How we revived an apparel brand with data-driven marketing

As the Marketing Strategist for Dotdigital in the US, I have worked with numerous ecommerce businesses that face difficulty in keeping their customers engaged and coming back for more. Recently, one of Dotdigital’s clients, an ecommerce apparel brand, was also facing this exact same problem. Due to the low engagement rate, the brand’s sales were declining. I was brought on board to assist them in turning things around.

The challenge: Overcoming the curse of customer churn

The brand’s customer retention was declining rapidly. It didn’t have a retention strategy in place, and as a result, its customer engagement and conversions were severely impacted. To turn things around, it needed a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to achieve a few key objectives.

• Boost website traffic and brand awareness
• Deepen customer connections and engagement
• Drive conversions and create loyal customers
• Build a rock-solid retention strategy to keep them coming back

By addressing its lack of a retention strategy and incorporating personalization tactics, the brand aimed to reverse the trend of customer churn and achieve sustainable growth. With a clear vision for the future, the brand was on the right track to achieving its goals and overcoming its challenges.

Solution: Building customer loyalty

I decided to adopt a multi-pronged approach to tackle the challenges the brand was facing. First, the team analyzed customer demographics by using platform data and Google Analytics. This helped the brand understand that Gen Z and Millennials were their primary target audience. 

The brand further used eRFM and RFM dashboards to identify engagement levels within this demographic, which provided crucial insights into the audience it was selling to and how interested they were.

Crafting a personalized marketing experience

With a clear understanding of the audience, I suggested creating a content calendar tailored to the customer journey, product use cases, and key seasonal events. The brand recommended creating emails showcasing back-to-school outfits for students or highlighting workout attire during peak gym membership sign-up periods. This ensured content resonated with specific customer needs.

Personalized and dynamic emails were also recommended. By leveraging audience insights, the brand built emails featuring product recommendations based on past purchases (“shop the look” or “more from this collection”). This personalization made the emails more relevant and increased the chance of customers finding something they truly wanted.

Segmentation and growth strategies were another key element. I suggested implementing tactics aligned with the customer journey. This included building preference centers, segmenting customers by purchase history and interests, and nurturing them post-purchase with review requests and loyalty rewards.

By segmenting their audience, the brand could tailor messages to resonate better with different groups. For example, they could send emails promoting new arrivals to frequent buyers or win-back campaigns to those who hadn’t purchased in a while.

Results

The brand embraced these data-driven strategies, and the results were impressive. By diversifying its content and making it more relevant, unsubscribe rates significantly dropped by 50%, leading to increased customer engagement.

The team also tailored content to customer interests, providing personalized and relevant information, which resulted in a click-through rate (CTR) increase of over 30%.

Showcasing the brand’s products in real-life use cases, like workout clothes at the gym, helped customers envision themselves using the products, leading to a rise in direct orders. Ultimately, these improved marketing strategies resulted in an impressive revenue growth of over 50%.

Key learnings: Why data-driven marketing matters

This case study is an excellent example of how data-driven marketing strategies can bring a new life to an ecommerce brand. By utilizing Dotdigital’s expertise, the brand gained valuable insights into its audience and created a personalized and engaging marketing experience. These strategies are not limited to the apparel industry only but are applicable across various industries. 

The key takeaways are:

• Personalization is king: Tailor content and recommendations to your audience’s preferences.
• Content is queen: Offer a variety of content formats to keep your subscribers engaged.
• Know your audience: Understanding their needs and behaviors is essential for success.

By following these principles, ecommerce businesses can navigate the highly competitive online landscape and achieve sustainable growth. So, if your brand is struggling, consider partnering with a data-driven marketing platform like Dotdigital.