How Missguided Won Over Fast-Fashionistas With Trigger-Based Marketing

Consumers are using more devices than ever before to compare and research even more products. As a result, the path to purchase is becoming increasingly complex for marketers to understand. Every shopper follows a very different route to purchase to the person before them and so in order to create effective marketing campaigns, marketers must have a strong understanding of the individual customer.

For marketers working in online fashion, competition is particularly prevalent as consumers shop around; never more than a click away from finding a product at a lower price or something more suited to their needs. This means that shoppers are even more in control, setting the agenda for the brands they are buying from.

So, in order to be the brand which is front of mind for shoppers, retailers need to utilise intelligent, targeted and creative marketing in order to avoid disengagement; otherwise they risk losing out to the competition which is only the next web page away.

Missguided, an online retail brand with a focus on offering the most on-trend items, felt it could be doing more to deal with heightened competition in the fast-fashion industry by welcoming in new audiences and keeping customers engaged between purchase cycles. The retailer also wanted to encourage single-visit shoppers to become multiple-purchasers. To realise this vision, the marketing team set out to achieve a more personalised marketing campaign to increase shopper engagement.

As a fresh and vibrant online fashion retailer delivering fast fashion to a highly active female online audience, Missguided already had a loyal user base with over 10 million unique monthly users online. However, as an online-only brand, Missguided recognised that there was an opportunity to harness the power of technology by sharing relevant and creative content that would resonate with customers and inspire long-term loyalty.

Trigger the Personalised Approach

This is where Oracle Marketing Cloud stepped in to help the retailer achieve their ambitions of delivering more personalised marketing through intelligent and targeted automated marketing. We recommended a trigger-based marketing solution where email communication activities would be based upon the measurement of relevant and identifiable changes in a customer's individual needs.

Whereas previously Missguided’s marketing strategy had been to use a contact approach, which lacked rhythm, trigger-based marketing helps the retailer capitalise on sales opportunities at each stage of the customer lifecycle, boosting engagement rates and keeping customers coming back.

The first step was to rethink the timing of all of Missguided’s customer emails in order to optimise communications. By using key consumer behavioural triggers such as customers’ life-cycle position, Missguided obtained the insights needed to increase the relevancy of emails delivered to both desktop and mobile.

Together with Missguided, we implemented modular templates, which respond to data considerations and distribute several personalised campaigns to drive additional revenue or brand loyalty. Two that were particularly effective were the ‘Welcome Campaign’ and ‘Birthday Campaign.’

The ‘Welcome Campaign’ is activated by sign-up information and engages new customers with a series of emails in the first week after joining Missguided’s database. The ‘Birthday Campaign’ rewards Missguided’s customer base with an incentive-driven email containing unique birthday offers or encouragements inviting them to purchase from the site, such as free next-day delivery or discounts. This is a highly effective way of building a personalised relationship with the customer from the start, and an incentive at a later date can lead the customer down the marketing funnel towards a purchase.

The trigger-marketing automation module was specifically chosen to catch the attention of the increasingly distracted consumer, not only by providing even more relevant and timely content in the email body, but also for its stimulating and responsive format.

This marketing technique increased the click-rate by 133%, and as a result, email conversion rates have increased by 298%. At the bottom line, email revenue for the automated campaigns is up by 439% since the implementation of the modular template, with yield per email improving 118%. This shows the real business value of relevant and timely content, and the response to personalisation in campaigns amongst the recipients.

By using trigger-based marketing, Missguided has realised that to engage time-poor, distracted consumers a personal approach and timely delivery is key. As consumers increasingly hop, skip and jump between devices, it is increasingly difficult for retailers to gain - let alone keep - their attention.

Missguided is a fantastic example of a retailer who has devised a marketing campaign with their audience at the centre. These results revealed to Missguided that the key to driving engagement and building long-term relationships with distracted customers is utilising intelligent, targeted and creative marketing.

So, when planning your next campaign, be sure that you completely understand your audience and design your communications around their needs. It’s the only way to develop strong and long-lasting relationships with customers, and to create efficiencies in your marketing outreach.