Preference-Driven Personalization; What Men’s Wearhouse Can Teach Us

The Challenge: Many companies are still not using preference based personalization. This compromises relevance and sacrifices engagement and potential sales.

40% of consumers say they prefer buying from retailers that cater to their preferences. According to research firm The E-tailing Group, respondents said they:

» Find it valuable if the retailer offers product recommendations tailored to their personal tastes and shopping histories.
» Purchase more often when retailers send e-mails that are personalized based on a shopper's past interactions.

One retailer who has embraced preference based personalization is Men's Wearhouse. With more than 1,100 stores nationwide, Men’s Wearhouse prides itself on providing personalized service to all of its customers. “Customer satisfaction is our highest priority, across all of our channels,” said Susan Neal, EVP, E-Business, Marketing and Digital Technology. “Just as our in-store tailors alter garments to perfectly fit each customer, we plan to deliver personalized emails individually tailored to each recipient."

• Men’s Wearhouse captures data from every customer touch point, mines behavioral signals using advanced predictive algorithms and overlays deep retail domain knowledge.

• They are extending their personalized experience to email as well.

• The company has in-store wardrobe consultants to help its customers. This service continues the online experience which offers a website for its full offerings as well as a separate website just for tuxedos by type of occasion. The Tux Sites features a dedicated Wedding Planner that can be contacted online or via an iPhone app.

• Overall Men’s Wearhouse is an example of a forward-looking retailer that understands the importance of delivering clients a consistent, personalized experience.

According to our firm’s VoC research on the Preference driven Reciprocity of Value Equation, consumers are willing to share personal preference information with trusted brands in exchange for “reciprocity of value” — in other words, receiving highly targeted and relevant offers and communications based on their individual preferences. This represents a powerful opportunity for marketers to transform how they engage with customers and prospects.

3 Research-based Takeaways

1. 59% of shoppers said that it is easier to find what they’re looking for when retailers personalize the shopping experience. So make it easy for your customers to find and buy what you have to sell.

2. 40% of consumers said they buy more from retailers that personalize shopping across all channels. So make sure your personalization experience extends to every aspect of your customer experience and interactions.

3. Retailers that remember the shopping behavior of individual consumers and use it to personalize future experiences are being rewarded — consumers are more engaged and purchase more. So be sure you have in place accurate and easily updated CRM practices and technology.

How Viral Emails Can Drive More Sales than Promotional Emails

The Challenge: Viral emails can often generate greater response and revenue than sales-focused emails. Following are examples and tips for sending engaging/interactive emails that do not contain sales pitches or feature products.

Airbnb Case Study

The holidays are an important time for the travel company Airbnb. They recognized that holiday greeting emails are very common and devised a unique campaign. They developed a way not just to send a holiday message, but an interactive campaign that encouraged customers to send a thank you note to travel hosts that assisted Airbnb’s travelers during the year. The email was sent with the purpose of getting the audience to engage with one another, not to drive revenue.

Response and engagement rates were very strong:

• 52.3% open rate — up from the previous average of 27% to 30% on regular marketing emails.

• 26.5% click through rate — increase over the 8% to 12% on regular marketing emails.

• The subscribers who used the tool sent an average of 7.5 emails.

• Airbnb increased sales with 600 bookings as a result of this non-promotional email.

Career Builder Case Study

Career Builder tied in a very successful viral email campaign to their widely acclaimed Super Bowl ad featuring chimpanzees performing common office duties. The campaign was named Monk-E-Mail and uses personalization to engage email subscribers and ease of use to ensure follow through of customizing and forwarding emails.

The engagement and increase in the site’s popularity as a result of the campaign was staggering:

• CareerBuilder was rated the #1 career site.

• 29 million unique users visited the site within the first four months (25% increase in traffic); more than 55 million total visitors.

• More than 150 million Monk-e-Mails have been sent and played.

• 22% of message recipients went on to send their own messages.

5 TAKEAWAYS:

1. Timing is important. Airbnb is in an industry where travel is not an everyday event; the holiday email campaign was good timing because December is a time for travel or planning future travel.

2. Personalization is key. Airbnb pre-populated the emails with each customer’s bookings from the previous year and included images of each user’s profile, making it easy to send the message.

3. Be Humorous. As CareerBuilder showed, a viral email is your chance to lose the serious sales attitude.

4. Ease of Use is essential to enable a high volume of viral actions.

5. Do Not Muddy the Message. Once you decide to go non-promotional, do not include any promotional content. Concentrate on the focus of engagement.

Hewlett-Packard - 5 Actions to Improve Social Media Effectiveness

The Challenge: Social media has become one of the most important points of contact for consumers. Marketers however, seldom access the gold mine of information waiting on their fan pages. Tech giant, HP does. They’re raising the bar for social interaction by developing an innovative strategy that’s setting the standard for customer engagement through social media.

So, while it is evident that companies are “in” social media they need to start becoming actively involved. A J.D. Power and Associates report notes that “businesses need to understand how their consumers use social media and then develop a strategy that addresses their usage patterns.“

One company who fully embraces this concept is Hewlett Packard. They entered the space by taking two full years to listen to their customs and determine where they were having conversations.

• They grew their social media community from its original 350+ members to over 2.4 million likes/fans on Facebook. Referrals from social networking sites have doubled.

• Referrals from social networking sites have doubled.

• HP’s online "Expert Days" have attracted hundreds of thousands of customers since their inception in 2009.

This activity has empowered employees to directly reach and converse with customers. There has been a ten time increase in blogging and social media activity by employees who go through the company’s social media training program prior to any customer communication involvement.

A key element in HP’s social interactions is that they integrate their social media with all customer touch points, not just for offers and contests. They also optimize and scale social media to ensure consistent customer experiences for different customer segments, geographies and languages.

5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HEWLETT PACKARD:

• Give Customers a Platform for Product Feedback. Through social media channels the company gets valuable feedback about products. They then feed this information to product and content teams for valuable insight into the development of future technology.

• Encourage Community Engagement.  A dedicated staff manages community engagement to provide value for customers. They also recognize customers who assist their fellow social page fans. This program is set to expand for top community contributors.

• Designate Community Ambassadors. HP has over 100 people called "Experts" who answer questions on the Forums. They include both HP customers and HP employees, and provide expert, free, 24-hour real-time access and advice on various topics of customer interest.

• Create Channel Integration. The company is working on a system by which customers can post a question in Facebook that can automatically tap into the HP Support Forum.

• Set Policies and Train Social Staff. HP sets specific social media policy standards. They train all staff involved in social media so that there is both consistency in social experience as well as consistency in brand messaging.