LOYALTY, RETURNS AND PERSONALIZATION Addressing Top Challenges with Email Marketing for Apparel, Footwear and Accessory Companies

GUIDE

2

Fashion retail is highly competitive and fast moving. It’s seasonal and promotion-based. Email marketing empowers fashion brands to not only get their latest styles into the minds, inboxes, and closets of shoppers, but also addresses top challenges unique to the fashion industry.

In this guide, learn how email marketing can help address top challenges faced today in the fashion industry, including growing brand loyalty, reducing return rates and providing hyper-personalized engagements.

READ TIME: 8 MINUTES

Loyalty, Returns and Personalization

3

Providing a hyper-personalized experience allows you to differentiate your brand and truly tailor customer experiences by speaking to their individuality and interests — treating unique customers differently by understanding them based on the information they provide as well as the behavioral data you collect throughout the journey.

Why it’s critical: Today’s shoppers expect personalized experiences from the brands they choose, and if you fail to personalize, you’ll find that you’re losing customers, seeing fewer repeat purchases, and generally missing opportunities for revenue growth.

Product RecommendationsProduct recommendations powered by data can transform any message into a deeply relatable and relevant email. Behavioral data like purchase history, website activity, or geo-location can be used to assist segmentation and serve up product recommendations that appeal to customers and drive repeat purchases. For example, knowing a customer bought a specific skirt, but not a matching top or accessory, allows you to showcase a “complete the look” email as the value prop for the sale.

Product recommendations can be used across your entire email marketing program from day-to-day promotional messages to any automated message you send, such as with cart abandonment or post-purchase messages. These can also extend beyond the inbox to your website, ensuring a seamless, and relevant, customer experience across channels.

43% of purchases are influenced by personalized recommendations or promotions1.

1 Shopify, “The State of the Ecommerce Fashion Industry: Statistics, Trends & Strategy.”

Going Beyond Basic Personalization

4

Capturing PreferencesWhen landing on a company’s online store consumers are often greeted by an email pop-up sign-up asking for their email address and gender. By asking for one more piece of data along with email, you have the ability to immediately customize your messaging to the new subscriber and assist with your segmentation.

With just gender, you have the ability to send more relevant welcome messages featuring products that matter most to them most. If you are not asking for information in your “my account” section or in the welcome series on a preference form, then you need to. The messaging in the entire welcome series could be skewed toward products that appeal the most to customers of that gender, including providing more relevant product recommendations — especially if you combine it with data you gather from browse behavior.

Browse AbandonmentCapture your shoppers’ browse behavior and automatically send personalized messages. Being able to identify what a shopper was interested in allows you to automate relevant messages to reach them immediately after, when they’ve just shown the most interest in the item.

These messages can deliver content to overcome any obstacle to conversion, such as sizing guides, how to choose the right style, or even complimentary or similar products. And these messages tend to be the best performing and most profitable because they’re the right message, delivered at the right time, to the right person.

Fifty percent of shoppers want their personal information used to coordinate a better overall shopping experience2.

2 The E-Tailing Group, “Consistent Personalization Everywhere Consumers Shop.”

Going Beyond Basic Personalization

5

The fashion space has become more competitive, as lower barriers to entry have allowed more brands in. Driving brand loyalty in a fragmented and noisy marketplace is a challenge, but using segmented, hyper-personalized email campaigns allows you to speak to your shoppers on an almost one-to-one level.

Why it’s critical: Brand loyalty can no longer be assumed. It has to be earned. If you don’t focus on developing brand loyalty, you can expect a declining customer base, decrease in revenue, and a loss in the “wow” factor that’s helped build your brand.

Welcome SeriesA welcome email sent after a shopper signs up is an opportunity to introduce your brand and lay the groundwork for an enjoyable and rewarding brand experience. It’s your chance to give new subscribers a focused, positive initial experience that leads to early engagement, conversions, and long-term loyalty.

Share your brand story and what you think will convince shoppers to trust you: styling tips, recommended products, and thoughtful sizing guides. This multi-email series guides shoppers down the path to purchase, gradually building confidence and differentiating you from your competition.

Growing Brand Loyalty

6

Post-purchaseShoppers are never more engaged with your emails than immediately after a purchase — except for maybe the welcome message — so take this opportunity to make them feel confident in their purchase. Demonstrate your product’s versality with style guides and recommended products to complete the look. Follow-up emails with care tips, or commonly asked questions, build the relationship and go beyond making it just about a transaction.

Send an initial “check-in” email asking how they’ve enjoyed your product to reinforce customer service and satisfaction guarantees. It’s an excellent time to encourage user-generated content to foster engagement, so ask them to share photos on social and review your product. Post-purchase emails come in series, so send additional messages promoting loyalty programs and product recommendations based on purchase history.

VIPsSet up VIP segments for frequent purchasers, high-value customers, or customers who engage with social posts and send them different messages that include early access to sales, exclusive VIP-only flash sales, and special in-store-only events.

Make them feel exclusive with behind-the-scenes access into new products or photo shoots, surprise and delight perks, or even allowing VIPs to provide input into new products. It’s all about finding ways to make loyal customers feel valued.

Growing BrandLoyalty

7

Eighty-two percent of customers do not return to make another purchase if an online store has a difficult returns3.

3 Return Logic, “Shopify Returns: 7 Best Practices To Reduce Your Return Rate.”

Customer returns in Fashion can make or break your business. Mitigating returns will help increase your profitability. Provide content, such as size charts, product reviews and personalized product recommendations in automated welcome, cart and browser abandonment messages to help shoppers make an informed purchase.

Why it’s critical: If you do nothing, you’ll find increases in bounce rates from your site, lower repeat purchases, and require higher costs that eat into your profits.

Reducing Return Rates

8

Transactional MessagesOrder confirmation messages are often the first place customers look to follow up on a purchase, so make your brand is reachable by clearly including customer service information in the message. Engagement is often highest with these messages, so don’t waste the opportunity. Include product recommendations and up- and cross-sells like the “complete the look” emails. The general rule of thumb for transactional messages is that 20% of the content can be promotional — the main content should be transactional in nature.

Sizing Guides and ContentSharing comprehensive sizing content — both before and after the purchase — can mitigate returns, especially for new shoppers. Go beyond the standard chart to inspire confidence: how-to videos for measurement and fit, more in-depth sizing guides, and explaining the different styles/brands offered (think skinny vs. slim-fit jeans).

Including sizing information in your browse and cart abandonment messages may help shoppers feel comfortable making purchases, and you can inform them when preferred sizes are about to sell out. This is also a chance to show them product recommendations that complete the look and share social proof.

Reducing ReturnRates

9

Social Media and User-Generated ContentSocial proof can help increase brand loyalty by building a community of customers, but incorporating it into emails can potentially turn returns into exchanges. Assuming that the purchase journey so far has been satisfactory, including positive reviews and social proof reinforces confidence in the original purchase.

The value of including social proof throughout the lifecycle culminates in the exchange process: Rather than assuming that the issue is with your brand or the product, the shopper has repeatedly been assured that their initial purchase decision was a sound one.

GeolocationIf you offer in-store returns, you can use geolocation to encourage those to reduce return shipping costs and allow shoppers to find replacement items while in-store. This can mitigate the cost of returns and also help solve the problem of continued shopping for the right size: Customers can find an alternate size while in-store and fulfill their desire for product immediacy.

We also know the majority of customers will make unplanned purchases when in-store, so offer a discount to come into the store where the customers can benefit from personal interactions with staff.

Reducing ReturnRates

10

For apparel, footwear, and accessory retailers, email marketing can be a powerful tool for driving sales and creating awareness. But email marketing done right goes well beyond sending promotions and new product alerts.

With email, you can use the data you have to offer tailored, outstanding customer experiences at the right stage in their journey to delight and cultivate loyalty. Differentiate yourself from competitors with a customer-focused approach while also taking steps to address the key challenges of the industry.

Delight Shoppers While Addressing Challenges

11© Oracle | Terms of Use and Privacy

Bronto Marketing Platform helps organizations of all sizes grow revenue, save time and optimize marketing resources. By delivering powerful and flexible email marketing solutions that work seamlessly with multiple ecommerce platforms, the Bronto Marketing Platform enables brands to maximize the value of customer data and deliver irresistible customer experiences. Bronto solutions incorporate best practices from 16 years of email marketing success and are used by the world’s top brands, including Rebecca Minkoff, Lucky Brand, Theory, Brooks Running and Christopher & Banks.

bronto.com