Lunch and Learn: Revolutionizing Customer Retention, AO’s Blueprint for Building Trust, Authority and Loyalty

Our next session is going to talk about revolutionizing customer retention, specifically AO's story and their blueprint for building trust, authority and loyalty. If you haven't encountered AO, you should know that they've been a trusted online retailer in Britain for well over two decades and now are the UK's market leader in major domestic appliances. They actually own 16% of the total market share and 30% of the online share, which I think is interesting probably for this audience. And that's all down to this relationship that's centered around the relationship with their customer and that strategy that drives that. So we're going to spend the next session talking about how AO has elevated its approach to its customer experience and transformed the way they're using customer data to really build closer, more loyal relationships with our customers. And the fun part of our speakers today is they've actually been working on the strategy for AO together for the last three years. So I think they're going to make quite a dynamic duo. We have the privilege to be joined by Craig Hogan-Farnworth, who's the head of CRM at AO. He is joining us live from AO's headquarters in Bolton, which for those perhaps not as familiar with the geography is, Greater Manchester. He's been with AO for six years, so he's got a rich amount of knowledge about the company. And he leads the team in designing and executing effective CRM strategies. His partner in crime, is the strategic consultancy team lead for EMEA at Emarsys, Ellie, who is here in the UK. She's been with us for over five years, working alongside our customers to transform their marketing strategies and personalize engagements with customers, and brings a wealth of perspective to the conversation. So it's my very great pleasure to hand things over to Craig and Ellie. Right. Thank you so much, Sarah. And thank you, Craig, for joining me here today. Craig, do you want to get started? And just to kick off with a bit of an introduction to AO as a brand and why we started working together in the first place? Yeah. So I can do. So thank you for the intro. You've got quite a bit, which is really good. So I think we've got a wide audience attending today, so, yeah, AO, we've been around for almost 25 years now. We do have, a really good partnership with Emarsys over the last 4 or 5 years, which has really allowed us to kind of challenge ourselves and delve into our kind of key issues, our key problem areas within our email channel and with our CRM channel. Our overall message, you'll see across all else AO's marketing, we are the UK's most trusted electrical retailer. We pride ourselves on now about being really customer focused and having the best customer journey within our industry. As I was listening briefly to the previous presentation about, interesting about Covid being, a quite a positive thing. And it was for AO as well because we don't have any stores. We're not customer facing where we have stores in the high street here in the UK. We're all online. We have a lot of our partners who do, but we don't. So to try and, put a face behind a brand, face in front of the brand is quite a challenge. But, something we do really well, we continue to do really well with the support of Emarsys across the strats team, which has been fundamental to where we're at currently. Absolutely. And I've had the pleasure of being able to come up to very sunny Bolton, just yesterday for a workshop with you and the team. But we've been working together now for over three years now, to help you adopt your channels, but also execute your really ambitious strategy. And as you've mentioned, like what really struck me as a business, AO you really do truly live and breathe. Your experience for the customer, to maintain your really high trust pilot school, but also to build loyalty with your base. And that starts from the really competitive prices you offer and the services for the smooth delivery. But it also really continues into how you plan to execute your CRM and how you want speak with customers as well. So as I mentioned, we've been doing workshops with you for the past few years, and this has really helped us understand some of your challenges that you are facing. Many marketers in the industry now know growing zero and first party data is key to the success of your brands. Increasing product relevancy was also a big thing that came out of the workshops that we've done, because you've got such a broad breadth of range. How do you speak to customers at the right time with the right product? And also how do you keep them engaged throughout quite a long sales cycle? You know, you're not going to be buying a washing machine super regularly. So you want to give them a great experience, but also give them reasons to come back and engage with you as a brand. Is there anything else you want to add to that Craig? Yeah, it's all the points that are on the screen as the main challenge is to do very close-linked together for us at AO. The range of products we sell, we do sell several thousand products on the previous screen that that was displayed. Quite a lot of what we sell is distressed. So people who maybe had a kitchen appliance that's given up, it's broken, something that you need on a basis. We do the very next day delivery thing really, really well so we can fulfill next day delivery on a range of products. Or major electrical products or major domestic appliances. One of our main challenges is how we then get people into our breadth of range? How do we tell people that we. Because you've had a really good experience on one major product we sell. Several thousand other things that you could get a competitor's on the high street. So by increasing product relevance, when a customer onboards with us through our welcome journey, that is something we've worked really closely with strats team at Emarsys on how we can use the data that's available against the customer's order, or maybe what our customers have been browsing online, through what they give us on, on on certain, we'll go into web channels shortly. But what they give us information, what we can utilize. And that all that really comes with targeted campaigns with really editorial, engaging content, which is one of the points on there. So not everybody's going to be in a sales environment, giving it a sales period or in the market for something. And while we keep them engaged by not just driving sales, then that and the customer's role is really, really important. And that builds right into our customer activation, on how we can keep more customers active in our database for a longer period of time. By understanding a little bit more. So all these challenges really are closely linked together. And fundamentally keep us on our toes. Yeah. And this led us to identify three key areas that we wanted to focus on over the past few years. You've got a fairly large marketing team, so we've been able to build a roadmap for them to basically execute across there and make sure that your team keeps actually delivering value for the business. So number one was lead generation with web channel. We identified there was a missing opportunity and the majority of your customers were coming into the space through your checkout. However, you know, there was a large pool of people who were probably coming to you through shopping when they were searching for their next washing machine. But you actually never had an opportunity to sell to them relevantly. So we wanted to make sure that we were capturing people who were coming to your site. Secondly, we identified the opportunity to beat competition with automation. So identifying more customers enables us to map out those customer moments that matter to you as a brand, whether it be from leads, first time buyer or first time buyer to repeat. And secondly, sorry. And thirdly, was a call to action with an email template toolbox, which what does this mean? Basically, we identified that there was a huge opportunity to update the AO template to really, speak to what the customer was looking for and drive more click and site traffic engagement. But we'll get into all of that in a little bit more detail. Craig, I think this was really underpinned by how we work together. I think the main benefit I see from working with my clients and working with the project teams that we've got behind us is actually like the project management side of it. And actually being able to deliver a roadmap that helps you be successful in your teams by using the technology. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think one of one great thing and why we've been strategic partner of the Emarsys for a few years now is we're very open about our challenges. On the previous page, just one of the one of many. But we're also more than happy to be challenging Emarsys to do that really well for us. They challenge us on certain things we may be doing wrong, maybe something we want to trial. We're not afraid to trial things. But the middle point about how we beat the competition with automation. It's how flexible automations can be within the Emarsys platform is a really big bonus for us. We can send customers down multiple different types of automation, omnichannel automation, including, social, direct mail channels and SMS channels. So, just because a customer is not interacting with a certain form of marketing, email isn't for everyone. But by overlaying engagement and purchase data with demographic data, which we have available to us, allows us to put through people through smart and more, relevant automation to hopefully the end goal to convert and getting them where they are. So that's a really big one for us. But, you know, Emarsys get it when we have our sessions together, which is really important to us. It's made for a very exciting project. So as I mentioned, we kicked off with lead generation with web channel. So our studio services team have built up these templates, which essentially have understood that capturing just email isn't really enough. And there's a huge opportunity at that point when someone's engaging with you to have a bit of a value exchange and essentially understand the mission and why they've come to AO.com. We had some great sessions and I think understanding, as you mentioned, Craig, the majority of your customers have probably come to you because they bought a broken appliance. But also there's a large pool of people who are renovating, or they're buying a gift or they're preparing for school to work. And, we are just, I guess, to caveat, we've launched with email and we're about to go live with what's on screen. So, just by launching the email sign up, we managed to drive with you 14% uplift on your opt in database. And we're about to go live with this progressive profiling, which is really exciting. But why is that important to you? What do you plan to do with this data once you understand that someone's renovating or that a distressed customer? Yeah, it sounds fantastic. And we can see that 40% uplift, it is brilliant for us. We still got an email address at that point. Nothing really much else to help us if you're a new customer or a known customer to AO. But what this allows us to do, going forward is to really put customers through a more relevant, personalized welcome journey, even if we know a snippet of information about these customers. It gives us the opportunity to target and to show more relevant information based on what our customers and a moment is in their life, whether it's renovating, whether it's gifting around peak trading time periods of towards Christmas time. You know, that allows us to really give some insights and put that in the welcome program. I'm a massive advocate of home. The more you know about someone, the more a customer feels like you get them. And I think we have philosophy at AO. We want to know our customers. So even at a very early stages of our customer's AO journey, before they come into a purchase and transactional journey. If we're able to get a little bit more information about them, we can tell that welcome journey. And again, use the automated tools available in Emarsys to allow us to trial that through different channels. Absolutely. And that leads us nicely to once we've identified more customers, it also instantly opens up the opportunity to speak to them. And through automation, it's really clear when someone's coming to you and they're trying to buy a washing machine, it's actually quite a difficult task knowing that, how it will fit with, which features you want. And I think automation has been a paramount to you as a brand, being able to deliver on your promise of being trusted advisors to your customers. And also, we know that the majority of your customers are purchasing washing machines initially, but then there's a huge opportunity within your welcome program. You've already alluded, Craig, that we've worked on this quite closely with you to make sure that you're- I mean, actually, maybe why don't you tell us how it's improved the customer journey for you? There's two aspects of it. There's customers who you can cross-sell using automation within multiple types of products. I can say we are a customer facing organization. So, you know, … For us in terms of showing our breadth of range. We also sell within that category. There's over 250 types of washing machine that you can buy. A washing machine, let's be brutally honest, it's not the most exciting product in the world. It does a job somewhere integrated in a kitchen, behind a door, somewhere unsure. But there are multiple different technologies within washing machines. Our customer may or may not know about that can first of all, make it quicker for customers to put cycles on, there's Wi-Fi connected. You can put your washing on from your car or your desk if you want to. But you also then can save money with energy efficient appliances. So what that allows us to do we get more information out of a customer. We can tailor these welcome journeys and ultimately use things like buying guides and be really detailed into our customers. Gaining more information we can help one of the customers in that sort of, initial purchase period, they're in a discovery phase of the purchase. These are 5 to 6 hundred pound products. It's not something you're going to buy just in the wind. So it's really, really important that we understand that. And we show we understand that to our audience. Absolutely. And your automated results really speak volumes. Because, 45% of your revenue being driven by automation really takes the pressure off the teams as well. That's down to relevance. It's how we work as a team. Within CRM here, about how we can use relevant content to help and increase that conversion of a customer. And ultimately back to the very beginning, if we understand the customer engagement trust, which is fundamentally our business. Absolutely. And finally, we look to improve the call to action within an email template toolbox, essentially enabling the AO team to speak more relevantly to their customers. The email template, you know, what's possible with an email has really accelerated over the past few years. And so from a technical standpoint, but also a strategic, standpoint, that was just a really good opportunity here for a bit of a refresh to drive tech engagement and also site traffic. I think what was really interesting, digging into your customer profiles with you is that we identified there was some really key information that your customers seek and desire before making a purchase, whether it's the saving or social proof from other people or they really want to know about the product features. This was all stuff that we basically took and evaluated your email template and just made sure that you were firstly showing the right information to the customer, but also actually being able to understand how much, what people were engaging with as well. How does your team now use the template, how they found it improved the productivity of the team and the engagement as well? Yeah. I mean, the engagement results speak for themselves, first of all. So we had a, I'd say good engagement number against email. But we saw opportunity how we could significantly increase that. Email is a very small window of opportunity in terms if you look at a whole kind of read rate, how long, how many seconds a customer reads an email. You have a very limited window to get their attention, particularly if you're in a really busy kind of industry and your inbox is full of competitors. So I think for us, we wanted to use the templates. We increased that CTAs from three. So we had pulled in emails where you could click three times to a CTA, maybe the title of the product. This now allows us up to nine points of click within each email. And each point can be more relevant to a certain type of demographic customer. So by that I mean some customers are more led by energy efficient. So we show energy rating on a particular product, particular on a lot of Indians, a TV example, which, is still got multiple generations. But, you know, if you get the right product, you can save yourself thousands over the course of the first five years. But it's also ultimately pays for the product. Reviews really, really important to people. So they want to know they're getting the right products and they see, you know, if this got 4.7 out of 5 and that's really that's a good rating or hundreds maybe, you know, even a good quality product, the promotion times, which is at the top there in red, that allows us to have up to four of those on this spot, which may be something like it includes additonal bonus of 10% off. So it really allows us to add more relevant information, which are core kind of USP, why you should buy this product in a small space. These render really well on mobile which is you know again what lot of businesses do best practice to build mobile first. So, it's key why we increased our email engagement by such a number. But we challenge ourselves, right? We're still challenging themselves. Are these the right thing to do? Should we display things in a slightly different manner? But Emarsys' fully aware of that. So, we'll keep chasing you down to fix it. Yeah. And I think that's exciting, what's really exciting about this, as well as I think it's really helped you stretch how you use the product recommendation tool as well. Like your team are now also testing using a product finder, like what additional information you should be bringing into AI recommendations. So, you know, I think, starting small within the email template and then seeing how you can utilize other features within the platform. It's been really great to watch and it's been a real evolution. So the results speak volumes. Oh, sorry just before we move on, just sorry I'm looking at time, but we also have the challenge of Data Mall We have a high adoption of Data Mall, which I'm pretty sure has been discussed in this afternoon's, or this morning, depending on where you are. All these we look at that in terms of how we could adapt and still get across and multiple points of click across using Data Mall that's again something we consider, throughout what we've redesigned the "pods" with new concepts. Because that is for us we're seeing that grow… The email templates constantly evolving in terms of what's possible. And it's just been really great to see your team lean in and adopt the new capabilities. What's also amazing about your brand is how playful you are in your tone of voice, and that gives you so much opportunity within email campaigns to engage your customer. So again, working with our services team, the team got creative. One of the challenges has been, as you mentioned, around cross-sell. And also, you know, identifying when someone could be interested in another category. So ideas like, 'what kind of barista are you, Simon?' Or 'Oops, I don't drink coffee. How about other gadgets for the morning?' All these tools have really, you know, they were really fun and exciting as a team to be able to concept. And it's also been great to see some of these rolled out. How do your team approach targeting customers? Because all of this ultimately feeds data. Then you can lead into segmentation. Yeah, it certainly does that every click point or every email send is obviously going to get a certain interactions and information about how to segment moving forward. The great thing about a lot of these examples is that we use them when we know customers not necessarily market. So we can be more playful with our languages. You know, using personalization, first name, a lot of these don't show prices. They're more engaging, kind of fun style of language. But also, you know, we see that price is ultimately important. So, yeah, if we know customers interested or not interested in coffee or aren't interested in coffee, it allows us then to build segmentation and put them in targeted automation. And that's not just on these examples. There's just dozens of these type of examples that we use. But I think for us, it's just really important that we still have our tone of voice. Again, we're not customer facing. We don't have stores, so it's important that we carry that across. Show that we understand customers and continue with that relevant journey. But, yeah, these are great. We rely on these, and the performance of these is really good. Fantastic. And I think the results really speak volumes for the collaboration between our teams. With our platform expertise, but your teams, what your teams know about the business, it's really helped to deliver experience that resonates well with your customers. And again, this really shows in the results. So I'm personally from my side, really proud of what we've been able to do together as a team. So thank you for your openness and your partnership in the collaboration. And being able to achieve these results. I'm really, looking forward to what we're going to be able to do next year as well. So yeah, I completely agree. And it's a big thanks to the team of Emarsys that understand our business challenges. We see Emarsys as kind of as an extension of our CRM team. So, we have a lot of account managers come and sit with us on a monthly basis to understand where we're currently. The numbers do speak for themselves, but we can't rest where we are. Email is constantly changing. We need to consider all the channels, through SMS. We need to, you know, things like WhatsApp, everything that's coming really, in our industry. What are the market leaders and what we do for that? So yeah, great results. But we can improve on them. And we will improve them over the next 12 months. So by continue to challenge ourselves and be challenged, which is, I think, a great collaboration so to have. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And yeah, if anyone else, listening is interested in working with the service team, feel free just to reach out to CSM. But yeah, thank you again for joining me today. Thank you both, Craig and Ellie. I think that was fascinating. We've got a couple things,1 or 2 that come in. I'm conscious, we're getting tight on time, but I think it'd be nice to pick up 1 or 2 of them. Craig, this first one's for you. The most powerful assets to transforming any organization are, frankly, the people. Right? So do you have any advice you could share for marketing leaders on empowering team members throughout your teams? Yeah, it's it's very straightforward for us here. I manage a team of 12 CRM specialists with AO and just this recently in the last two days, and again, this is a good example because it's the workshop with Emarsys. When we kick off new projects here, we have in the past just had heads of or senior management. We like to delve in a little bit more and make sure every extended member of the team is involved in projects, to have them really involved and engaged from the off. Now, that doesn't mean they'll be involved in every step of the project, but then they're fully a level at that stage, then fully align what we want to achieve over the next coming months 12 months, six months, whatever that might be. So for me, it's the big key is keeping the team engaged with what we want to achieve or for the goals of the project. I've got people who don't necessarily work on that particular silo or CRM. Then one person might work on one part of CRM. If they know the project, they feel like they can come to me and say, I've got an idea. Yeah, I've got an idea on how we could improve that different area. And we had one just a couple of weeks ago, which went up to executive level at AO and it was it was loved. But if we don't give people our platform and kind of ability to feel they could be involved, that'll never happen. So yeah, very simple. Just have a really engaged team, but allow them to be engaged, at the early stages. Thank you. Craig, I think that's really good and important advice. I've got one more for you, and then I'll let you escape. You've been working with Ellie now and the strats team for some time. What's the biggest learning, or change to how you were doing things in the past that was uncovered during this partnership? I think it's the ability to be open and to be challenged. I think, Emarsys do that really well. They are expert in the field and they work with many of the different brands that are not necessarily in our industry. Listen, we don't claim to do the right thing, we're doing the right thing that we feel is now, but the great thing about Emarsys is that because they can come in and look at what we do with outside eyes, if we're really detailing the brand and how it should feel. They challenge us and say, "why not try this, why not try that?" And I think that's really important. I think it's a partnership moving forward. If you're both on the same page with that, but the suggestions that we have on some projects are not necessarily what Emarsys agree with and I think the team and I know Ellie and the guys are more than comfortable to challenge us. But I'd like to think it's because we're open enough to be challenged, and not just to kind of say, No. We're doing the AO way, that's it. And I think that just leads to us ultimately going to the right result. Wonderful. Well, that feels like a very positive note to to wrap things up on. So Craig, Ellie, thank you again so much for your contributions. I think this is another really great session. If anybody would like to connect again you'll find QR codes on the screen. To their LinkedIn connections. And I'm sure if you have any questions that we weren't able to get to you, they would both be delighted to talk to you 1 to 1. And Ellie, Craig, thank you again for joining us today.