Le Col’s game changing strategy – an interview with Summit speaker, Chris Palmer

The Dotdigital Summit is only a few weeks away. We recently shared our jam-packed agenda of expert talks, and in this blog, we’re chatting to Chris Palmer, Head of CRM at cycling apparel brand Le Col. Get to know Chris and get an insight into what you can learn in our engaging fireside chat, where Chris will be delving into the detail behind a successful Black Friday campaign. Let’s get into it. 

Can you give us some background about Le Col and your role? 

Le Col is a premium cycling apparel brand focused on making the best kit in the world. We use our unique insight from our legends such as Bradley Wiggins, Pro Cycling team (Bora- Hansgrohe), and founder/former professional cyclist Yanto Barker to help our customers ride faster and further.

I’ve been at Le Col for just over three years now and my role is to head up our CRM team to ensure that customers are having an optimum experience across all digital touchpoints and build long-term relationships with the brand.

Are you excited about this year’s Dotdigital Summit, have you attended before?

Very excited for this years Summit! Yes, I’ve attended before and really enjoyed it.

What do you like most about the Summit, and what are you looking forward to this year?

I like the opportunity to listen to a great group of speakers – I feel like you always get actionable insights at the Summit to bring back to what you’re doing in the office. 

Your talk will focus on Black Friday, how do you think it has changed over the years? Are customers getting fatigued by Black Friday messaging?

People have been talking about Black Friday fatigue since I started in ecommerce. Most people I speak to have really seen an increase in sending of poor quality messages from companies that you forgot you subscribed to or just feel the need to send because it’s Black Friday.

I think with the state of the economy now and the challenges brands are facing, Black Friday is still a crucial trading period for most. As long as you put a good plan together – offering timely, relevant, and valuable customer-centric messaging to campaigning – people will always be engaged.

What will people takeaway from the talk?

Hopefully, they will leave with a few new tips and tricks that I’ve learned implementing Black Fridays over the last couple of years at Le Col. I would also like people to go away remembering that Black Friday is also an opportunity to speak to customers than just a discount sale.

What tactics do you suggest brands employ to generate loyalty from casual Black Friday shoppers?

Make sure you focus on a wider range of metrics when it comes to your Black Friday shoppers.

Obviously, transactions and revenue are key drivers during Black Friday, but we also put a premium on maintaining long-term relationship building goals including brand awareness, loyalty acquisition, and net promoter score.

What are Le Col’s plans for the future?

One of our key goals is to build on our loyalty programme, the Le Col Cycling Club. We’ve seen massive spikes in customer retention and satisfaction since launching the free membership in 2021 and we want to continue to build and develop on the programme offering new cool features going forwards.

What do you think will be a big trend in marketing for 2024?

Apart from A.I? I’d say in a world where third-party advertising will become more difficult due to Apple privacy protection and general privacy laws and shorter attention spans, we’ll see a greater reliance on first-party data for targeting and reporting, and increased focus on creative to stand out from the crowd to drive real incremental gain.

If you’ve not got your tickets for this year’s Summit yet, grab them here.