

Bring your toiletries

Toiletries – what kick-started this all for me. Where possible, do bring your own for overnight stays. You’ve likely already got your toothbrush and toothpaste, so I’d suggest putting these in a small bag with either a re-fillable travel bottle of your favorite products; or even better, look at solid shampoo and conditioner bars. 5 reasons to ditch to shampoo bottle. These take up less space, have a lower impact on the environment, don’t leak, and are often lighter than their water-filled counterparts. Some hotels are now committed to only providing refillable shampoo and conditioner, rather than the individual packages. But you really can’t rely on this being the case unless you research the chain. Marriot has been doing this for a couple of years now.

Reuse hotel towels

While you’re in the bathroom, look around for a sign that says what they will do with your towels. Many hotels will rewash towels, and sometimes linen, every day, unless you indicate that you’re happy to reuse. A typical room with 4 kg of laundry will require up to 60 liters of water, so take a second to see if you need to do anything to show that you’re happy to reuse.

Get those steps in

On some trips you’re likely to need to take private transport, but do consider your local public transport options. For me, it was easy enough to get from my hotel to the event on foot, and get home from the airport in Sydney on trains, rather than needing to take an entire taxi myself for the 20-minute trip, which can save up to 80% on your carbon emissions.

Don’t forget your keep cup

This one is easy for all types of trip: domestic, international, and local. Bring those reusable keep-cups, water bottles, and masks with you. We all forget things from time to time. But keeping your re-fillable drinks containers close at hand means you’re more likely to be able to save some cups and bottles from landfill. And don’t forget that the masks that airlines hand out (currently mandatory on flights in Aus) also often end up at the dump. If you do find yourself caught out, and need to take a disposable mask, remember to cut/tear those straps before it goes in the trash.

Love your vegetables

I met Anna over a supercharged vegan salad bowl at another local event, where we got chatting about the impact of vegan and vegetarian choices on the environment. So, it was no surprise to me that one of Anna’s key points is to consider are your diet choices, even when on a trip. Did you know that switching to a plant-based diet is one of the best ways to fight climate change? “Correct – a vegetarian diet is generating about half the carbon footprint as a carnivorous one (a vegan one even less!), so opting for the zoodles instead of the steak makes a real difference!”

Sharing is caring

Finally, ask around. There are loads of companies and individuals out there with fantastic tips of their own, and many passionate people looking to drive change from within their own business. Plus, there’s people like Anna, who have made it their job to help businesses on their sustainability journey. At dotdigital, we are proud to have received our ISO14001 certification earlier this year, with the ‘dotgreen’ team at the vanguard of the company’s environmental efforts. Full of passionate people across all teams, they’re eager to learn more and further reduce dotdigital’s impact. So please do get in touch below if you’ve got more tips to add!

Anna Forster is Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Nerd at The Purpose Agents where she helps businesses drive change towards a more sustainable future. You can find her at: www.thepurposeagents.com

How to keep the conversation going post-purchase

Beatrice Ellefsen — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

You’ve made it through Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles’ Day, (maybe even Boxing Day and New Year’s sales by the time you’ve read this) and got yourself a whole lot of new customers – wohoo! With such a huge volume of first-time buyers, it’s no surprise that our customer success team is being asked how best to implement post-purchase programs, even in the middle of sales season. It’s important for any online retailer to make sure that they’ve got a great program to help keep that buyer’s high and get customers coming back for more, and this is a great time of year to test different types of conversation to see what engagers your customers the most. If you’re feeding in your order data, you can track the success of this in the retail dashboard of your dotdigital account, take note of the percentage of single vs repeat customers, and see the value of this conversion by multiplying your unique customers by your average order value…It’s a big number, right?!

Returns

Australia Post’s 2019 report revealed that Consumers buying fashion items are, on average, three times more likely to choose a vendor based on their returns policy, so make sure this is clear on your site for starters. Costume box sends out this brilliant offer to return any item within 100 days of purchase. This helps to take the pressure off the warehouse processing returns at busy times of year, and also increases the value proposition for us as consumers.

Product aftercare

I adore this email from Stuck on you, sent out once you’ve bought your customized Bento box. Not only are they giving you ideas for what to pack inside, they’re also educating consumers on how to snap out the inner lid. This helps reduce customer frustration with the tight-fitting seal, reduces the number of customer service queries on the topic, and makes sure the product is being cleaned properly, helping it last longer.

Social interactions

Costume box helps to educate their audience on how to interact with them on social media. Although it’s old hat to some shoppers, for many of their demographic, it might be their first time tagging a company on Instagram. So, the brand walks you through it, with some gorgeous examples from their recent feed on the upcoming Day of the Dead festival.

Spend-less Shoes knows that a lot of their customers aspire to be social influencers, and so send this out post-purchase to inspire tagging and sharing on Insta, as part of a competition to win a shopping spree. A winning campaign both for Spend-less and for their customers.

Cross-/upsell

New Zealand clothing brand 3 Wise Men’s core offering is “3 for 3 hundy”, so when a customer makes it past checkout with only two items, they make sure to notify the customer, both at checkout and on email, how they can get the third item at the reduced price. This means you never miss out on a good deal!

Reviews

Remedy Kombucha sends out a review email asking customers to rate their favorite flavor, helping the company develop more flavors and refine existing products. No incentive required, so they can ensure the feedback is authentic and not just a lax attempt to win something. Authentic reviews help to encourage both first-time and repeat purchases. Whilst I’m on the site raving about their passionfruit flavor, I’m pretty likely to be putting another slab in my cart at the same time as I reminisce…

Shipping

Finally, don’t let shipping variables affect your post-purchase journeys. Shipping in Australia is a challenge for many retailers, and we often hear customers not wanting to send anything until they can guarantee the parcel has arrived. However, Baxter Blue does a fantastic job of addressing this head on. They check in with the customer, letting them know where they can track their parcel, and also offer some above-and-beyond help. They’ve also added some info on the product you’ve bought, to reduce any post-purchase remorse, highlighting the protection of their glasses against screen glare.

Key takeaways

Your first-time purchasers are a goldmine for future revenue. Make sure you look after them, and don’t just put them back into the BAU emails without saying thank you. Try one or more of the above conversations to make them sticky and turn them into brand advocates.
Sustain that buyer’s high to encourage repeat purchases. Try something new, and track the success of different conversations, using your retail dashboard and/or segmentation.
Choose the conversations which match your brand voice, and product range, and make sure you’ve given your customers a way to continue their conversation with your brand once their product has arrived.

If you’d like to hear more on the topic, you can check out the webinars I’m doing on post-purchase journeys, one with Trustpilot and another with Magento, coming soon to our resources section!