How flaconi uses direct mail to optimize their customer first strategy

[auto-generated captions] Thank you very much. Very, very excited to be presenting today and to be joined by Nina to to talk about what Flaconi is doing, how they're leveraging Emarsys, how they're leveraging the upsize platform to take their customer centricity to the next level. And with that, I would actually hand over the microphone to you and talk a bit about yourself as well as Falcone's. Yes. My name is not I'm the team needs ops me and Sierra empty Max AI koni. I'm at Falcone's since 2016, so for nearly five years now and yeah, we are a team of eight wonderful people and we are working on strategies and new technologies to optimize the customer communication. And of course, with the goal to establish a long lasting customer relationship with its customers when it comes to Francona, who is colleague, we are one of Germany's leading online video retailers and we are offering about eight hundred and fifty international beauty brands. And in 2020, Falcone achieved a revenue of nearly 300 million euros. And yeah, we have a strategic long term goal to be the most loved online beauty destination in Europe. Yeah, really, really great company. I'm actually really excited that we're working with you, the things that we're doing with Flaconi Optimize is a direct mail software, so our solution is used to run the physical mailing campaigns in a more customer centric manner, sort of things like letters, postcards and self mail us next, like we have around 300 other customers across all industries e-commerce, retail, but also it's a more traditional industries like insurance and finance across 25 countries. Something that we're very proud of is that we are 100 percent climate neutral. So everything that we're showing you today, despite that, it's physical mail. It's it's climate neutral course. We compensate the effects of sending out physical mail while at the same time enabling companies to actually reduce these campaigns that, let's say, don't make so much sense. So really, the power of what's optimized our slides in three areas. First, automation moving away from just the mass mailings, the one time campaigns towards more trigger based touchpoints. So we have a couple of cool examples of what Villacorta is doing here. Personalization, right? Thinking about how content you direct, data can be more relevant, how you can leverage things like the Emarsys recommendation service or recommendation engine IT, then omnichannel. How would you link this channel with other channels to have better or more powerful omni channel customer journeys, which again, is something that is nicely done now, Courtney, where this is a screenshot from off the Oculus dashboard showing the flag only campaigns, we're not going to dove into this right here, but I think what's what's nice about this? What you can see is that not only has a constant flow of campaigns that are running that are triggered, that they're alive, and that's that's I think only possible to that extent if you take a tech driven or software driven approach that enables you to move away from manual processes. But let's take a step back before we dove into the customer journeys and direct mail itself. Anita, maybe you maybe you can give him some overview in terms of where we have Courtney stands, how you see customer centricity, customer first and what role that plays in your job and in the company. Yeah. So for every customer, it's the most important, most important part of our daily business. So as you can also see these hashtag customer first, it's one of the five defined values of any and every strategic company. Decision or goal is geared to these five defined values. So the customer first value really puts the customer and the focus of everything. So for us, it's really important to understand the customer, its individual needs and also to assess its individual elements and to fulfill this approach. You really have to offer its most customer experience onsite in the shop, as well as offsite and different communication touchpoints. And that's our main focus. And you can see communication as a key factor because when you're interacting with a customer, he's telling you a lot of his buying intentions, his past behavior interest and also your about its needs. And for us, it's very important to put all these information into our different touchpoints. So we do not have only email on the app or direct mail because there is not this one communication tool that fits every needs. So it's yeah, the combination of everything. So a really successful communication. You can say it's built on these three main parts you can see here. So it's the cross channel alignment and it's your engagement. And only is when you close your work or and goes into another, then you have a really good base for building up a good communication. I think this, by the way, a really good point that like you need a strategy before you dove into the implementation and you need to take a take a step back and think about what you want to achieve versus going to operation. It's what I see very often just being to yeah, to yeah, you can try to implement every different kind of communication tool, but you really have to see which communication tool the customer wants. So you can implement emails and send emails per day because the customer doesn't show any engagement and maybe email is not the correct. So you really have to see which communication tool sets to which need and also in which part of the lifecycle. Yeah, I think. And you mentioned it before, right, or just just again, just now, there is no perfect chain. I think that's something that even from my point of view, of course, I'm tainted. I love that it just because that's what we do. But at the same time, what I always tell companies is that there is no perfect channel and there is no whenever I read somebody claiming, Oh, email, it's dead or direct mail is dead or this doesn't work. I always say that that's not the case. You have to think, like you said about the customer. You have to think about where this customer stands. And if we look at direct mail, of course, if you don't have an opt in, you can reach customers without having an opt in. But it takes longer and even even with an educated set up, and it's a lot more expensive, right? Yeah, that's correct. So you really have to check which customer is the perfect customer for mailing, so you cannot say the email is everything we are doing and the communication goes through your print mailing. So if it really has to be a very fast communication, so you want to form a customer maybe about a special deal or a sale, then email or push notification might be the best option because a direct mail needs some time and then the deal is over. So you really have to kind of this perfect trigger point for a direct mail, and it's more about the customer retention and not really about communicating. Sort of it's more like a new thing and tempering your customers more. Yeah, yeah. I think that's that's that's a good point. Like you did kind of the use case. But and then also seeing what you do when I always say, like if you can send an email, sent an email, if it got in and if it converts, great because that's it's just cheaper. It's more efficient. You have an aisle, right? But then again, if if you can't, there's other options. How do you think about that? To what extent do you think about, for example, a customer value? That's something that we have here is the question, I guess customer value high enough for certain, for certain customer that that I target my and it's a direct mail. I think it's very common to spend a lot of money for the acquisition of customers and you I think a lot of companies are really shy about investigating an existing customer and loyal customers. But if you already acquired this customer, the customer is open for communication and the relationship with you, then you don't have to shy away to investigating your customers. So you can also spend money for direct mail in the beginning of a life cycle. So the customers that we interact with your product and your service. So of course, the value of a customer at this moment maybe is a little bit lower. But if you look at these potential value of these customers, if you're investigating at the beginning of this lifetime of the customer with different communication touchpoints and different tools, and SMS company is investigating and in our relationship and I'm important to this company, then also a direct mail is worth for maybe you're more or less value customer at the beginning. I think that's a very good point. I overall, I think or what I'm seeing overall the market is that there's a shift from what you also described as a shift from new customer acquisition to what's more, CRM, new customer acquisition, getting just because it's getting more expensive, it's getting more difficult. So once you have a customer, why don't we think about how to increase lifetime value or how to make sure that we don't have to reacquire that customer down the road? So yeah, I think that's that's different things like this, overall developments in online marketing that that lead to that. But then there's also the realization it's here. It's actually extremely powerful in terms of making more out of the most out of that initial marketing investment out. Yeah, I think it's also you can see it in different business models that are really receiving great offers if you are a new customer. If a company wants to require you, but when you are a loyal customer, then you have a company so many new touchpoints to communicate with your customers. So you have, for example, a birthday or an anniversary so that are really points in your relationship with the customer. And you are normally also talking to your friends to sell for someone to the birthday. Then you are maybe sending a card and not doing that to your customers, so it's offering really great options. And also, I think for myself, on my birthday, I opened my inbox and I received thousands of emails from different companies. And that's not really the awareness for this one email of one company. But if I look in my inbox at my door and I receive maybe a flier with some nice words and nice meetings, it's much more and much longer in my mind than just an email. I think that's a very good point. I like that the idea that a longer journey like loyalty can be nurtured and no loyalty can be created through touch points where we think about how we can value the customer. I love the whole birthday birthday campaign topic, of course. Like now, I'm just showing the different things that you're doing it support. Maybe you can give it and like a bit of an overview of the other touchpoints. I really I sort of think that the whole idea of, like you said early on, like a welcome welcome touchpoint is a very, very powerful one to initiate a relationship. No. Yeah. Or, for example, when you are at the tennis auto, so as you can see here, we have a line to mating for our men's order. And I think that's also really important because you are appreciating the tennis order of a customer. So I think it's not it's not that someone is ordering and times it's the same company today. So you can always use these different touch points and you're not really thinking about that. This is a special moment for a customer, but you can make it a special moment interact with your customer. And also, if you, for example, in the upper left, you have these and some prevention or reactivation. So especially in this part of our relationship with the customer, there is not really any interaction. So the customer's not with the Website, he's not opening your email. So you have to find new ways to communicate with the customer. And especially at this point, you can send in a print meeting and he can put it on the fridge, maybe and with a nice voucher and maybe some offers that there are new brands in the shop and we really miss them. So it really. Yeah. For me, it has a higher value than just sending an email and saying, Hey, we miss you and that you can also combine it because sometimes you also have customers which are still showing interaction or engagement emails. They are not really buying. So you can also combine these two touchpoints, so sentiment email may be slipping. Or maybe also what kind of links are clicked? Is there any interaction on the website? And based on this behavior, you can trigger a print meeting. It's no order happened too fast. So they are very different options to combine these different communication tools. I like that. What I like is that you basically what you just described was churn prevention versus reactivation IT. I think a lot of companies focus too much on reactivation. So when you've already lost a customer they haven't bought in or interacted at all in three months, you just then you come back and you try to relive the kind of the feeling of the relationship that you had. But I think it's it's a lot more powerful to think about it in a more agile. Many ways say, Hey, I have the indications that I'm losing this customer that they are, they're not buying, they're not interacting here and there, but it's getting less. It's kind of breaking up and I prevent it before it has happened. And what I very often see you said, that has a big effect on performance because once you've lost them, you're starting not from scratch again, but you are. You have to rebuild a lot more than you do if you if you read the signals right through the right kind of set up and iterate fast and go for drug prevention and not reactivation. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And. Yeah. And next next point is, I think, also an interesting one, and I think it's very often underestimated is the question of format. So with direct mail, we have all these beautiful options we can do all kinds of, yeah, so simple, but you know, postcard things, but then also go crazy with with different, you know, the self mailer formats, et cetera. And I always like normally when I when we talk to customers, we tell them, Hey, you have to be tested as lots of things for every even between use cases and audience, etc. So there's different kinds of formats. They perform differently. Maybe, yeah, you can give an idea of like what what we see here, how you see the formats and what you do you when and how maybe how you got the item. Now, when you start at the beginning, so just to compare different communication tools, we saw untested print money because a lot of people saying print this that you had that at the beginning, but I can say it's not that. So we can see really an uplift of around 60 percent in conversion rates. So if you compare a classical email to a print mailing, and I think that is really, really great numbers. And when you see these numbers, then it's also worth to investigate and offline communication tools. And yeah, when you when you see that online as a as a communication tool a customer is interacting with, then you can also test on these different options to optimize even that one print, maybe. So we tried out to send out. And print mailing, enveloped and uninvolved. And we saw that in the enveloped test loop, the conversion rate even has an uplift about 40 percent, but a really, really great number. So we are decided to send out our mailings and envelope. So because it's something like more special or more personal to the customer, because if you are receiving maybe marketing stuff at home and you have totally held up different fliers in your inbox and maybe you throw it away. But if you really have an envelope print flier, you are opening it because you are interested what's in there. So that's a really good option to optimize your performance and also the conversion rate of the print mailing. And when it comes to different formats, you have to think about who you are talking with. So for example, if you are really identifying your customer group, you can try to use these customers as brand ambassadors. So you cannot just create a small flier with a voucher and miss you or thank you for your order. You can create really much more content about it, and the customer can give it to your friend and you can put it away for a friend. Thoughts on it. So you really have different options. You are in the communication style and also you are in the in the content of the mailing. So that's really great. That's really I like that. I tried to save my life. I like that. It's really interesting. It's also a balance between cost, right? Take because you have different ways of going from cheapest to more expensive options. The question is always, who do I use? What? Yeah, it says, made. Of course, it's a little bit more expensive than now. I would say normal flier. But if you're really doing the right customer group and you know, that's a performance that it's yeah, that the results are great. So why not doing different formats for different groups? So that's a possible path, and we should use these different kind of formats because also, when you are thinking about email all notification, you're also differ there in the style. So why not doing it in the print? So yeah, we agree. I always love it when it's when it's like when you say it, we're doing this in digital. Why don't we do it physically? Why? You know, we see that this works. This is a nice transition. What can we do physically? It physically, it's the question like kept to the next level is the whole topic of picture customization, I think, which is interesting, but it's also something to experiment a lot, right? Yeah, yeah, you also have the topic, you are choosing personalization as a very big thing in email marketing and also on site in your shop. So why not doing it off-line? So we tried it and it's one of our Christmas campaigns from last year. And yeah, we did the. It's not a trigger based on automated manning. It wasn't being made around Christmas. And yet we didn't be testing with our customers to send more generic Christmas missional against a more personalized or highly personalized print mailing. So, yeah, we used recommendation engine optimizers. And so it's nice based on the beginning or buying behavior of the customers. And when the customer is receiving this, maybe we really see the products reviews in the shop, or maybe maybe 50 products to the one you bought before. So that's a really, really great option to also personalize not only in name or, for example, in the voucher, but really in the different content. I think that's a very like what I like about. I mean, there's different benefits of personalization. One of them is also why it's it's powerful for the reasons that you have an email. And I think this is a similar reason because it's it's physical, but in the end, it's also customization. I think it's also very powerful, very often. To use personalization is because you said it before, like when people open their mailbox, normally they have a lot of there's a lot of useful, useful stuff and a lot of lot of uncoordinated stuff that is just dropped in everywhere and for the customer to realize this company is writing to me. You know, this is this is for me, especially, this is not for my, you know, my neighbor doesn't get this. I think that drives a different kind of performance perception. Yeah. Although that is something that, yeah, I have a feeling that the company knows about my behavior or what I like, and I'm really interested in my relationship with the company because I can send the same stuff to everyone. But as we can see on the emails, we can also see things that personally, personalization is, yeah, thinking you're always say yes, yes. I think that's that's a that's a good transition, too. Last question What's next? Maybe like some an outlook. Where do you see e-commerce going off? Like? What can you tell us? And know for us, it's always important to look at new technologies and to see what the trends and CRM, so I think one of the most important topics in the last year is artificial intelligence. So you can use it for personalization on sites, you can use it for the segmentation of emails. But maybe it also works for segmentation of prince meetings. So that one is really. So we have this topic. It's all about data since a few years. There are so many unused option to use your data and to really not use it for segmentation, but also to find different applications and new tools. And that is really our focus. So we really want to build a special relationship with our customers. So the customer really should have the feeling that, yeah, you wants to have this relationship and he wants to also investigate this relationship. And for that, you always have to find your new options or your new ways to communicate with your customer and also to make it. And you have to interact because I think especially in this digital fast-moving world, you are really, really easily bored or very quick, so you have to find your way, so interact with your customer. And I think that's the most important point we are working on. There's still a lot of potential that is unused at the moment and. I think great, great summary, I think like what what I what I always see from my experience to company is that, you know, I think the most successful in taking these steps are not only the ones that see the opportunities with different new ways of technology, new ways of interacting. And then there's lots of testing. Not everything works. Not everything is smooth. But, but I think that, yeah, what I see right away. But you also have you always have to just test and find out if it works. And maybe there is this golden key, your finding what you're testing and you can take it and make it even bigger. And if it's not working, then you try to try and find this perfect combination of communication of words or of different content. So it's it's all about testing and trying out new things.