Boosting Owned Channel and Loyalty Performance with Individualization | Wunder 2023

Louisa Nicholls: Well, welcome everyone. And thank you Wunder, for hosting this incredible event. As you can tell from my accent, I'm not from these parts. My name's Louisa Nicholls. I have the privilege and pleasure to be on the UK advisory Board for Wunderkind. Previous roles of mine, I worked in John Lewis for a number of years, so heading up the digital marketing team. So everything from the famous John Lewis Christmas ads all the way through to the performance marketing teams. But enough about me. I'm going to hand over and ask these wonderful ladies on stage to introduce themselves. So your name, where you're currently working. inaudible.

Maggie Lee: Sounds good. I'm Maggie. I'm the Chief marketing Officer at Fresh Clean Threads. We rebranded from Tees to Threads over a year ago, and we're a basic essentials men's apparel brand, recently launched Women. We believe in providing quality, well- fitting basics at an accessible price point because everyone deserves to look good without breaking the bank. And so I oversee the e- commerce team, brand performance and all of our creative departments prior to Fresh Clean Threads. I started my career as a management consultant working in a variety of strategic growth and operational projects. Fell in love with consumer side technology, the excitement that is growth, and so made my way through to this startup and have been scaling this business for over three years now.

Ana Warner: Great. I'm Ana Warner. I'm the Vice President of Loyalty and Retention Marketing for Belk. I'm curious how many people have heard of Belk. It's a department store. Okay. Must be a lot of Southerners in the room. We're a department store retailer. We're headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. We have about 300 stores in 16 states all in the southeast. And so my role is responsible for our loyalty program, so our Belk Rewards + credit card program, as well as our owned channels, including email, text messaging, and all of our mobile app communications.

Lora Loesch: Awesome. And I'm Lora Loesch. I was formerly the VP of Digital Marketing Finance at Finish Line and JD Sports. I took some time off to be a stay- at- home mom. I just don't have any kids. So yeah, at Finish Line and JD Sports, I oversaw all performance marketing and managed our digital P& L. We did over 700 million in digital sales, so a huge P& L, and then also ran all of our digital marketing channels. So excited to be up here.

Louisa Nicholls: Thank you very much. Incredible lineup, and I'm sure you'll agree, a really great span of brands to really get into this topic. But it's as if we set this up, it's as if we planned this, Maggie, right? With the segue in with Rich mentioning about loyalty and what Wunderkind is doing in that space, and then just the 65% marketing leaders cite not enough budget as having led to large impact on paid strategy. So we're here to solve all those problems. Hopefully we'll be able to give you some examples to take away. You can steal with pride and take back to your companies, but we'll get right into the topic. So the market ups and downs over the last three years have led to some major shifts in strategy for retailers. Affecting all parts of the conversion funnel and personalization efforts. What has been the loyalty journey for your brands over the last three years? And I'm going to come to Maggie first.

Maggie Lee: Up and down is a great way to explain the last few years. So we are purely online e- commerce brands. So COVID was quite successful for us in scaling media costs were very low. Customers were all migrating online to purchase and being a lot more open to it. And so acquisition was easy. We focused a lot of our efforts in getting to first order profitability and your budget was unlimited. You didn't have to have conversations with the CFO because you were first to order profitable. A year later as we got out of COVID media costs became more expensive. Meta could not figure out its algorithm for all of our sake for a while. And so it became really expensive. And even now, even though they've gotten a lot better, the fight for loyalty is now the most important focus of the company in which we work with Wunderkind for a lot of that work. I'm paying for my time now. But we have started thinking a lot more about our LTB, how we can not only acquire these customers, but make sure they come back to fund the acquisition funnel. Because without these returning customers, we will not be able to continue to acquire without finding more cash. And so for us, we spent a lot of effort thinking about what kind of membership programs, what kind of individualizations do we have to provide to give these customers a good experience, give them a reason to buy from us beyond a great product, what does the brand stand for? What is it that we can offer them that makes them feel valued and providing the value to them in more than just a product form? And so that's been a big, big journey for us and happy to get into some of the tactics we've used, but shifting to LTV has been a big focus for us.

Louisa Nicholls: And help us understand, so your customer segment, is it more Gen Zs, millennials? Where do you sit within the customer segments?

Maggie Lee: We actually represent all of America. Some of our biggest selling cities are in Salt Lake City, which are shocking. Vegas. So we're actually all throughout America and our customers tend to be slightly older. One of the ways we sell is that our T- shirts fit any guys, but particularly for the bigger guy, it makes you look really fit and it hides your belly. If anyone's seen those Instagram ads, you might start seeing them now. But that segment is, they're well off, but they're seeking value. They're busy in their everyday life, they don't want to think about their wardrobe, they just want to be able to grab a T- shirt from their closet, a polo from their closet and go. And now we've also expanded a large part of the closets into bottoms, into performance and actually launching into women. So our proposition to these folks is this is for everybody. If you're a busy person who's seeking value but want a really quality product without thinking about it, this is for you. And this is a big part of our value proposition in ads.

Louisa Nicholls: And you've touched on something really interesting there around the customer experience. I think this iPad is interfering. Customer experience and how it shifted with the likes of Amazon coming on board years ago and customer experience suddenly shifts from great store experience into when can I get it seamless, quick, I don't need to think about it. So really hold that thought because we'll come back to that. Really interesting. So Anna, on the flip side, obviously bricks and clicks with Belk. Tell us a bit about your inaudible.

Ana Warner: Well, I agree it has been quite a roller coaster that we have all been on, excuse me, over the last few years. At Belk, we're about to celebrate our 135th birthday. So we're a very old legacy traditional company. And while pre- COVID, we were on our digital journey, I would say the pandemic certainly accelerated our digital first mindset. So as stores were closed for a period of time and people were not as comfortable going into stores, we looked at how do we optimize the digital experience? And one of the, I guess, positive outcomes from a business perspective is right around that time we had partnered with Wunderkind. And so our digital growth was increasing and we had Wunderkind in place and promise this isn't a plug, but we did. We had Wunderkind in place as our digital traffic was growing. And so they were able to help us not only identify all of this new digital traffic, but retarget based on the behaviors that a customer is taking on our website. And then more recently also on our mobile app. And that actually had a residual effect because now as our customer is more comfortable going to the store. We have their digital experience and learnings from that to better optimize the store experience as well and how we speak to them. So it's been an interesting cycle.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah. And you've got a brilliant story. I loved it when we were chatting earlier around your stores becoming a community hub. So for the older population of demographic that you operate within, tell a little bit about that.

Ana Warner: Sure. Yeah. So being a company with a legacy we have, people have been going to Belk their entire lives, remember going as a little child with their grandma. And so they have a very positive sentiment and heartwarming memories with our store, which is not all retailers can say that. So it's something we're very proud of. And I think also a reason why as things did become hard both economically and globally with the health crisis, we did still see a good amount of our customers retaining that loyalty. So that was a positive for us.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, incredible. And congratulations on 135 years.

Ana Warner: Thank you.

Louisa Nicholls: I think America is only 245 years old, isn't it?

Ana Warner: Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: So brilliant. That's impressive.

Ana Warner: 1888. And if you live near a Belk on September 16th, your store will be having a party to celebrate. So please, we welcome you in.

Louisa Nicholls: Great plug. And Lora at the end there. Now I know your brand from JD Sports, so that's a big brand in the UK.

Lora Loesch: Yes.

Louisa Nicholls: Tell us a bit about your story and your brand.

Lora Loesch: Yeah. Yeah. So COVID was incredible for us. So we have an interesting supply chain. About 70% of our online orders are fulfilled from stores so that we can get product to the consumers faster based on where they are. So during COVID, we were able to keep one person in a store during the day and fulfill packages. So we accelerated incredibly because our competitors, Nike and Foot don't work that way with their supply chain. So that was a massive acquisition time for us. We heavily invested in acquisitions, stealing share, and our traffic actually exceeded Foot Locker's, which was a huge win for Finish Line, and they still continue to have stronger digital traffic versus Foot Locker, which is awesome. But now we've shifted more to the retention focus for sure. The budget cutting, pulling back, obviously margin is eroding and it's a tough situation right now from a cost perspective. So how do we really retain those customers? And obviously Wunderkind's been a huge part of that and we'll get into that more I'm sure.

Louisa Nicholls: Well, I can imagine that the sports market is incredibly competitive. Obviously all markets are, but I mean, where do you start with, how do you approach loyalty in that way when brands are so, so strong in that space?

Lora Loesch: Yeah, yeah. So we have a loyalty program called Status, and it's incredible for us. The more you buy, the more you get access to products. So they have a very interesting marketplace of these Jordans and now again, Yeezys that are so competitive to get, and once you get them, then they're even more expensive to resell. So the more you buy from us, the more you get access to this hot product. And it's been an incredible loyalty program, obviously based on my last question to Ben from Rag and Bone, I'm obsessed with loyalty programs. And what Finish Line is put together is amazing, to grant access to people the more they shop.

Yeah, really incredible. I read somewhere that the average American are members of 16 loyalty programs. So you really, I mean, really need to up the game. The brands really need to be there in that space and really understand it. I'm interested around the Gen Z mentality of they are aligning themselves more and more with brands that have the right values, operate in the right spaces, bring that community to life. I'm just interested from your perspectives, how you are leaning into that. For example, in the sports sector, Lora, how does that manifest and do you still think traditionally Gen Z and millennial and how you target those subgroups?

Lora Loesch: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think we actually really heavily focused on Gen Z and granting them product. I would almost say we over index there and we forget about the moms and all of our loyalty programs, so based on accessing product, and that's so attractive to them. Everyone's fighting for the best sneakers right now because supply is still low, but we absolutely focus on that. Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, it's really interesting. And actually the session that Mindy did yesterday around that side of things and the disability and what brands stand for, it all beautifully ties together into this segment around loyalty and what that means. But I want to get into the holy grail of first party data, so to speak. But how do you use data? Talk to us about how you use data, given that you are a pure play, how do you use data to incentivize and incentivize customers and build out your LTY programs?

Maggie Lee: Yeah. So all of our sales are mostly first party. We're also on Amazon, so you lose a little transparency there, but I'm sure all the retailers here understand that. But we really leverage it to understand what our customers want. I actually really like Ben's title because being a chief customer officer is essentially the core of our jobs to understand what the customer wants, what they need from us, and being timely in engaging with them when they need new T- shirts. Or knowing even, we actually sell mostly basic colors. So understanding the color preferences of our customers. We'll find that a darker color wear doesn't care to get bright colors, emails or launches from us. And that's okay, that doesn't appeal to them. And so we will make sure we're sending them other things that are of similar color profile that they prefer. Or when we know that they're more of a polo wearer, will they prefer a more formal bottoms versus sweatpants, for example? And so we do use their purchase data, their behavior, their browsing data, to understand what it is that they like and make personal recommendation. I think from a product assortment standpoint, especially as an apparel brand where you have so many products, that becomes really important because they need some help browsing and there's no store associate to help them.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess the flip reverse for you and Belk, obviously you've got physical and digital channels and trying to tie that together. Talk to us a bit about that.

Ana Warner: Yeah, sure. So by nature of having a credit card program, we actually collect a lot of zero party data. So the customer is explicitly providing information about themselves as they're signing up for the credit card. So that of course opens windows for us to understand them better and market to them more relevantly. And our stores are a crucial part of that. They're a crucial part of not only driving card applications, but also just collecting data in general. So over 50% of our email subscribers come from the stores and the field that's out there, boots on the ground, driving home the incentive that you get for not just signing up for email, but downloading our mobile app. Believe it or not, our stores are a huge driver of our mobile app downloads. And the way that we've done that is we obviously, we collect your zero and first party data, we're able to then hopefully market to you and we're able to tell you the benefits of having the mobile app. So you can actually, if you have the mobile app downloaded and you're in the store, we have a price checker. So you don't have to wonder when you get to the register, what's the total going to be. So we've strategically done things to provide value and benefit and give a reason for someone giving us their information, whether they're signing up for a card or not.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah. I really like that. It's the value exchange, isn't it?

Ana Warner: It is.

Louisa Nicholls: At John Lewis, we are quite famous for our free tea and coffee vouchers. Very British, I understand. But people would you inaudible to come into the post and then they'd take them and then they'd drive miles to the nearest store. So they actually didn't save any money. They paid for it in petrol anyway, but that's beside the point. But it was very, very popular. But we were working on initiatives on how to drive app downloads, and we realized actually that if we digitalize those vouchers and didn't give people an option to have it through the post, tell you what, the entire customer base suddenly downloaded the app. Guess what? Older demographics, they were on there. Even my father who refused to do any type of digital thing, suddenly was an app expert. He got his coffee voucher. So I really like that. It's about that value exchange. It's giving that reason to download it. How did you incentivize your store staff to get those downloads and encourage?

Ana Warner: Sure. I mean, probably the way many other retailers are doing, there's contests and things and you can fill the fridge and break rooms and things like that, that boost morale. But also a key part of it is just reporting and providing insight to the store associates on how they're doing, how are they ranking among other stores in their area? And so it becomes almost a competition and they want to see those numbers rise. And so we try to be very transparent with how they're doing. And also, we have such a strong store training program, and so if numbers look low for a particular store or associate, we have very formalized training methods and we help them. And that's been successful for us.

Louisa Nicholls: It's fine. Employee incentives, customer incentives. And I suspect similar, because obviously you guys have got stores and online presence, but talk to us about your strategy.

Lora Loesch: Yeah, no, same thing with the app. It's been a huge thing for us. Before I left, we launched a huge app download campaign. And Taylor on my team was here and he was telling me how great the results are, and I was like, " I love hearing that." But we did the same thing, just trying to compensate employees to get customers to download the app because the app is incredible. I'd say from an overarching strategy, I always like to use the analogy of dating then a relationship when we get customers to the site. So when we get customers to the site, it's like we're dating. So we first try and get their email, obviously through Wunderkind, and then we try and get their phone number, which I wouldn't really ask someone for their email if I was going to try and date, but I would probably be vice versa.

Louisa Nicholls: Informal.

Lora Loesch: But we do offer a coupon when we get their phone number, and then once they convert, then we're more in a relationship and then we try and get them into our loyalty program. So those are the steps that we take through. So let them browse, let them love us, and then get them signed into status.

Louisa Nicholls: I love that.

Lora Loesch: And then we get their first party data.

Louisa Nicholls: I love that. Is there a career move into dating apps? I feel like-

Lora Loesch: I know. I know.

Louisa Nicholls: We told you you'd have things that you could steal with pride. Take that back to inaudible.

Lora Loesch: inaudible. I think that's really-

Ana Warner: If you get their email, you can send them to spam if needed.

Lora Loesch: Yeah, that's a good point.

Ana Warner: Strategy.

Maggie Lee: And one thing we're talking about here is before they even purchase, how are we incentivizing them? I think another really great place to incentivize is even if they don't want to give you their email right away, when they do make a purchase, they're giving you that chance. You've convinced them to give your product or your store a try. That's another really great place to try to lock them in. Hey, you bought from us once. It's not that much more effort to become a lifetime member of our brand or retail store. And so in that sense, that presents another really good opportunity on top of our Wunderkind identity network and other types of actual marketing that can identify these users. Because yeah, maybe they're not giving you an SMS number on the first time they meet you, but maybe at a different bar they see you again and suddenly they're like, " Okay, fine. Maybe I'll give you my business."

Ana Warner: I think that's a really key point because nobody wakes up in the morning and says, " Hey, I'm going to go subscribe to that email program at my store down the street." Or, " I'm going to go get a credit card today." So it's really finding them in those key moments where your opportunity is there and optimizing the messaging in that moment is crucial.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah. It's about being there when people need you, and getting out of the way when they don't.

Ana Warner: Yep.

Louisa Nicholls: But I feel we could have a whole session on the analogies between dating and loyalty. I love it. I love it. But let's get into some of the different channels that we can use in our marketing toolkit. So specifically email, that's having a bit of a resurgence at the moment. How do you use email within your marketing mix, and how prevalent is it within that mix? Have you got something that you lean on more towards? I'm just thinking from a belt perspective and your client base.

Ana Warner: Yeah. Well, I mean I'm biased, but email is certainly king. It's a huge driver for our company. And although we have deliberately expanded into other channels, we launched SMS about a year ago through Wunderkind, and that has exploded. So if you're sleeping on SMS, I highly suggest at least looking into it because I have seen definitely a resurgence in consumers being more willing to sign up for SMS programs. Just make sure you got your legal stuff straight. And then of course, I mentioned earlier our mobile app. So even though our demographic does skew a little bit older, they're not afraid of technology necessarily. Especially like I said, if you provide a value proposition. So they're not afraid to sign up for, they're actually pretty comfortable with text messaging. I mean, whose grandmother in the room doesn't know how to text. So it's grown from being very focused on email, which we still are, but it's more of a mix now. And I think that's a really healthy approach.

Louisa Nicholls: And from a contact strategy perspective as well, because we can flood customers so quickly, so much messaging. How would you weave that into your, because I should imagine it's all encompassing. How do you weave that email strategy into your wider marketing strategy about?

Ana Warner: Yeah, it's something we talk about a lot. And we haven't completely cracked that nut, but we believe that technology can help us. And so we've made some investments in technology that will allow us to do more omnichannel orchestration across our channels, including our paid channels. So that's an exciting thing on our roadmap. Because right now I think we probably all deal with data silos and we'll be working with Wunderkind in the upcoming year to make sure our cardholder data is integrated into our SMS program, so we can do cardholder messaging, we're going to work on more things that we can do through our mobile app to send Wunderkind retargeting triggers and things like that. So it's definitely something that's top of mind.

No pressure Wunderkind. And Lora, how about yourself?

Lora Loesch: Yeah, so our SMS program has skyrocketed. We actually do more revenue through SMS than we do email now.

Ana Warner: Wow.

Lora Loesch: Yeah, it's crazy. And maybe it's obviously our consumer, but it's more engaging and everything. And we have actually one person that's over SMS to make sure that we're delivering at the right time, because you don't want to wake up someone in California at 6: 00 AM to buy sneakers. And making sure it's the right messaging and doing a ton of A/ B testing, all of those different things. But SMS, and obviously we do it through Wunderkind, has been extremely successful for us. We also really manage the two channels strategically. So from an email perspective, we obviously know more about that consumer, what they open up, what they'll engage with, all of that. So we do tend to have sales shoppers over index with emails. So since that channel is so cheap and everything, we really market any sale product and all that via that channel. And then we've moved to very premium via app messaging. So if there's something launching, if there's a brand message, if it's just a general back to school, whatever it is, we really push through SMS. And we found huge success with that. So high margins, high AOV, it's crazy conversion rates, we're talking like 12%. So it's been awesome for us.

Louisa Nicholls: Oh, 12%.

Lora Loesch: Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: Most brands would kill for that. That's incredible. And I really like that, thinking more around actually when do you deploy each channel rather than doing the whole blanket. We're going out with inaudible every single channel is just so important in this day and age. Really is.

Maggie Lee: And I would say email certainly is a really important channel, but SMS is quickly growing and it's a much more intimate channel as well. So you have to be quite thoughtful in how you're approaching your customers. You have effectively a 100% open rate. The SMS program is quickly growing for us as well. And we actually use that as part of the acquisition funnel too. When we send out big SMS campaigns or email campaigns, even if a new customer hasn't quite been acquired, they haven't purchased, but because they're in our email list and suddenly they see a new product launch that they really want to check out, they will buy from that. And so all the channels effectively work together to get to this customer and get them to purchase when they want to.

Ana Warner: Yeah. That's so true. And we use our channels to drive our other channels. So if you don't have the mobile app downloaded, but you're on our email list, we're going to tell you why you need the mobile app, especially if you're a credit card holder. There's even more benefits to having the app if you're a credit card holder. So it's also about segmentation and figuring out what's the right message for the right person. Because there may be someone that honestly is unlikely to download the app, at least right now in their lifecycle, and that's okay, but let's make sure we're leveraging the ones who would benefit from it.

Louisa Nicholls: And it's all about leveraging that data, isn't it?

Ana Warner: Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: You can have the Rolls- Royce of search engine or marketing tools, but if you haven't got that data, if you don't understand it, like your point around breaking down the silos as well. If there are any chief financial officers in the room, I'm assuming not, but when you're going in and you are trying to convince them to spend on brand marketing, that's a prime example. If you don't spend on that brand marketing, it doesn't matter how much you spend in your performance marketing channels, you've got to find that blend. It would be remiss of us on this panel not to cover a little bit about AI. I realized that we had a session yesterday, but I'm just interested from your perspective and from your brands, how big is AI on the agenda for your boards and where your head's at with utilizing it within this space come to you at the end or?

Lora Loesch: Yeah, I'd say I'm really excited about what AI is going to do for the SEO space. I think that's going to be some great wins. I'd also say everything that Google's coming out with, a lot of this was talked about yesterday that you can search something and the background will change based on what you searched or there's so many different things that's going to make it easier to appeal to the vast amount of customers out there. So I would say, I don't think it's top of mind for our board unfortunately, but I would say the true marketers in our company understand that that is going to be the next thing.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah. Yeah. And is there a nervousness around it or are people embracing it?

Lora Loesch: I think people are embracing it, for sure. I think sometimes people use it as a buzzword, because they don't really understand what it's going to be. But I think, I can't remember who it was yesterday who was saying, hire the 18 to 20 year olds who are going to dig in and figure it out. That's exactly what our team's doing. It's the young guys and girls figuring out, okay, what can I do to change things? How can I get my conversion up? All of that, that's truly invested in the changes.

Ana Warner: Yeah, I think we're all kind of figuring it out, except maybe the Create Labs guy who's been doing it for next-

Louisa Nicholls: He's nailed it.

Ana Warner: Which I grabbed him last night over a spicy margarita and picked his brain. But we are approaching it very cautiously, but positively. And we're using it in somewhat of a simplistic form for copywriting efficiency and things like that. And it's actually, of course, people are fearful, is it going to take jobs, things of that nature, which is fair. But in our instance, it's really just freeing up people's time to focus on more strategic things, the things that they wish they had time to do. And so I think if you approach it that way, it becomes a lot less scary and it becomes a tool in your arsenal.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, I really like that. That's a great pitch.

Maggie Lee: Yeah, I think for us, AI comes in two flavors, similar to what Anna's talking about. In the boardroom, it's more about our exit strategy. If you have AI, if you have technology and a way to innovate that, for us, other apparel brands can't, there is a reason to warrant a higher valuation potentially. And there was a recent IPO that had technology, or maybe it was a sale and the valuation was quite good. So I think from a board perspective, that's a pretty big interest, but it's not actively talked about right now yet, where it's more practical in its current stage for us as marketers are asked to do more with less. As we talk about budgets, I want to spend every dollar I could to acquire and push getting more customer sales. So then thinking about my team's resources, how do I create the efficiency within the team, to leverage a smaller team to do more? And so whether it's from a copy perspective, variations, brainstorming, AI comes up with some unique ideas too. I'm not sure if they're as good as Jason's ideas, but AI can help assist through a lot of that. And then further on is potentially thinking about how AI can be leveraged with our customers and achieve efficient sales from that perspective.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm going to flip it slightly. I was going to say to you guys, what are you most excited about in the future? When I flip it on its head and say, what are you least excited about in the future? Maybe that's the British pessimistic, it's not very American, is it? I should be really positive.

Ana Warner: If you don't mind. There is something I am excited about.

Louisa Nicholls: Okay, yeah.

Ana Warner: I was fortunate to be at the customer advisory board breakfast yesterday morning with the Wunderkind team. And they showed us the roadmap for the coming quarters. And there are some definitely, I mean there AI is on there, there's some very appealing things, and the dialogue in the room was phenomenal. And so I think for anyone that wasn't, there are definitely some things coming down the pipeline to get excited about.

Louisa Nicholls: Fantastic.

Ana Warner: In terms of not excited about, sitting in more calls with lawyers about data privacy and what new-

Louisa Nicholls: I hear you.

Ana Warner: Yeah, what laws popping up in what state and working with it to make sure we're not tracking that, but it comes with the territory.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the boring stuff.

Ana Warner: Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: How about yourself?

Lora Loesch: I'd say what I'm excited about, I'm also going to do that one too.

Louisa Nicholls: Take it back. Americans are taking it back.

Lora Loesch: We have 11 minutes in 54 seconds.

Louisa Nicholls: inaudible. Questions?

Lora Loesch: Oh, sorry, questions, but I'll go really quickly. So obviously I think AI is going to be huge for SEO, and I'm obsessed with SEO because I love free marketing channels. So I think that's going to be awesome. I also have found this new obsession with returns and how do we change that industry? There's over 800 billion returns in the US in 2022. It was up 7% year over year. So how do we as retailers figure out that industry and get those customers to convert or get their money back faster? So I love that, and I've been talking with some startups about those different things, but I just think that's really cool, and I think it's the future. I was racking my brain on what I'm not excited about and I have no idea. I'm excited about everything. I love a challenge.

Louisa Nicholls: I love that. Not afraid inaudible.

Lora Loesch: I love to be here. I just feel great about everything, so.

Louisa Nicholls: Loving life. We're channeling that you're not getting away from it.

Maggie Lee: So I got to take in all the least exciting things. I actually think right now we've been talking about a lot of ups and downs in marketing. I don't think it's a get any easier for us. Data continues to be an issue, especially as it relates to privacy. How we can track, how can attribute efficiency. Media costs, wildly expensive. I remember about 18 months ago when it was very hard to acquire a customer on Meta because of the cost of impression. So there are a lot of these harder things, which I think also as marketers, we love a good challenge and think we're in this business for a reason. And so it's thinking about how can we overcome some of that and find efficiency. And then going to loyalty. Gen Zs are notorious for not having any brand loyalty. So as a brand, how do you get them to come beyond the product features? How do you get them to stay and care about you as a brand and pay up for what the brand does stand for? And so there's a lot of these fun, I would call them fun challenges that aren't exciting in the moment as you think about your 2024 planning and 2025. But if we can figure out how to solve some of these and get around it, I think there's a lot of success and growth to continue for us.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, I love that. There's always opportunity out there, right? Fantastic. I didn't ask though, we didn't prep this one, but just personally, I'm interested, you mentioned before Rag and Bone, and you're a fan of that, the loyalty program. Which naughty programs do you interact with most? What are your favorites out there? You can't pick your own, by the way.

Ana Warner: Oh my goodness. Honestly, the one I probably interact with the most is Pet Supplies Plus, because my dog's food is very expensive. I appreciate those loyalty rewards.

Louisa Nicholls: So for you, it's more around the rewards that you get?

Ana Warner: It's the value.

Louisa Nicholls: Yeah, it's the value. Okay.

Ana Warner: Yeah.

Louisa Nicholls: Okay. How about yourself?

Lora Loesch: Oh, Mine's United Airlines.

Louisa Nicholls: You can't have Rag and Bone, obviously.

Lora Loesch: Rag and Bone doesn't have a loyalty program. But no, I'm obsessed with my United Global Service Status, and I always am checking on my miles, all that. Yeah. And then I also am a huge Nordstrom shopper, but I used to be a buyer there, so I still love their program.

Louisa Nicholls: Okay, fantastic. So travel and shopping?

Lora Loesch: Yep.

Louisa Nicholls: Woman after my own heart

Maggie Lee: Mine's got to be Sephora.

Louisa Nicholls: Oh, okay.

Lora Loesch: Yeah, it's a good one.

Maggie Lee: I'm not a makeup expert. I am quite lost if you put me inside a beauty store. And so to have those experts around me to explain to me what I should be buying and I get points for it, and then I get free makeup lessons or-

Lora Loesch: Yeah, they do a good job.

Maggie Lee: Right?

Lora Loesch: Really good job.

Maggie Lee: It really helps you, especially for those, I don't know how this applies the room, but for myself, where I am not as comfortable with makeup, it makes me feel at ease. And anytime I think about, oh, I need to find a new mascara. Well, next time I'll go to Wendy for inaudible. But I just walk into the store and I ask for help.

Ana Warner: Well, your makeup looks flawless.

Maggie Lee: Thank you.

Louisa Nicholls: It's great. It looks fantastic. But that's three different, very different reasons as to why we've joined loyalty programs. So I'm sure if we ask the whole room, they'd have different examples as well. But thank you ever so much ladies. Please join me in thanking our incredible female lineup.