Why Data Is Still Your Biggest Competitive Advantage

I wonder if everyone could just imagine a moment, just imagine this: you're sitting there, standing there talking with your partner, your best friend, close confidant about the latest kitchen gadget you've just discovered. You've been talking about, let's say, a Thermomix or an instant pot. And you're talking there and you feel like you two are discussing it. Then the next day, you go online. You go online. You stop browsing around and you see an ad for a Thermomix. And you, like Facebook's been listening to me, Facebook's spying on me sometimes. Because it feels out there. It's like you're in my house, you know? Same thing happened at Google. Google suddenly start showing you ads. So I've got a Google home next thing you know, there's an audio ad which just pops up in the middle of the news read about something I was just talking about with my wife the previous day. And I'm sure Google is listening to me. But they're not. They're using the data which they're collecting about all of us to make these decisions about who they're going to serve that ad to. 52,000 is the number of data points which Facebook held about each one of you, each one of its users back in 2018. That number is now over a million. Even after iOS 14, there is so much data which is out there about each one of us. That innocuous Facebook pixel which you install in your website collects data about every single user who goes through that and then stitches all that data together to form a rich tapestry about who they are, where they go to, what they do on the web, who their friends are, what their interests are, what they're looking for, to then be able to serve you that right ad at that right time. Sorry John, Justin, I don't know if you were here, we talked about that before. But this is what data does and that's a power of data that how we can use it to be able to communicate and connect with our customers in a much more meaningful way. And be able to serve them that information so that they can actually hopefully convert and buy from us. But with that, there comes a lot of responsibility as well as Spider-Man said, as Uncle Ben said actually. That with all this data which we're collecting, there's now this huge responsibility on all of us to make sure that we're responsible with that data. After all, Optus, MyDeal, MyBudget, the number of brands which have had data and privacy leaks and which has affected their brand reputation and is going to affect their sales is also growing by the day as well. So we now need to be super conscious not just about the data we're collecting and how we're using it, but also what are we doing to be able to protect that data as well and make sure that we're using it, that we as custodians of our customers data are being responsible with that as well. So I'm really excited now to be introducing this panel, a panel of marketing experts who are going to talk to you now about how they're using data, how they're using data within their organizations to be able to make those meaningful connections with their customers. So please join me in welcoming a panel of Lauren Graham from Brisbane Airport, Michelle Wu, Michelle from Forever New, and Edward Roberto from Fantastic Furniture. So to start off with, I'm just going to throw an easy one to all of you. Who are you, what do you do, and how do you use data? So I'm going to start off right at the end. Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm Lauren from Brisbane Airport Corporation. So I'm the Head of Commercial Marketing and the commercial team at Brisbane Airport manage kind of four pillars of the business, which is our retail business. We like to say we've got three shopping centers on airport, which is the domestic terminal, the international terminal, and then our own shopping precinct called Skygate with a DFO, our parking business, our e-commerce business, which a lot of that is our parking business but we do sell other things online as well. And then our property business as well, which is mainly a B2B marketing business to try and get people to move their businesses to Brisbane Airport. Hi everyone, I'm Michelle. I am Head of Digital marketing and CRM at Forever New. Most of you know Forever New as an Australian women's fashion brand. We also sell globally, so we have stores in the UK and Canada as well. So we do have that large global footprint. In my role, I use customer data, insights, and personalization to drive meaningful interactions with women around the world. My name's Edward, Head of Digital of Fantastic Furnitures. A lot of you may know us as very retail. I've got a 80 plus store network. My role there is looking after a team that looks at development and operations, UX and merchandizing, and digital marketing, and we pretty much use that across the whole business really. Fantastic. So as you can see, we've got a true panel of experts here with data. So data is a topic which I'm super excited about. You know for the longest time I've always said I'm a data driven marketer, but it was only at Uber when I realized and someone talked about SQL before. I had to learn SLQ when I worked at Uber in 2014, which really showed me that I thought I knew about data but when you actually start querying massive databases yourself as a head of marketing, you realize that, holy shit, there's a lot out there. So Big Data is something we've been talking about for a long, long time. And Lauren, do you think that with Big Data having been kind of a topic of conversation for many, many years now, that it's still just as relevant today now? Or has the wind been knocked over? Sounds a little bit by all this other talk about other technology which is emerging like crypto and AI or is it still lots more what we can do with data. I mean I don't think you can run an efficient airport without data, without lots and lots of data. It's everything from feeding the pipeline so our aviation business development team, they'll be looking at demand for certain routes and then they'll go to airlines to try and put a Brisbane route on the table to say there is demand for the market and you'll be able to fill the plane both ways in and out of Brisbane. So even from that end of the scale our terminal operations team, you literally can't do anything without knowing how many people are going to turn up the next day and go through the terminal. You look at security management lines, you look at operational lines, our retailers do staffing off the back of that. So a lot of forecasting, a lot of management comes through in terms of data. From our retail point of view, nationality data is key, particularly at the international terminal. So they know that there's a Vietnamese flight coming through that day. The Vietnamese shop very different products to the Chinese flight that comes through the next morning, very different to the next flight with the Aussies going out to Bali. So they can then move their stock but also check who's on the shop floor for those flights to make sure they've got Mandarin speakers when the Chinese are coming through, Vietnamese speakers, when the Vietnamese are coming through, etc., etc.. And then for our parking business. So I mean, we use data in a way because at the airlines you don't book with an airport. So from an airport point of view, we don't actually know you're coming to the airport today. You book with an airline, but what you might do is book your parking. And so then from our point of view, we know when you're coming, we know when you're leaving the carpark and we can then start to talk to you about other products and cross-sell you through that the travel journey into our retail business and beyond. So that's where data becomes crucial for an airport and for particularly the commercial marketing space as well. And is that data used throughout the entire organization? Absolutely, yeah. I don't think there's many teams within BSA that wouldn't be using data on a daily basis. So it's pretty important. And Edward, with your team at Fantastic Furniture, so Fantastic Furniture obviously a very prominent retailer in the furniture space. How are you using data within the marketing team specifically, how are using data to inform the campaigns which you're running, optimizing all your different platforms and things like that? Well, we utilize data across so that we make sure that we unlock efficiency and we unlock efficiency within spend and how much time. Obviously within the market that we're in at the moment, it's all about doing more with less, a bit of a buzzword that's happening at the moment. But very much we're using that and it's all about the small percentages really and it's all about saying how can I save percentage here within money or time in here and here and here, because they're all going to add up and that's all what we need to do. Especially being an EDRP retailer, you know, I can't go on those peaks and troughs because we don't really have a lot of sales periods. So I always have to look at those little one percenters for them all to add up. And for us, we really use some of that data to optimize our marketing in terms of really testing. You get a lot of data from digital platforms and that is obviously the drug that we're all on and using Facebook and Google and using all that, all their metrics. But for us to unlock our own data, we really get to benchmark and really test those metrics as well that you're getting from there. So that's really how, I guess, how we're utilizing our data. Any case studies or examples that you'd be happy to share with the audience? Not at the moment. I tried. I tried. So Michelle, so Forever New as a brand, which has been around for quite a while, a very prominent women's fashion brand in Australia and also globally as well. But it's also one which has actually really managed to stay ahead of the curve or at least moved with the tide as well in terms of actually establishing a really quite robust digital presence. Whereas I guess there are some more legacy in women's fashion brands, Australian ones, which haven't quite stayed as relevant as Forever New has managed to be. What do you put that success down to? What do you put that ability to stay up to date with what's happening in the digital world? Yeah, I think for us, so we launched here in Melbourne over 15 years ago. So we started with physical stores around Australia and that has since expanded to over 26 countries around the world through a network of online stores, concession stores, online marketplaces. So I think as a brand, we've really tried to move with the digital era and move with the new opportunities, moving into online as soon as that was available. And just really moving with that digital era. And I think with bringing in the online presence as well, we've really had to bridge that gap between online and offline and offering new omni-experiences. So things like click-and-collect, reserve in-store, driving online to offline but then also "endless aisle" which you know is offline to online. So offering those omni-experiences I think just helps us stay relevant within our industry and also merging together that online data and offline data. So introducing a loyalty program and allowing us to merge those data points together and really building that rich picture of our customer from an omni perspective. And using that data to gather insights and really understand our customer and then use that to personalize experiences. And I think it's not just marketing, it's our products teams that use the data too. They're constantly looking at what are the new trends, what is it that customers are looking for and bringing that into our designs as well. So you're using a lot of this offline data, but all the data is to able to inform the new platforms you're building. So even with some of those features, the innovation you talked about, like endless aisle, click and collect, things like that, so were they informed by data or were they more like a punt that this is going to work and let's test it? Or was it something which you found that your audience were looking for and were and were craving? So that's why you offered it? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, we do see a portion of our customers who do shop omnichannel and they also are some of our highest value customers. So we wanted to deliver experiences that would benefit them and make that shopping experience easier. We could also see that they're using online as that discovery tool before going into store so just connecting those things up. But then also from a data perspective, making sure that we can then identify them when they're going from the online to store and completing that transaction. Now, measurement is a topic which I think when we talk about data, we instantly can measure everything. I remember when Google Analytics and Urchin at the time came out. You could measure everything online. It was mind blowing to marketing teams to suddenly be able to see how many people are arriving at your website and things like that. And then it began this whole addiction to wanting to measure everything. You had to measure literally everything which happened in the business but not everything that measures that you can measure can like matters. So in your businesses, I'm going to throw this open to all of you is what do you look to measure? To be able to measure customer engagement; what are those key metrics which you are looking for within your respective businesses? Lauren? I mean, some basic ones is still the same as they were years ago. So you send an email and if your open rate is high, then obviously you're probably segmenting to the right audience. We used to have a bit more of a spray and pray approach where we would just send one email to the whole database and hope for the best and we'd make a big hit of sales off the back of it. But we've definitely moved into more smaller sends to smaller audiences who have we have different behavior for. So for instance, our FIFO market was really important to us during Covid though basically the only people coming through the airport so we know they're on a regular pattern, they're flying for seven days and they're on a week on-week off schedule. So you can very much segment that market and know who you're talking to. And if we send them a particular offer, a particular email and the open rates are high, the click through rates are high and then the sales off the back of that are high, we know we probably hit the mark with the right audience in terms of that engagement rate. So it can be as simple as things like that but as you said, you can measure a million different things in a million different ways and it's probably about cutting through and finding the best way to measure it for your business that makes sense, not just to marketing but also to the wider team. Are you identifying unique users as they come to the airport? Like me, I'm a frequent flier, so would you know how often I am coming to the airport? What are you currently doing to try to identify a user when they arrive on the on the premise? If you book your parking, we can. So that becomes very important to us. We know roughly 18% of people at the airport park at Brisbane and of those people 60% book online. So it's about a 60-40 split. So we know that when 60% of people are going to turn up to the carpark and we know as soon as that boom gate goes up, we read the license plate and we can identify that you're in the carpark. So as long as we can join all of those dots and if you're booking 2 to 3 days out, then we can start to talk to you about other things that we sell within the terminal space, but also in the e-commerce space from a travel perspective. So it starts to become more of a customer journey for us where we can start to cross-sell you into other areas as well. Great. And Edward, for Fantastic Furniture, like how are you? What are those key metrics? What are those key things, key events, key actions which you're measuring? Yeah. Very similar. We still measure those metrics that are pushing people further and then funnel whether or not it's bring them to site or once they're on the site. So I guess bringing people to site, obviously using the specific channels that are top of funnel and then seeing how many are then coming from your social platforms being top of funnel and then Google ads being lower in the funnel. And then very much once they're on the site, we kind of use this from a UX point of view is how do you help me discover, help me choose and then help me buy. And then I sort of say, okay, cool. If I look at those three sections from an e-comm point of view is like, what are the metrics that attach to that? And we then say, okay, well what metrics are attached to that, that we need to improve to then say, okay, if it's helping me choose how many people are using a specific tool to help them choose or how many people are viewing PDP as an example. And then obviously within the economy that we're in, it's a shrinking demand market. And so we're looking at things like new users because we know that we need to get more market share. So that's another metric that we're looking at the moment. Yeah. And Michelle? Yeah I think for us as well, it's looking at where the customer is in that journey and deciding what is the best metric that is going to predict a high lifetime value in future. So I think really understanding the behaviors of that customer's life cycle and deciding if it's a new audience, which engagement metrics are most valuable to then generate a higher lifetime value in future. So for new audiences things like just database sign ups and moving them through that funnel. And then once we have that shopper in there, repeating their purchases, then looking at the retention rate and kind of changing up the metric depending on where they are in journey. And women's fashion, any apparel really is probably one of those fickle industries where people will tend to substitute brands very, very quickly. So that becomes really important to kind of optimize that journey, particularly the first 90 days I find. So Edward, I'm going to ask you a question now just about data and just like how it just like optimizing the performance of different parts of the funnel. You talked about the funnel before, you talked about the journeys that your customers take through browsing and things like that. In which part of that journey do you see data having the biggest impact to be able to help you unlock more value for the business? Yeah. Look, I guess when it comes down to that, the biggest value that I can get from the data is really helping you understand and validates who your customer is and really validate also business beliefs. So speaking to our CRO agency recently, some of the things they were like, "Hey, let's test stuff that your business really believes is true." As an example, we really believe that click and collect is a really big thing for us or our regional stores is where we get a lot of business out of them because there's not much out there. And so it's about using our data and using tests and using other strategies to understand are those really true? And then also understanding, okay, cool. Well, in this changing market that we're in is who our customer is really who our customer is. And that's one of the biggest things that we get out of data because it's constantly changing. And then from that, it allows us to really set and review what our KPIs, what our benchmarks are and really understand what the real opportunity is, because that's constantly shifting. Let me really dig into like the data sources, which you are looking at a little bit. So, what are some of the data sources you're using to to inform these decisions? So obviously, we have the data source of all of the store networks that we have and all the transactions that flow out of that. So you can really understand the richness of who our customers are. I see we've got our marketing analysts there, we do a fair bit of research through our CRO agencies and through a bit of marketing research that's there. And then we do some demographic data which I probably don't see a lot of and that's more about where our stores are going to be located and so forth. And listening to the gentleman before talking about demography, I think I could relate a little bit just because of some presentations that we had at work, but that's a lot of the data that we get. So I guess, I'm exposed to a lot of that stuff that comes from the business and then I sort of take that and then put up my digital hat on and give you that lens to then say, Okay, cool. Well, based on that and based on the data that I have, what is it that I need to go into? And Michelle, looking at all the data which you're collecting about your customers and obviously, Forever New has been around for a little while now. So there's obviously a wealth of customers. And through that time, you mentioned before you make some assumptions about who your customers are in terms like who we're trying to market to. When you've looked at the data, has it ever thrown up any surprises about who your customers are? Yes. So we segment our customers based on like personal style preferences. So we've kind of undertaken these market research panels where it tells us the percentage breakdown of different personal style segments. So it can be things like glamorous, pretty, classic. So, I think we design all of our garments as well with these specific personal style segments in mind. So, the most recent market research that we conducted did show that there's been a shift in that personal style segment. And I think taking that we've changed who is our core customer and who it is that we design those garments for. So I think through things like market research, we find out things like that. And I mean we run a lot of customer feedback surveys, post-purchase surveys and I think listening to our customers is really important and that survey data, because a lot of our data tells you like 'the what' but it doesn't really answer 'the why'. So I think listening to our customers, it really helps us to answer why are they shopping with us? So an area that we really focus on is the energy. So what is that customer actually shopping for? Like they're buying a dress, but why are they buying a dress? So it's for some quite interesting information around that and it's changing quite a lot month on month. So yeah just changing the products offering based on. That and is that through surveys, qualitative interviews? How are you collecting? Post-purchase online surveys. Yeah. Fantastic. Now I'm going to go into like the nuts and bolts now. We are here in the Emarsys event, a fantastic event. But I want to talk a little bit more now specifically about CRM. So Lauren, obviously you've talked about this a little bit before, that you've got so many different data sources from how many people are going to the terminal each day or the flights, their arrival times, all those different things. Can you tell also a little bit about how are you connecting this to Emarsys, to your CRM platform? What are you doing, how are you connect it and what are you using it for? Yeah, I have to say, when I was asked to be on this panel, I felt like we are very early in the journey still. I'm definitely sitting among people that have been on this journey for a bit longer and probably be more sophisticated. But I think we do have a lot of different data points, but as I was saying before, it's anonymous data. We don't know who that person is and we can't connect to that dot. What we can do is go through the booking engine that we've got we know those people are coming and we get basic information like first name, last name, email address, which we've always been pushing through to an email platform. I think what what the beauty is actually being able to connect that within Emarsys, but it gives us an ability to not just email the people that are opted in. So of those people that do connect with the airport, we get about 10% of people that opt in for email, but that means 90% of people are still on the table that we can't we previously haven't been able to talk to you through our CRM provider and what Emarsys has allowed us to do is start to use things like digital ads because we still want to talk to those people. We know that they're coming to the airport, we can cross-sell them into other categories and that allows us to then use things like Facebook and Google and talk to them in that way. So I would say we've managed to come a long way in the last 12 months, but we've still got a long way to go in terms of joining all the dots and feeding it all in. But I think that we're on this journey and it's really exciting to see what the next 12 to 24 months looks like as we start to feed more and more data points into Emarsys. Fantastic. Edward, at an organisation like Fantastic Funiture, which is a bit of a legacy brand, it's been around for quite a while. So similar to Forever New as well. How have you been able to change those perceptions about data throughout the organization? How have you been able to get teams aligned around data to foster better collaboration? Between like creative, marketing, analytics, digital. Yeah. I guess it's a bit of a journey. Look, I've only been with the business for about 18 months and Fantastic Furniture is quite a legacy brand. It's 35 years strong and saying that digital has grown a lot in the past 3 or 4 years at Fantastic. So even before I got there and it's been exponential and in saying that, it's about really keeping it simple. When I talk to the other teams because you can throw a whole lot of metrics at them, you can throw in all these dashboards and you can throw all this stuff and then you'll be like, "wuhh?" but at the same time, it's sort of like, how can I relate it back to them? How can I tell their story and how is it going to benefit them? I'm constantly having to do that. I had the pitch for us. We had a recent project where we had to we decoupled a website, so we have a headless commerce. And for me to do that, I had to present all of these metrics and all the benefits towards our board and to our C-suite. And I really had to go down to 15 page deck to like a 10 page deck to like could just give me highlights in about three pages and I had to squeeze all that data in and how I'm presenting that. And so it really is about keeping it simple who your audience is and seeing and whether they can get value of what you're presenting. Fantastic. Now, final question for all of you, what advice do you have for the brands who are here today to get smarter about how they use data to be more impactful in their business? So I'm going to start with you, Michelle. So I think with the privacy changes coming up and I think we need to futureproof the data that we have and be resilient to the changes that are coming up. And I think coming up with strategies to start collecting zero party, first party data to I guess retain that understanding of the customer and I think we're going to start losing more of the data that we have whether it's third parties and I think collecting more of that first party. Edward? I would agree with that. I think the way you can get smarter is obviously building your own database. The death of cookies that are coming, but then also the efficiency that you can get out of first party data. But then I guess it's really just linking it back to the objectives that you have. And because it's always about the what question you're trying to answer rather than just trying to get through all this data because you can get that. And I frequently go through that when somebody wants to learn about analytics as an example, everybody thinks there's this magic template to say you need all of these metrics, but it's all about like, what is the question that you're trying to answer? And that's really what it comes down to when it comes down to how you become smart with data is what is the question and the objective you're trying to answer rather than the data itself. Love that. And finally, Lauren. Yeah, mine's probably a combination of the two. I agree with the future proofing because I think what you do now, you need to also think about what your plan is in the e-commerce space in five years time and make sure that you're covering yourself for that. But I think also just collect what you need. If you don't need the data, there's no reason in collecting it because from a customer point of view, that's annoying. But also from your point of view, that opens you up a lot more to risk. So we're looking at being at duty free, for instance we've launched which is a click and collect website with our duty free provider. Duty Free has to collect passport numbers as part of the legislation requirements around duty free. But we said, please do not pass that information to us. We don't want it. You need to delete it straight away because that puts a risk on our business in having it, and we're actually not going to use that data for anything. So I think it's just about being smart with what you're collecting and make sure that there is a reason for every single thing that you've got coming through and that you're pulling through to your systems as well. Fantastic. On that note, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. And thank you to our fabulous panel, Lauren, Michelle and Edward.