While accessing a recurrent revenue stream and a loyal customer base are solid advantages of subscription-based businesses, there’s plenty more to explore—from complementary brand relationships to mapping customer journeys to re-marketing to former customers. Following are five takeaways, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant, for businesses that rely on subscriptions as a key source of revenue.

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“With everything that’s happening in privacy right now, and how the media landscape is changing, your first-party and your zero-party data become at the center of communicating with your community or your consumers. And that’s why we really nurture this program.”

—Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer, e.l.f. Beauty

Chopra is referring to e.l.f.’s Beauty Squad in the quote above, a loyalty program that boasts an impressive three million members. The brand’s success on social media, which includes creating TikTok’s first viral campaign and becoming the first beauty brand to launch on the app BeReal, can be attributed to community listening followed by swift action, Chopra explains.

“e.l.f. really listens to their community. And once we get a signal, we lean in,” Chopra says. “We tend to take more risks than some of the other brands do. That’s one key differentiator. And we are not afraid to go into channels, partner with people, and be authentic to those channels.” Chief Marketer spoke with the digital chief about the benefits of loyalty programs, managing personalization at scale, keeping up with the speed of digital, and more.

Chief Marketer: How do you account for e.l.f.’s success on TikTok? What’s working for you that other brands can learn from?

Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer, e.l.f.: It’s grounded in who we are. First of all, e.l.f. is a bold disruptor with a kind heart. Disruption is in our DNA. We listen to our community; our boots are on the ground. Back in 2019 when TikTok was just starting to come up, we did a small test, and it gave us the signal that our community is actually there. We leaned into that signal and partnered with an expert in TikTok, and [created] the most viral campaign that TikTok has ever seen, our #eyeslipsface challenge. Now we are a TikTok “billionaire” multiple times.

The key thing there is, e.l.f. really listens to their community. And once we get a signal, we lean in. We tend to take more risks than some of the other brands do. That’s one key differentiator. We are not afraid to go into channels, partner with people, and be authentic to those channels. Sometimes brands just want to dive in, but they don’t lean into this ecosystem of people that actually know how those channels operate. Once our community tells us that you need to be here, we don’t wait. We want be the first ones. The same thing happened with BeReal. We are the first beauty brand on [the platform]. Then everybody else followed.

CM: Talk a little bit about your Beauty Squad and how you nurture that community.

EC: Beauty Squad is our loyalty program, essentially. Currently we have a little bit over three million loyalty members. With everything that’s happening in privacy right now, and how the media landscape is changing, your first-party and your zero-party data become at the center of communicating with your community or your consumers. And that’s why we really nurture this program. Our program rewards our consumers not just for shopping with us, but also for shopping with other retailers. They can choose different types of rewards. On our app, 95 percent of our shoppers are Beauty Squad members, so we know that from a shopping experience perspective, that is our most engaged consumer. And it is also about giving us feedback. We learn a lot from them.

CM: How do you approach creating a personalized customer experience at scale?

EC: We invested in ActionIQ’s CDP way before the privacy landscape was even starting to change. For us, leveraging and harnessing the power of data is very important. When you think about personalization, it is your data, right? When it comes to Beauty Squad, that’s the most engaged consumer that’s giving you information about who your consumer is, what they like, what they don’t like. [It’s about] leveraging the power of a CDP and then surfacing up insights that can then help us create the right content for the right people, the right messaging across all channels. And then ensuring that the consumer is not wasting their time, they get the information that’s going to be relevant and our brand shows up the best that it can. The CDP is what’s helping us power that.

CM: As a digital-focused company with so many different products and launches, how do you keep up with it all?

EC: Digital is always changing. You’re on shaky ground all the time. Number one, it takes the whole organization being digitally-centric and data-driven. Because if it is only one person talking about it, it doesn’t go anywhere. There is an alignment at an organization-level that’s needed. Number two, for me personally, I like to focus on learning from others. You partner with like-minded people, whether it be other companies that are doing amazing things or the insights that you’re learning, and then building an organization that can activate those insights into actions. [It’s] bringing those insights to the organizations externally, leveraging what you’re learning internally through the data that you have, and building an action-oriented team that can actually deliver and focus on speed—because doing it with quality and speed is really important. You have to balance both.

Digital is a constant muscle of testing and learning, and then quickly leaning in when you see that something is working. TikTok was a great example of that. We didn’t wait a year before we got any approvals or anything. It’s about leaning in once you see a signal—and leaning in hard and quickly.

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Loyalty programs can unearth a treasure trove of first-party customer data. One brand that’s capitalized on the tactic is quick-serve restaurant Noodles & Company, whose marketing department overhaul included a revamp of its rewards program. Read about how and why the company transitioned to a points-based offering, according to a piece in AdExchanger, as well as additional positive outcomes of the upgrade.

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A global pandemic has turned consumers’ attention toward the value of a robust, healthy immune system. And as a result, ingesting foods that support that health—like probiotics—has become increasingly important for many.

“Because of the pandemic, almost 30 percent of consumers are consuming more functional foods and beverages—and the probiotics category has benefited a lot from that tailwind,” says Kallie Goodwin, Vice President of Family & Wellness Brands at Danone NA. So when it came time to launch its new probiotic-packed product, Activia+, the brand leaned into immunity as a hook.

We spoke with Goodwin about marketing its latest product launch, and how it partnered with retailer shopper marketing programs, tapped influencers to court a younger demographic and leveraged scientific research to support its health claims.

Chief Marketer: What are Activia’s overall marketing strategy and communication objectives? And how do they connect to the new Activia+ campaign?

Kallie Goodwin, Vice President of Family & Wellness Brands at Danone NA: As we’re talking to our consumers, we know how important your gut is to your overall health and wellness. And we know that a lot of the body’s systems are connected to the gut. Our original A to Z, “Your gut is where it all begins” campaign, is anchored in that insight. It helps educate primarily our female target that how you feel on the inside impacts how you feel on the outside, “from active to zealous.” It empowers you to be your best self.

So when we developed and were looking at launching our Activia+ Multi-Benefit Probiotic product, which offers both the probiotic benefit from Activia through our superior probiotic strains as well as an immunity benefit delivered through vitamin C, D and zinc, we wanted to continue that communication strategy with the A+ Feels ad, using the same kind of creative tone and style—the sing-songy, highly-visual approach.

We know immunity is top of mind for consumers right now, obviously, with the pandemic. A lot of consumers are looking for immunity benefit in their foods, and 44 percent of consumers are interested in yogurt to help support their immune system. We wanted to launch it in a really big way, and we knew that leveraging our existing creative idea, which they’ve seen for the last 18 months, would help instantly communicate to consumers.

CM: Besides TV advertising, what channels have you used to market the new product?

KG: We looked at a variety of channels, but are focused on video, in television and online, to drive awareness so that people know about the product and to drive them to the shelf. But it’s not just television. We also have a robust conversion program driving trial and conversion at shelf with coupons, both digital and print, and in-store promotion tactics.

CM: What shopper marketing tactics are you using? How are you cutting through the clutter?

KG: It’s a two-pronged approach. The first is working specifically with every customer team to marry our trade program. So, promoting and getting the right feature and display on the product. At the same time, it’s integrating into that retailer’s shopper programming. Whether it’s Publix or Kroger, each has their own mechanics and rich shopper data for them to reach their customers, and so it’s about leveraging those programs to make sure we’re reaching the Kroger shopper the way they’re used to being reached, through their loyalty card, ads targeted specifically to them through the Kroger retail media group, etc. We have a robust program specific to each customer. That’s one tactic.

For the second, we layer on national consumer promotion tactics by working with a partner like Quotient, where we’re delivering digital coupons through a coupons.com-type platform that also can connect into specific retailers, but more at a national level. We’re trying to give consumers a reason to try us through a discount in the way in which they’re used to receiving those discounts.

CM: What are the consumer insights that this campaign is based on?

KG: We’ve seen that—because of the pandemic—almost 30 percent of consumers are consuming more functional foods and beverages and the probiotics category has benefited a lot from that tailwind. Activia, however, has been outpacing the probiotic category because of our superiority as the number one probiotic and the number one recommended probiotic by doctors. So when thinking about how to expand Activia as a brand anchored in the gut health space, immunity was just a natural place to go next. Seventy percent of your immune system actually lives in your gut. And as I mentioned before, we know that consumers are looking for foods to help support their immune system.

How do we go about doing it? The consumer we’re trying to reach, this healthy go-getter who is a younger millennial consumer, is looking for multiple benefits in their products. So rather than just a standalone immunity benefit, we wanted to bundle it with our existing Activia probiotic and then use vitamins and minerals to help deliver that immune system support.

Then there are other trends that we’re also aware of and incorporating into this, which is additional scrutiny on sugar. Sugar has replaced fat as the biggest dietary demon and a lot of consumers, particularly this younger millennial, are really mindful about sugar. Each bottle of Activia+ only has nine grams of sugar and 70 calories. So all in, when you combine the functional benefits of the product with this delicious, convenient format, it makes it a winner in our book.

CM: How are you appealing specifically to younger generations through your marketing tactics?

KG: In two ways: in tone and personality and in look and feel. We don’t want to be—and we’re not anymore—the old Activia for your mom. We know that a lot of that is just how we show up. Are we showing up in a modern, vibrant way? And that is the beauty of the A to Z campaign. It shows a variety of different women, a variety of different body styles, all living their best lives in an active way that has this very youthful energy.

The second way is in diversifying our media mix and leveraging influencers to help us tell our story to a younger audience. In 2021, we partnered with Iskra Lawrence, an outspoken influencer, model and younger, new mom. That’s going to continue to be part of our strategy moving forward. Are we partnering with the right influencers that are helping us show up to those younger demographics?

CM: What are the biggest challenges for marketers looking to cut through the clutter in the wellness space today?

KG: There are two that keep me up at night. One you’ve already highlighted: cutting through the clutter. There are so many different options in health and wellness. There’s constantly new brands coming to market with different benefits—some of them more backed in science than others, if I’m being honest. In that case, we rely on the superiority of Activia and the fact that we are the number one doctor-recommended probiotic to help us in that superiority effort. But still, it’s a very busy media landscape. We spend a lot of money on Activia as a percentage of our total yogurt marketing budget because we want to make sure that we’re cutting through that clutter with a really clear message.

The second one is more specific to a brand like Activia in the health and wellness space. You have to make sure that you have the science and are constantly reminding consumers of that superiority, but it has to be in a way that’s very subtle so that we’re not seen as medicinal. [We want to be] seen as a proactive part of people’s health and wellness and not a reactive one—like, “I take this when I don’t feel good” kind of thing. So as we’re on our journey to modernize and be our target’s ally in a proactive health and wellness way, we have to walk that line.

The post Danone NA VP Talks Activia+ Product Launch Within the Wellness Space appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The editors of Chief Marketer, Event Marketer, and AdExchanger are pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Top Women in Marketing Awards. The winners were announced live last night at the Top Women in Marketing Awards celebration during Women in Events Week.

Congratulations to Pia Barlow, EVP of Originals Marketing at HBO Max, who took home the highest honor of the evening, The Marketer of the Year Award. Check out the full list of honorees here and learn more about their inspiring accomplishments this past year.

A special thanks to the amazing panelists who joined us for candid discussions during the event, making the experience even more unique and inspiring.

“Getting to learn more about the finalists in this year’s inaugural Top Women in Marketing program has been a master class in marketing,” says Jessica Heasley, Group Editor & Publisher at Chief Marketer. “This talented collective of women represents the kind of leadership, fortitude and creativity that kept this industry moving forward in a time of unprecedented challenges. We congratulate all of this year’s finalists and winners, and celebrate all women in marketing for their accomplishments this year.”

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Throughout the pandemic we’ve seen a rise in the demand for subscriptions—up 41 percent, according to research from Ordergroove—as an effective way to build customer relationships and provide value. Following are ways in which subscription programs can improve the customer experience, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant.

Personalize the Shopping Experience

Use customers’ purchase history to match the right products to the right shopper. This data can also be used to manage communications and time them appropriately with artificial intelligence technology.

Prove Value Through Cost Savings

Providing discounts for subscribers helps to build brand relationships. Offering greater savings the more a customer buys or introducing reward and loyalty programs that include opportunities for discounts are effective tools.

Streamline the Purchase Process

Focus on providing a customer experience that’s as seamless as possible. Allow customers to easily update account information to build trust and provide a sense of control, and give users the opportunity to subscribe at checkout. Having the ability to change and update subscriptions will help mitigate “flavor fatigue,” or the sense of boredom customers might feel from purchasing the same products again and again.

For more ways to enhance subscription programs, read further in Multichannel Merchant.

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Chief Marketer’s Marketers on Fire content series showcases some of the world’s most innovative executives making all the right moves. Our conversations in 2021 have covered Doug Scott’s commitment to nurturing brand equity and word-of-mouth marketing at Twitch, Suzanne Fanning’s community-building strategy at Wisconsin Cheese and Bruno Cardinali’s approach to gamification and loyalty marketing at Popeyes, among others. Following are some of the industry heavyweights who caught our eye this year.

Hennessy’s Jasmin Allen

Twitch’s Doug Scott

Wisconsin Cheese’s Suzanne Fanning

IBM’s Randi Stipes

Popeyes’ Bruno Cardinali

The post Marketers on Fire in 2021 appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Chief Marketer’s Brands on Fire and Marketers on Fire series, a monthly analysis of some of the world’s top brands and executives making moves that set them apart within the marketplace, is now well into its second year. So as we head into the fall season, let’s take pause and highlight some of the nuggets of wisdom we’ve gathered during the first half of 2021—from Ikea’s renewed focus on sustainability to Dunkin’s innovative promotional programs to Visible’s cheeky brand voice and experiences. Click on the brands below to review their latest killer marketing campaigns.

Cadillac

Budweiser

Visible

Dunkin

Barbie

Ikea

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Our monthly analysis of the world’s top brands and the marketing moves that are setting them apart.

—

Yes, it’s true: The print version of the Ikea catalog is no more. The furnishings retailer will publish what it’s describing as a tribute to the iconic book in the fall to commemorate the catalog’s 70th anniversary, but other than that it has ceased what had been one of its most wide-reaching marketing tools.

Fortunately, Ikea has plenty more channels and campaigns to compensate for the absence of a print catalog. And many of them tie into one of the major reasons the company has ceased producing the catalog: a renewed focus on sustainability.

Selling sustainability

It might seem ironic that a company known for products just one step removed from disposable is making sustainability one of its selling points. Yet several years ago Ikea announced its goal to be fully “circular,” with every product designed to be reused, repaired and recycled rather than simply tossed, by 2030 and to being completely powered by renewable energy by 2025. Earlier this year, Ikea U.S. released news of completing its first solar parking lot and converting its New York City last-mile delivery fleet entirely to electric vehicles.

For those missing the print catalog, Ikea posted a digital version on its website, as well as digital versions of subsequent room-specific brochures. These include shoppable images of its products in situ—important as access and aspiration are key motivators for purchases of home furnishings. In March 2021, it also produced an audio version of its 286-page 2021 catalog. Entirely devoid of images, this audiobook was available for free on YouTube, Spotify and Audiobooks.com.

While a three-hour, 40-minute podcast of a narrator reading one product description after another may seem a counterintuitive means of selling furniture, the narrator notes in the intro that “we know that by now you’ve probably binged through every possible podcast, audiobook and ‘best of 2020’ playlist there is, so maybe you could use some new soothing sounds to put on while we all continue waiting for normal life to get back to, yeah, normal.” What’s more, the audio catalog garnered coverage from outlets as diverse as  Gartner’s blog, The Hill and Architectural Digest.

The audio catalog also served as a reminder that Ikea U.S. had released an upgraded app in January 2021 that was in effect a rollup of its previous niche apps, with shoppable room photography, a more user-friendly checkout process, the ability to request home delivery and curbside pickup and linkage to the user’s Ikea Family rewards card.

Image source: Ikea.com

Ikea’s spring 2021 Tiny Scavenger House Contest promoted the Ikea Family program as well as sustainable living. The previous year the company had created a 187-square-foot abode that was both eco-friendly and stylish. Originally, Ikea had intended to take the home on a countrywide tour, but COVID-19 prevented that. Instead, the retailer teamed with Vox Creative to create a microsite with Vox’s Curbed franchise that included a virtual tour. And this spring, Ikea unveiled on Instagram six rebuses that revealed a password. Those who figured out the puzzles could enter to win the home—provided they were Ikea Family members. Tips on sustainable living were integrated throughout the contest. Unit9, which created the campaign, reported that the increased engagement with the contest posts had a halo effect, boosting overall engagement on Ikea’s Instagram feed.

Continuing with its sustainability theme, Ikea debuted its Little Robot campaign in May. The centerpiece is a video, available in 15- and 30-second versions, in which a robot clearly inspired by WALL-E returns home after a dismaying day of trying to clean up his town. His digital frown turns upside down, however, once he sees the eco-friendly actions his family are engaging in, such as returning from the market with groceries in reusable (Ikea) mesh bags and drinking from reusable (Ikea) glasses. The spots will appear online and on broadcast and connected TV through November. Ikea also began testing in June an interactive element of the campaign with streaming service Pandora: Ads ask listeners if they want tips about living more sustainably. Those who verbally respond yes will be given three suggestions and taken to the Ikea website.

The Sweet Smell of Meatballs

No matter how adorable its robot mascots or how quirky its audio catalog, Ikea realizes that sustainability can’t be the theme of all its marketing. So around the same time it unveiled its Little Robot campaign, Ikea debuted its interactive Renocations campaign on Pinterest. Marrying renovations with vacations, Renocations centered on a three-question quiz. Based on the user’s answers regarding favorites destinations and activities, a bot created a Pinterest board of relevant products, with each pin linking back to the Ikea website. Users could also share their boards on Facebook.

Image source: Ikea.com

In keeping with the staycation/relax-at-home theme—and just days before #NationalRelaxationDay on August 15—the Digital Spa debuted on Ikea’s website. Rather than some sort of virtual massage, it’s a set of five video loops set to music that were designed to evoke specific responses, such as serenity, creativity and a sense of control. The images, which have the Ikea logo in a corner, can also be downloaded as wallpaper, ostensibly to serve as a reminder to savor the moment but, of course, also as a reminder to check out what’s new at Ikea.

Of all Ikea’s summer campaigns, however, the one that garnered the most attention was its Store in a Box celebrating the 10th anniversary of Ikea Family. From August 6 to August 22, members of the loyalty program could enter to win a limited-edition package that included a candle whose scent was that of Ikea’s renowned Swedish meatballs. Factory PR reported that within a few days of the campaign’s launch, more than 300 outlets had covered the contest and the candle. Simply delicious.

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Experts have argued in the past that participants feel less vested in non-tiered loyalty programs such as “buy 10, get 1 free” than participants in tiered programs do. Because tiered programs are more of a progression—spend $500 and get early sale access; spend $1,000 and receive early sale access plus free shipping; spend $2,000 and earn early sale access, free shipping and a 10 percent discount—it’s believed that participants feel they have more to lose by not shopping with the program’s brand.

The study, dubbed “Can Non-tiered Customer Loyalty Programs Be Profitable?,” analyzed the behavior of 5,544 customers who became members of the free-to-join loyalty program of a chain of men’s hair salons. Members received a $5 coupon for every $100 they spent. Given that the average transaction value was $21, members typically had to visit five times before earning their reward. The authors are researchers from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Over a five-year period, the researchers found that customer lifetime value rose 29.5 percent as a result of the program. Yet customers did not spend a statistically significant amount more per visit, and the frequency of their visits rose only by roughly 5.5 percent. The jump in lifetime value resulted primarily from an approximately 23 percent drop in customer attrition. As the authors wryly note, “the value of increased frequency is only beneficial if the customers actually stay.” Because previous studies failed to measure the effect of non-tiered programs on customer attrition and retention, they missed the primary benefit of such programs—and with that their effect on profitability.

In short, while the non-tiered loyalty program didn’t persuade members to increase their spending in order to earn a reward, it did encourage them to keep coming back rather than go to a competitor. Given the Bain & Company rule of thumb that a five percent lift in customer retention increases profits at least 25 percent, and that the program was structured so that it gave back to members just five percent of the revenue received, it seems that the answer to the question posed by the article’s title is “yes.”

The lift in retention rates varied among segments of the program’s membership. Attrition decreased most dramatically among those who had been the least-frequent and the most-frequent customers before participating in the program. Typically, companies promote loyalty programs most heavily to customers in the middle, as a way of upselling them. At the same time, they often neglect their most-frequent customers, reasoning that they already have their loyalty, and their least-frequent, assuming that they’ll lose money by “bribing” them to come back. This study suggests the contrary: that these are the cohorts that should be most actively wooed to join a non-tiered loyalty program.

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