Customer-centric Omnichannel Strategies that Drive Customer Lifetime Value

I'm Paul, Growth Consultant at Emarsys focused on the Dutch region, and I have the pleasure of introducing our next session, which is a panel tackling the next topic, which is customer-centric omnichannel strategies that drive customer lifetime value. We have three experts that are joining us and Andre, tell me if I'm pronouncing the Dutch names right, but we have Leonie Lammers again from Studio Anneloes. We also have Leonie Jonker, who is Senior Manager of Retention in Europe at Paula's Choice. And finally, we have Jan Van Der Harst, who is CRM Activation Specialist at New Balance. So please give them a warm welcome and invite them to the stage. Maybe we'll start off with a quick introduction to the panel. Hello, everyone. My name is Jan, I am a CRM Activation Specialist at New Balance. My background is actually also in marketing, technology and consultancy. But beginning this year, I made a switch to, well, the good side, the client side. And I've been, well, enjoying New Balance so far, very much working with Emarsys, lovely to be here. Thank you. Hi, I'm Leonie, I'm Senior Manager of Retention for Paula's Choice. Paula's Choice skincare brand, global skincare brand, founded in the US 29 years ago. And I am responsible, together with my team, for retaining our customers in Europe and since yesterday actually also South Africa. So we have a large customer base that we're trying to sell their best skin care of their life. I already introduced myself, right? Right. We're in your home. Nice. Well, maybe to kick things off, I start with you, Leonie Lammers, and maybe I'll say Leonie L or Leonie J, if that's okay. That's fine. Cool. So we've had some really great insights from Sanne and yourself on the past and present future of your CRM strategy. But what else do you bring into the fold at Studio Anneloes? I know that you just spoke about loyalty and we're all excited, myself included, to become a member in September. But tell us a bit more about your CX strategy. Yeah, I think we already talked a lot about the personalization and it's getting more and more important for the demanding customer that you really expect to get a personalized offer. And she really wants to feel special, treated special. And that's also why we are introducing our member program because then we can step up that game as well and take her to a journey and build a community with our consumers. And that's also what we really value is we don't only want to sell clothes, but we also want to inspire women and bringing women together. And we we believe we can create a platform with those women together and also learning a lot from their feedback. And that's something we really want to do, learn a lot from our customers because of course, your customers are your most valuable assets. So why don't you utilize them and ask them for feedback and also create the collections, listen to what they want. And sometimes we do this already because we have such a short lead time, which [is why] we can do it even better. Yeah, nice. Yeah. And we've spoken a lot about kind of community building, being a strong pillar for you as a business. And you also mentioned that you as a brand don't compromise margin and don't want to do discounts and things like that. How are you trying to create loyal experiences for your customers? Give us a little insight into what you're trying to do. Yes so our program is not about discounts because you can, of course, earn points, but you don't get discount with us. You can get perks or benefits. You can utilize your points to get a styling session at our head quarters, join events for inspiring each other or plant a tree or whatever you want, but no discounts. Good. Good. And does that resonate with anyone else on the panel in terms of trying to drive loyal experiences without harming margin and harming the brand identity? Yeah, well, it does with me. Same as Studio Anneloes. We're not big on discounting. New Balance. Yeah, I think what's most important is to be there across the journey, as you said in your brilliant presentation, to be there at the right time. And that's not only when they've already purchased something, but also prior to to a purchase into the decision phase, the awareness phase to create a brand and brand moments that resonate with the audience. And from a CRM perspective, then it's to get that deeper connection not only through the data side of things, but really understand what kind of consumer shopper do you have here and how can we, you know, surface or provide products to that person that resonate and fit their style and needs. Leonie J, I'm going to bring it bring it over to you. Tell us a bit about your role at Paula's Choice and some of the priorities for this year. Yeah, so I'm manager of the retention team. But yeah, you would think only retaining customers, but there's also a part of acquisition. So we're actually yeah, over the past few years collaborating more with other teams to become a bit more customer-centric, work more in customer journeys. Because yeah, for us, well we call members, our email subscribers are super important because they are well, we know that they're three times more likely to come back. So especially for our retention strategy, our members are super important to grow our our database and eventually grow our our revenue. But there's also a large share in our database that our people might have subscribed but they've never purchased. So how are you going to get them from. Yeah, being not a customer to their first purchase and the second purchase is very important for us in the in the whole journey because that's the most difficult one, if, if I may say so. Yeah. Getting a person from this one time acquisition offer to actually becoming a more loyal customer is something that we're working on every day and it's a large part of our strategy. Yeah. And we are, yeah. In the core of our brand is also a lot of education and guiding customers on skincare. Our founder was actually a writer of books actually reviewing other skincare brands. And yeah, from that position she developed her first skincare line. So that's why also education is super important in our brand and that's what we also try to do with our email marketing strategy to inform customers, not only push them for a next purchase, but also educate them on what's good for their skin. And does that education ever start pre-sale? Does it is it typically post-sale? It's both. So we develop, for example, E-courses. So it's it's kind of like a educational journey via email to inform people about a certain skin concern and what matches to that concern, but also post-purchase super important to tell them like how to use their products, what's goes best with the products that they purchase to enhance their results. So there's, you know, a whole journey. Yeah. Before and after to the actual skin care purchase. Leonie, is that something that yours and trying to do a Studio at all trying to educate customers before purchase as well as after purchase in terms of kind of the ethos that you spoke about at the beginning of the presentation in terms of who you are, what you are, then see us. Yeah, that's something we do. We did we just installed the after purchase mail Sanne told you about. And of course we need to tell her more about the products, how we use it. And we have done recently studies and that study showed that you wear a product two and a half times more than another product because of the terrific quality – it's really made to last. And you wear it also 130 times where a normal product you were like 60 times or something like that. And that's the story we have now. Data and data doesn't lie. So that's a story we really need to tell as well. Yeah. And I'm also wondering, because you said for us, the the second buy is the most difficult. We see now in our data and we have just started that the first buy is almost always a pant, a trouser. Do you also have a particular product they always buy for the first or second time. And what's then the road? Yeah. So we have a well, we're very known for our 2% BHA exfoliant. So it's a black bottle that's all over social media. And it's also our sort of travel size product is our main acquisition product. So a lot of people enter via this first Yeah, mini bottle of our best seller, but it's a very low hurdle because they can purchase it for like €13. But then the step to yeah, going to a full size purchase, Yeah, that can be like €20 in between. So yeah, getting this person from this one time exfoliant that they saw on TikTok or Instagram too, like a full skincare routine or their next product – that's quite a difficult step. So we're also testing a lot with our online marketing team. We're making more analysis now with our data scientists to try and find like, what are the logical next steps and yeah, what can we improve to actually make it, from a one time buyer to a skincare user of Paula's Choice. Jan, I'm going to come to you next for the next question, we haven't heard you for a couple of minutes so we'll come to you. So the theme of Power to the Marketer this year is tradition meeting transformation. And we're talking about heritage, quality, exceptional experiences remaining the hallmark of tradition. But in an age where we're in a bit of attention economy, it's how brands are not only competing for acquisition but loyalty, trust and advocacy. And what we're looking at in this question is really how can marketers make every moment more meaningful and culturally relevant? So at New Balance, which I think has gone through quite a transition, as being maybe one of the third or fourth or fifth kind of flagship brands, but now is beloved by everyone. A lot of people wearing their trainers, a lot of people wearing their gear. It's kind of now the flagship sports retailer. What does that mean for you? Well, I love it, of course. Yeah. It's great to be part of a brand that's doing so well currently. One of our C-level executives was quoted that we are not a heritage brand, we're a brand with heritage, which is a quote I really like. And I think like indeed what you say is that there's a lot of competition and a lot of short attention spans across the full digital journey, right? Keeping somebody focused on your brand and actually getting to know them better and no more and taken by the hand and taken to that full buying side repurchase cycle is a challenge and I think that's why we're actually all here as well. But what I think when you when you look at traditional marketing and how that's changed over the years, it's like new channels you can get so much value out of, on the brand side of things, but also on a CRM side of things, way more data available. People are more inclined to share their data if you do the right things with that. Data is becoming smarter on itself, you know, it can make decisions for you. So like as a as a CRM Activation Specialist, I work a lot with automation and I think where I'd like to see, you know, transformation go is, is to have dynamic, personalized and automated marketing campaigns that really resonate 1 to 1 with the person. Yeah, that's in the market for a potentially Studio Anneloes clothing, Paula's Choice or New Balance apparel. Yeah I guess one way which we see at Emarsys this coming to the to the forefront is is channel mix. So how do I communicate with with customers via SMS versus email versus web channel and so on and so forth. Kind of opening up the question to the to the rest of the of the panel, how are you guys currently using multiple channels to communicate with the varying customers, the different customers that you have within your database people. Maybe we'll start with you, at Paula's Choice. Yeah. So we we've been on Emarsys for two years now and while email marketing is still our main channel in the retention team, but what was really great about moving to this omnichannel platform was that we could incorporate all our marketing and the website in one customer journey. So in our automations we work with different channels. We lead a customer through maybe an email touchpoint, maybe they don't respond, then they go to the website, we can prompt a web channel asset. Show them like, "Hey, you've abandoned these things in your cart". Maybe after several days, so many days they haven't responded still, we pushed them to an audience that goes to Paid Social where they can see a really consistent journey where before we were more siloed and we could be, yeah, we're the same brand but a customer could see three different things on different platforms. So yeah, I think that really helps in being consistent and more customer-centric in that sense. Yeah, nice. And the Leonie Lammers, is there a way that you test out new channels because I guess there's an explosion of channels that we can be communicating with our customers on. Now, is there a way that you say, Hey, maybe how do I try out maybe Pinterest or how do I try out Tiktok for my brand? Is that something that you're currently doing as a business? Yeah, we are, but we are mainly focused on the Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook at the moment. We are just starting with Pinterest and it's already giving us a lot of insights and also maybe a different customer group so it's really interesting. I must say I'm very interested by your story because we're not that far yet, but we're getting there and we now just launched our app and that's something we're really proud of because we work a lot with the retailers because we don't have our own stores. So we have now incorporated the wishlist and if you have put something on your wishlist and you walk by a store, you get a push notification, "Hey look, it's inside". And that's yeah, that's also really really cool. But yeah, there's so much more to do. Yeah. Nice. And I want to just come back to you Leonie J just around some of the things you're talking about using channels to influence different elements of the customer journey. And I know for a lot of marketers working in siloed teams and trying to drive operational efficiency is a big focus now. We're being asked as digital leaders to do more with less. So I kind of wanted to ask a bit about how at Paula's Choice you're approaching, you're using a more holistic approach to help achieve more customer-centric marketing and what that means for you as a business. We've always had a lot of data. We've always been a DTC first brand. So yeah, that's, that's something. Yeah, you're sitting on a pile of gold, but then you come to the stage where you're like, okay, how are we going to unlock all this data? And being able to use that in a automated way, in a sense that it also makes sense for a customer and not have channels operate in their own silo and "oh I'm responsible for acquisition so I'll just focus on these acquisition promos that we're running". But then on the other hand, you get these new customers thrown at you at retention and you're supposed to retain them but maybe they've been acquired with a totally different set of communication. So that's something that we've been I think noticing more and more that we're supposed to look at the full picture. Okay – where do these customers come from? How do we communicate with them and how do we set the journey further for them and being able to segment that and yeah, be personal but not in a scary way. And that's, that's also very important. But yeah, that's something that we're making steps in but there's still quite a way to go of course. Yeah because we're also still on the other hand still mass mailing our base with our marketing calendar campaigns and yeah that's also the other side of the, of the brand but yeah my hope, my vision for the future is that we can be more customer-centric in a way that we can we can push people through their own automation to their own customer journey, put all our education in such a way that it's available whenever a person makes a certain purchase or and not when we think "oh, this is a good month for anti-ageing communication" because maybe half of your base purchases their anti-ageing products in the previous half year and then they, they miss out on this communication. So yeah I think that's part of what we're continuing to work on. Nice, good to hear. I wanted to take the conversation in a bit of a different direction and come towards customer loyalty. I think that's been a theme that we've been talking about for a good couple of months, if not years in terms of how we move customers from awareness to true loyalty and that is kind of the gold standard of personalization. A question for all three of you on this panel: What is the biggest obstacle to delivering true customer loyalty for your respective businesses? Maybe all starts off with New balance from a bit more of a global perspective. What are the what are some of the challenges? There's short attention spans everywhere now. People have a lot of different digital touchpoints that they can get influenced on on their next purchase. And also comes with there's always a lot of competition out there. The availability of everything like by the touch of a button on your phone. So I think like loyalty is fostered in a brand not only within marketing or CRM, it also comes from creating beautiful products, creating a brand that resonates. And again, then we as CRM marketers, we have to, you know, take them not from a first purchase or even we might have to take them to the first puchase because they only signed up. But to really look at the data and see, okay, what is the intent here? What are the interests here? And then start shaping that customer experience. And then the problem again is to keep their focus on you and not have them go looking around again in the ideal world. In an ideal world, everybody would just stay loyal to one brand and every brand could exist. But that's unfortunately not the case. And how do you coming to Paula's Choice and Studio Anneloes, how do you keep your attention on yourself from a customers perspective are their strategies that you use to overcome that? Or how, just in general, how are you trying to overcome the challenges to really driving truly loyal, loyal experiences for your customers? Well, I think as a brand, you really need to be authentic. You need to be transparent, and really stand for your own brand DNA. And don't look at all the others., "oh they're doing this, they're doing this". No, we are this brand and this is our strategy. And I think if you stay close to your own brand strategy then the customers stay loyal if they choose for you. I think that's also really important in this whole world of all opportunities. And what can we do? But you really need to stay at the brands. And that's also because, of course, with a loyalty program, you can have can give them discounts and of course, we had this conversation, but then we said, no, this is not suitable for our brand, this is not what our brand is. So let's state our DNA and just don't do it. Let's be different. And that's what we already are as a brand but let's keep it this way. Paula's Choice? Yeah well, customers will always tell you that they want a discount or they want more discount if you already give them a discount. So yeah, for us, well, we do give discounts but we tend to not go above like 20%. But then over the recent years we've been, so we've always been DTC first. Now we're also partnering with retailers. Of course they are larger, they are more able to discount or to attract people to their store. So we're kind of, in some way, creating our own competition in a sense. So yeah, on the short term, we also work with gifts and discounts to get to get people to our own site. But I think like the proof is in the in the eating so we try to put products in their hands to experience what it does for their skin and educate people and build a relationship with them. Trying to set up a dialog instead of like only pushing our communication. Yeah. Just thinking because I think with skincare, it's indeed what you say it's very important you experience product, like I don't use a lot of skincare, but still! We can talk after. All right, I'm just going to make, I think like physical stores where people can experience like testers and stuff. Yeah. How do you kind of transform that, that, that physical touchpoint to then later follow up with a digital touchpoint that resonates with that person? Yeah, that's, that's also a struggle that we have because we're not used to this, to this game. We've always been like very safe in our own digital world. And of course, also our partners, our retailers are not always willing to share all there data and things. So yeah, that's that's definitely something that we, a game that we have to learn. So yeah, that's still something we're, we're working on. Good. I'm conscious that we have brands from farther afield in different verticals in the audience. So I was wondering if anyone is comfortable to share about how they're trying to overcome some of the obstacles in driving customer loyalty experiences. If anyone has has a comment to make around that? I have a question because we're talking about sending and putting our effort in customer loyalty, but I know every online marketing, digital, any company has also returns. So if you're having online returns, how are you helping these clients to remain their client loyalty also and how do you connect that band with those customer? That's my question because it's all about sending and maintaining and customer intimacy. And I think, turning that point from a weakness into a strength is also like a really challenging thing as a company. Yeah. Yeah. I can comment. Luckily, we don't have that many returns. Of course they do happen – wrong sizes, maybe something that's defective, but that's bound to happen. We have a very good customer success or customer service team. But we it really also depends on what kind of return you're dealing with. Of course, if it's a wrong size, make it useful that they can actually get a new size quickly, get it pushed through fast, and then you still get that happy experience. If it's about a defective product, that's a different thing, that takes more personal touches. For us, that doesn't lie with CRM, to be honest. We have a whole team that kind of tackles those issues, they put their heart and soul into that. And yeah, so it's not really my expertise. But we do really tend to listen to, to the people that share their experiences. We captured that data through forums and such – and we try to improve. Yeah, we, so a couple of years ago, so we have several products that are quite high on ingredients so people can get a skin reaction if they start using it for the first time or overdo it. So well, luckily we also have a very good customer care team with skincare experts who kind of help our customers. But we, a couple of years ago, we also tried to turn it around a bit to reduce the returns on those kind of products with creating post-purchase emails where we take the person by the hand and explain them really well, "Okay, what do you do with this product? Please don't overdo it. Don't start combining it with everything that you have on your bathroom shelf". So that's one way that we can try to to make the experience a bit better for our customers. And we also work a lot with customer feedback in our email. So for example, in our new customer flow, after three weeks, we ask them a question like, "Hey, do your products meet your expectations?" From the responses that we collect, we are also able to see like, okay, positive and negative. The negative experiences, we work together with our customer care team to contact these people and try to give them a better experience. So yeah, that's a way that we try to work with with returns. Sort of the same for us. We really value, of course, the feedback from the customer. And we also have a tool when you want to buy a pant, for example, you fill in the tooling and then the tool says, okay, this is your size. And of course, if you filled in the tool and it's still not your size, it can happen of course, or there something with the product, we also get feedback from the customers adjust the tooling and yeah, for us as well, we ask a lot for feedback. We have Trustpilot incorporated [onsite] and also want to get it in the emails as well. And luckily our returns aren't as high. So for fashion brand, that's also good but yeah, feedback is always very valuable. Yes. Good. Well, it sounds like returns have been influenced really by brands that we're speaking about here being pretty bullish or intentional about the personalized experiences that they're trying to deliver. And from that, you're being rewarded with customers that are really interested in terms of your brand, what you have to offer and and loving and enjoying your product. So that's maybe a strategy that a lot of our audience can take back to that to their respective businesses. But the next question I wanted to talk about, which is probably the buzzword of the year: AI. AI. AI. AI! So you're all using AI for your customer segmentation to make customer experiences more relevant to the individual. How important is segmentation to your marketing strategy and how are you using AI? How has AI essentially changed the way that your teams and you guys are individually working? Jan, I'll come to you first. Yeah, indeed. Big buzzword, of course. Like for me AI what it essentially does it makes sense of big data sets and then you have different things that I can do. I use it the most to make decisions for me. We have a lot of contacts at New Balance, of course. We operate from Amsterdam the whole EMEA region. And for me, it's incredibly helpful to have a tool that actually can make decisions on when to fire what email to which audience. You can make things as complex and personalized as you want. But if you set everything up once and have a good decision engine that is powered with artificial intelligence behind that, it takes all the complexity away for you and all the manual work as well. So really being able to dynamically target the right audience at the right time with the right message, cross-sell, upsell, anything – that's for me, the biggest benefit. As for using generative AI in writing emails – New Balance has a pretty strong brand voice, so we're not really steering into that region. So for me, it's really on making sense of the data – dynamic segmentations, people flowing in and out of segments. So it's predictive AI to identify opportunities and generative AI to drive operational efficiencies. Is that kind of the same sort of sentiment for for Paula's choice and Studio as well? Yeah, definitely. And I think we cannot work without it any more. Makes our work so much efficient. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that's always also good, it's that the AI keeps learning right? On a person's intent, interests, see buying patterns between the similar audiences to kind of get that recommendation engine to improve you know make it even more relevant what kind of products you are setting up in an email or on site. Good stuff! And onto our next question, Leonie J I was going to come to you. So you're doing some really great work with sentiment analysis to turn this channel into more of a two way conversation you were speaking a bit about that rather than just being more sales driven, how can we actually open up a channel or communication, a relationship with our customers? Can you tell us a little bit more about about that? Yeah. So well, as a skincare brand, we're kind of literally on the skin of our customers. But yeah, the only one and only person who can tell you what it's like to be a customer is the customer themselves. So email is of course a very big channel for us and it's a push channel. You throw your communication out in the world. But so a couple of years ago we decided also to work with customer feedback in our email. So every email people are able to tell us what they think. It's what we call sentiment score. So it gives us a layer of qualitative data upon like quantitative data. Like for example, when we started, we have one of our main automations, of course, our birthday automation, very common of course to have. Numbers were good: conversion, open rates, everything. But then we started adding sentiment score and we actually found that the sentiment on the birthday automation was very low. And if there's one thing that you want to achieve with a birthday email is that a person becomes happy. Also, luckily, people are able to give their remarks. We can filter it that and we found out that our offer was actually expiring too fast and making people unhappy. So made a couple of updates, changed the offer, changed the expiry and then the sentiment increased but also your conversion, everything is related to it. For us this sentiment score is very important to keep in check with our customers, our recipients and to see what makes them happy, what can we improve and what they think of what they receive. So it also gives them a very low hurdle to not have to call customer care or yeah. Makes them more friction-less. Yeah. So it's a, it's a very. I have a question about it because yes of course you get like hopefully you get a lot of response on that, hopefully mostly positive. But the negative stuff you can actually work with, which is very valuable. When do you say like, if a negative feedback point occurs x many times, when do you say, "okay, this is actually something that we need to work on"? Let's, you know, kind of the, the way to make it a priority. Yeah, well, we haven't really set rules around that. It's sometimes can be like super simple email has gone out and the links don't work. That's also what you get through the feedback system of course. But so then you have to act immediately, even if it's just like one person saying it. But yeah, so we kind of filter the things that we that we receive and see what we can, what are the main topics. And sometimes it's a few people saying it, sometimes a lot of people. So yeah it's, it depends a bit. Not not a set rule. Okay. Okay. And for Studio Anneloes? How are you measuring customer satisfaction and how you using that to drive your marketing strategies as a business? Well, at the moment we don't do like the sentiment meters in the emails. We are getting it, I heard, but it's very interesting. And we ask now reviews and also learn a lot from the reviews we get. And of course we also ask customers for feedback on our socials. Because we are so close to the market, we also can ask the customers, "okay, we see in the data people expect a coat, with Studio Anneloes. Can we make you a coat?" Then Anneloes walks outside with the umbrella, we make a video of her and then six weeks later we have the coat to sell. Then of course, as a customer you have the feeling "oh the brand's really listening to my wishes". That's something we do already. We also did it with sneakers last year. We saw a lot of people searching for sneakers. We made them, sold out within an hours so it was really cool of course. That's something we really want to do more, of course. Also for different customer groups. Yeah. And for now, feedback is so valuable. I don't I'm not really the target of Studio Anneloesl, I'm sorry, but you don't own stores, do you? No, we don't, no. So, and 20% is coming out of your e-commerce? Yeah. So that's the customer base that you have for yourself? Yeah. The other ones are, you don't know them? No. No. Is that a fact or are you are you working on strategies to get them on board? Well, we're really working on that. So with the profile enrichment Sanne talked about earlier, we really want to know her and also asking her favorite store and that's one touchpoint already if we know what's her favorite store and she's entering the store that we can see, with the app we have – if she has the app of course, she needs to have the app. Then we can even learn more about her. And of course, the future wish for us is to have her closets in the app or in an environment where we can see, okay, this is the style she's shopped within a retailer, this is a style that she shopped online. We know, "okay you bought a trouser with us, you bought a blouse with a retailer – you can make combinations and we will advise you." And how is your retail network reacting on that? Are they happy with that? Yeah, they're definitely happy. Yeah, because they see that they also sell more if they work? Yeah. If they also know the customer better, they can also advise her better. So you share your customer data with, with, with a with a retail network? No, we don't do that but we can help them, of course, with the data we have, get the customer to their stores as well and that's something we really push. Yeah. And we help them getting traffic to the stores. New Balance, same thing, I suppose? Yeah, we, we, we do, intend to take data from stores. We actually capture where a person signs up from a store and then we send relevant updates about drops that's happening in that particular store. Also at Zalando or something like that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's really just to our contact database. Marketplace I cannot tell you that much about, to be honest. It's something that we justed start with. So yeah. So you focus on your own base? For like from a CRM perspective, yes, definitely. I think that's essentially where you can make the most meaningful interactions with between the customer and the brand. Jan, something that I wanted to speak to you about was, so your role as CRM activation specialist is new to new balance in the region and shows a focus on automations within the company. Why do you think that role has come to the fold? Why do you think building and optimizing automation is important for the success of brands? And tell us a bit more about what you're doing day to day. Yeah. So like I said, I kind of oversee all the automations that happen across all regions. And what I think that there's a bigger focus on these kind of projects or campaigns is that you're able now to do these things. The technology's there. The data is there to actually make it a relevant experience. And what I also must say, I think, a lot within marketing is that, like I said, I want to make sure to not make things too complex. And I think that as a brand, you also don't want to make things too complex in a relationship with your customer. And it goes from, from processes like marketing, all the way to a buying journey, of course. And automation plays a vital role in actually to set up stuff and let automated decisions and campaigns and dynamic content work for you. So in the ideal world, my job would become obsolete because I've automated everything. But that's like, that's still a long way to go, of course. But there's like, there's real value in reacting on certain intent. That's how you hold conversations normally. And there's real value in, in being able to, to, to trigger a message at a right moment. And that's all within automation. And I think, like everybody must agree, there's a lot of value within your abandoned cart, your abandoned browse, your post-purchase journeys. And not only to simply to push revenue, of course, but also to create a whole brand experience about that. Yeah. And I guess it depends on the brand as well. If I if I'm thinking if I'm buying a Philips toothbrush, then and I have an issue, I probably want to speak to someone personally about the issue out with my with my Sonic Healthcare. Whereas with other brands I'm probably more comfortable have a bit more of an automated experience. The question to the Leonies is, does that change? Does that differ the way that you approach automations based on kind of your brand identity and the sort of experiences you're trying to deliver? How does that look for your brands? If we start with Paula's Choice. Yeah, well, I don't think your job will ever become obsolete when you're automating everything, because there's also maintenance. So, yeah, we. It sounded really good. Good. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. But I think it's also in not producing everything for a one off. So you're actually letting your assets and your data work for you on a continuous basis and bring in revenue, customer loyalty and a good customer experience. So yeah, I think that's one of the great powers of automating. Yeah. Being able to automate and work with the data on a very granular level, actually. Yeah, I think to add on, I think in the end every customer wants to feel special and that's why we do this. And of course that's where you're going for. And then you can keep them loyal. My team also works on our referral programs, on our in-package material. Well, in package materials – very offline – but if I think of our referral programs which are now connected with Emarsys so we can actually build customer journeys in automations where those data is connected and you can actually act on what a person does in the referral program with email or web channel. So that really helps us orchestrate like different areas where the customer's Present. To wrap up this session, I wanted to ask a final question to the three of you. How do you think the marketing landscape is going to change over the next 2 to 3 years? But of a broad question. Jan, you're smiling. Difficult question, of course. You didn't bring your crystal ball, right? No, no, unfortunately, not I left it at home. Sure that's absolutely fine. I think eventually, customers will even crave more personalized experiences. I think brands will have the data and technology available to provide these. Of course, regulations will be also sharpened. That happens every time. I think there's like, there's a lot of opportunities and challenges. Of course, I think the opportunities that brands can really get that 1 to 1 contact by using for, for instance, AI with their customer base. In the end, if everybody starts doing that so well, then, you know, there's too much maybe happening. I think for now, the way forward is leveraging personalization even further, getting to know your customer better, but keep building those real touchpoints, showing that you listen to them, which you do very well with creating complete lines by just asking for feedback, I think that's amazing! So yeah, I think brands and consumers will first move closer together. That's it. Yeah. I think the customers don't want to be fooled, so they get smarter. So yeah, you also need to get smarter and step up the game. Yeah. And is there anything you're doing even just more broader than that from a tech perspective? I know Studio Anneloes does amazing things, such as kind of the self-made talks and kind of building community beyond just the brand and some of the real values you have. Is there anything that maybe from a Paula's Choice perspective that you're doing beyond just celebrating products, but also kind of trying to create a bit of a culture around around the business? We are trying to work like, for example, with micro-influencers who create communities and be more close to the audience. I think for my area of expertise looking at retention, we also focus a lot on our members, our email program and on our brand advocates who are customer advocates. Because I think there's also a lot of potential in having your customers actually tell others about the brands instead of like us only sending like "this is good for your skin" or "this is good for your skin". But if a customer has a really good experience and we have a lot of customer love that, yeah, let's see how you can leverage that and spread that and make them tell others about it. And yeah, that's one of the things that we're also working on expanding and making it scalable because that's also one of the things that's also really important for us because we're expanding over the years with more countries, more markets, and we are the scalability is for us also very important. And I think in skincare as well, you kind of go with brands that friends or family have trusted before. There's a lot of inherent loyalty in the space. So celebrating and leveraging your brand advocacy is a massive win. Yeah, for sure. One thing that specific before I wrap up is is sustainability as well it's a topic that a lot of brands, not only just fashion but in other verticals are really looking to drive at the core of what they're doing. Does that play a part in any of what you're doing when you are looking at growth opportunities? Is there a sustainable kind of lens on stuff that you doing? Jan, maybe to you. I think in the education of your consumers that they start caring more and more about these sustainability topics. From a CRM perspective it's more about communicating how a whole brand is working towards a more sustainable way. And that goes throughout the supply chain. But also I don't know any/everything that's connected to it, education of the workforce, better working environments for everybody. It's increasingly important, of course, but probably like on a large scale as New Balance is operating, it's something that we're working on every day to make sure that we get it or become more sustainable. I know from a Studio Anneloes perspective, you just launched your second-hand platform. Maybe tell us a bit about that before we wrap up. Yeah. Yeah well, I think what I already said, like our product is really made to last, and that's also what we saw a lot of people selling it on Marktplaats, yeah, marketplaces ones like Marktplaats, Vinted those places where you can sell. And we saw that it still keeps its value. So we as a brand, we want to bring the people at our platform and let them share their second hand clothes, sell them to each other, build a community around it. But for us, sustainability is really in our DNA. And we've done like, research just yesterday as well with a lot of customers, scrolling through our website. And of course it's in our DNA and we all know here and also the retailers know. But we learned yesterday that we really need to tell more about it. Yeah. Really inform them. Yeah for us, it's also, like sustainability, social responsibility are in the pillars of our brand house. But yeah, it's also a long process and I think also because we are well, we were, we are a US founded brand. So in the US, sustainability is also a bit of a different topic than in Europe. And of course we're dependent like for example, for our product production from the US. So yeah, we are making small steps, but I think also in the, like the daily work that we do. Like for example, when you're segmenting your emails better, you're not blasting all those email volumes into the world and increasing your CO2 footprints that are already like small steps that you can do for sustainability and in daily work. Really interesting topic. I believe we're at time now. So I wanted to say thank you to our three panelists if you guys can give you a round of applause. Thank you so much.