Will Instant Drone Delivery Take Off in 2019?
Delivery by drone has been getting a lot of media buzz for the past couple of years. This article explores the latest developments on drone delivery and what’s at stake from consumer and industry perspective.
How to Manage Successful Brand Post-Merger Integration
Far over 100 lifestyle brands are taken over every year. While a majority of post-merger integrations fail, here’s what the successful ones have in common.
As a seasoned CEO and experienced retail executive I’ve been part of my fair share of successful (and less successful) post-merger integrations. In my current role, I advise family businesses and financial investors on growing their brands, organically or via acquisition. Although the backgrounds of individual companies, the company cultures as well as the strategic reasons for takeovers differed widely, clear patterns emerge for both successful and unsuccessful cases.
From Omni channel retailing in India to Omnipresent Retail
In recent years, omni channel retailing was the buzzword in the retail world. But the real big deal in the making is ‘omnipresent’ retail. This case study on Reliance Industries in India shows how. (more…)
Special Edition: Brand Growth Strategy for CEOs & Strategic Planners
How’s your year going so far? Now’s a good time to take stock and prepare for the upcoming planning season! This special edition offers some brand growth strategy inspiration for you.
With the first quarter safely under the belt, are you happy with what you’ve achieved and on track to exceed your strategic and financial goals this year? The next round of financial planning starts in six months. That makes now the perfect moment to prepare by reviewing and tweaking next year’s strategy ahead of time!
Selling on Marketplaces: Are Your Processes Ready?
Marketplaces are the largest digital D2C distribution channel. Get ready for the KPIs in digital marketplace distribution that measure whether your brand is ready to meet today’s demanding end-consumer needs.
Is Building Retail Concessions Still Only the Second Best Multibrand Distribution?
Growing wholesale distribution via department stores has been the most valuable path to brand growth for many years. Is that changing with multi-brand retailers in crisis across Europe and the US? How do retail concessions hold up as alternative?
How to Improve Your Hit Rate and Make Good Use of Bestseller Potential
When brands need to reshape their portfolio and close stores, they face the challenge of improving Like-4-Like performance at the remaining points of sale. The two product strategies introduced here help improve the top and bottom line of your P&L.
Improving like-4-like performance often focuses on mechanics and triggers that can be influenced by sales staff and a retail organisation. Surprisingly, it often excludes an honest evaluation of the assortment’s performance. This article shows how improving hit rate and using best seller potential can push sell-through, create incremental sales potential, reduce mark-downs and improve the gross margin. (more…)
Rapha is not a brand, it’s brand community management at its best
How does a small UK cycling apparel brand become the global benchmark for brand community management? Here’s why brands around the world use Rapha as a best practice case study.
In case a cycling jersey isn’t yet part of your casual wardrobe, read this brand story to learn why bike apparel may well set trends in mainstream clothing by 2025.
Scan, Shop, Go – Omnichannel Best Practice Retail Made in Germany
After three years of research and testing 80 omnichannel services, fashion retailer Bonprix has opened a world-class omnichannel best practice store in Hamburg.
There can no longer be any doubt: the future in retail is neither pure online, nor strictly brick & mortar, but omnichannel retail tapping into the best of both worlds. But the challenge remains to find the best ways to balance the two. And Hamburg is likely a witness to what can currently be considered global omnichannel best practice.
Inspirational Business Model for Omni Channel Retail
The need for constant innovation in retail is a call to action. I’d love to motivate retailers to execute their innovative spirit with simple acts of creativity.
One option is to develop your customers’ new favourite place, spaces where the community meets to share common passions in a relaxed atmosphere while experiencing brands and their product offerings.
The Latest Brand Management Insights
Need to catch up on the latest in brand management insights? We have curated a few recent gems on current e-commerce trends, last mile innovation, performance management and omnichannel retail for you!
Culinary Treats & Shopping
The way to a customer’s heart is through their stomach! Culinary treats have the potential to increase conversion rates and average ticket size for retailers. Success isn’t guaranteed, but these factors significantly reduce the risk of failure.
More and more retailers, shopping centres and cities invest in new, attractive and unique food and beverage concepts. These concepts often differ in level of integration between culinary treats and shopping.
Will Price Wars Be the New Normal on Otto.de?
Otto.de currently operates a ‘closed’ marketplace system, where a product is sold only by one supplier at a time. Rumours have it that this may soon change – will price wars become the new norm for your brand?
Driving Customer Lifetime Value with Brand Loyalty Programs
Successful brands use loyalty programs for customer segmentation and to increase lifetime value
Zalando has just announced its loyalty program Zalando Plus as one of their key initiatives for 2019, and Amazon Prime has been present in every other US household in 2018. The concept of loyalty programs, however, is not new.
Premium department store Breuninger in Germany launched its loyalty program as far back as 1959. The original aim was to allow customers to buy on credit, which later evolved into a loyalty program with different tiers and membership rewards. As one would expect, today’s card is no longer in paper but integrated into a shopping app.
Evolution of Breuninger’s customer loyalty program (Source: Breuninger; WikiCommons)
Reward and Focus on Your Most Valued Customers
The goal of having a brand loyalty program is to better serve and focus on the most valued customers, eventually driving Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Amazon Prime members spend USD 500 more per year compared to non-prime customers. And there is good reason for Net-a-Porter to invite the top-spending 2% of their customers into the EIP (Extremely Important Person) membership rewards program, as they account for more than 40% of sales and shop on average 12x more than the average customer. Focussing on those 2% of customers and increasing their buying frequency by just 3% would lead to an increase of 1.2% in the overall net sales of the business.
The Journey from Acquisition to Retention
Providing incentives such as free shipping or free alterations can be a strong tool in acquiring more members into a customer loyalty program. Keeping members engaged after the first transaction or sign-up is often more challenging. Leading marketing or ‘growth hacking’ teams know when to reconnect with new members with the goal to drive engagement, which at a later stage can lead to the second sale transaction.
Tiering Members is Key
While all customer loyalty or membership programs are using some sort of tiering, a brand needs to decide whether to openly tier and thereby create the feeling of exclusivity to the customer. One advantage of this approach is the ability to nudge members to move up to the next level, for example by the means of monthly point statements or by informing members how close they are to reaching the next tier and thereby stimulating additional sales. However, traditional customer segmentation is typically based on annual spend per customer, which does not take ‘share of wallet’ into account. A better metric is customer lifetime value (CLV or CLTV), which incorporates expected future spend and potential.
Membership program tiers and benefits at Harrods (Source: Harrods)
Paid Memberships are Strong Loyalty Drivers
A powerful way of keeping a loyal customer is to convince her to pay for membership in the customer loyalty program. Multi-brand and product stores are at an advantage here, as customers can leverage the fee over a higher number of transactions.
The average active Zalando customer, for example, orders 4.4 times per year and is charged EUR 7.90 for premium or same day delivery per order (read here for a detailed review of the benefits of same day delivery options). A Zalando Plus membership at an annual fee of EUR 15 includes free premium or same day delivery, among other benefits, which makes it an attractive offer for frequent shoppers.
Most importantly, the incentive for members to shop with a different online retailer decreases, as the cost for the same premium services would be very high for just a single transaction. As a result, Zalando management expects their brand loyalty program to be key in increasing the gross merchandise value per customer spend by approximately 20-25% in 2019. The increase on customer lifetime value (CLV), which is calculated over several years would be similar.
Zalando Plus membership drives shopper spend (Source: Zalando Capital Markets Day Presentation 28 Feb 2019)
Opportunity to Focus on Value Rather Than Discount
While product discounts and rebates dominate the most-valued membership rewards, it is worth noting that millennials place a higher value on service, experience and customer recognition.
(Source: Nielsen, Global Retail Loyalty Sentiment Report 2016)
This is especially interesting for premium brands aiming to use their loyalty program to increase the brand value perception of the consumer. Nike, for example, offers their NikePlus members access to member-exclusive products. Net-a-Porter allow their EIP members to shop new collections earlier than everyone else and offer them a personal shopper. Online supermarket Albert Heijn Online provides its loyalty club members a personalised dashboard that suggests healthier substitutes for previously purchased products, which can have significant positive impact on personal health.
Having worked with a client on a project in Retail/Health Tech in China last year, I’m convinced that the trend to personal health and well-being is one of the strongest drivers for loyalty, but comes at very high level of complexity for brands.
For brands with a smaller budget, a more focused approach to a brand loyalty program can be an option. Cycling wear brand Rapha, for example, has created a cycling club with frequent member bike rides and services tailored to the needs of race bikers in large metropolitan areas. The focus of the stores (called ‘Rapha Club Houses’) is to provide the best member experience, featuring racing bikes for loan and a café. They become places for the member community to connect after organised bike rides, which start and end at Rapha Club Houses. The selling area dedicated to cycling merchandise in store is surprisingly small.
Rapha Club House Tokyo (Photo: Rapha)
Drive Your Member Strategy Now
With many brands already having a customer loyalty or membership program in place, 2019 will be the year to evaluate the impact on customer experience and lifetime value (LTV). To start, brands should measure ROI and engagement across the channels. An end-to-end calculation, including supply-chain and/or labour cost, is especially relevant when calculating the ROI for lower margin brands or product groups. The second step is to calculate customer lifetime value (CLV) per member and start customer segmentation to budget future marketing spend. For many brands this can mean a shift from member acquisition to retention and increasing spend per member.
Driving customer experience for the most valued members requires having the same top-level standards across all customer touchpoints, from front-end to operations to last mile delivery or stores. Setting up a matrix membership team structure with experience beyond just marketing but also in store operations, supply-chain, merchandising and finance can be a powerful way of driving this end-to-end experience across digital and retail channels.
About the Author:
Maximilian Gellert gets excited about transforming a range of digital options into pragmatic every-day solutions for retailers. Combining consulting experience with industry functions in premium apparel and online grocery, he supports retailers and etailers in their digital challenges and last mile innovation. Get in touch with Max via email or connect with him on LinkedIn to discuss your own plans for a membership program and other challenges related to customer loyalty.
Partner Retail Transparency
Everything you should know about your potential partner retailer’s business and how to get the information you need.
There are many reasons why it makes sense to conquer a market through reliable retail partners. Besides the shared risk, lower investment and faster growth, you may want to benefit from your partner retailer’s deeper understanding of the market – the local players, dynamics (e.g. real estate and channel development) and consumer behaviours – before opening your own retail stores. (more…)
Special Edition: Processes & Operations for Retail Managers
While everyone talks about growing online sales, offline retail still makes up the vast majority of consumption. This special edition offers inspiration and guidance on processes & operations for retail managers in this context.
E-commerce managers and financial investors can be quick in labelling your stores as part of the so-called ‘old economy’. But today, retail still stands for 85% of all consumption and offers many opportunities to create superior consumer experiences and be commercially successful. As many brands and retailers have shown, a great brick and mortar store can grow far more profitable that online sales.
Retail Portfolio Management: Store Staff Performance
While excellent staff and service are what distinguishes brick and mortar from online retailers, staff performance is often overlooked in store evaluations. Two new KPIs help account for the human factor.
When evaluating a retail portfolio, very often mangers only look at the financial results of a store. But excellent service, competent and dedicated sales staff are a key differentiator of brick and mortar retailers. A fair and objective store staff performance evaluation is therefore increasingly important. This article introduces two new KPIs that help to fairly evaluate staff performance and to determine optimal staffing for each store in your portfolio.
Global Retail Best Practice 2019
The likes of Amazon and Alibaba open tech-heavy brick & mortar stores, but best practice commercial brand retail still happens elsewhere.
Early sales reports indicate that 2018 was a good year for large parts of the lifestyle brand industry. Almost 4/5 of the top 100 European and US American lifestyle brands had a growth year, and for the most part did better than in 2017. This was despite a global department store fallout and online growth and was largely based on store growth.
