The home goods retailer increased digital marketing ROI and surpassed pandemic-era order volumes by activating customer data to automate revenue generation with Bluecore.
Bluecore, the retail marketing solution for the world’s top retailers, today announced the results of its first year working with Lulu and Georgia. The home goods retailer tapped Bluecore to significantly scale its digital marketing efforts after having previously worked with Wunderkind. With Bluecore, Lulu and Georgia surpassed pandemic-era order volumes by first increasing opted-in customers by 5% and then putting Bluecore’s email and site personalization technology to work to improve shoppers’ movement throughout the purchase funnel. Bluecore increased Lulu and Georgia’s first-time buyers by 133% and repeat purchases by 229%.
Like many brands, the fast-growing retailer, whose broad product catalog spans rugs, furniture and accessories, saw disproportionately high order volumes and growth during the pandemic. As the world rebounded and consumers began leaving their homes, however, the focus on furniture and home goods declined. Now, with rising inflation and interest rates, fewer people are buying homes and therefore, furniture and home goods. All of this inspired Lulu and Georgia to find a way to create new buying moments that go beyond home purchases and other market-dependent trends.
Lulu and Georgia partnered with Bluecore to put its growing customer and product engagement data to work with a goal of significantly increasing its known customer base and growing customer lifetime value. Lulu and Georgia and Bluecore focused their efforts on three priorities:
- Get casual visitors to become subscribers. Lulu and Georgia wanted to maximize the ROI of its customer acquisition efforts by increasing identification of site browsers and converting them into opted-in subscribers. Bluecore did this by creating an engaging experience for 100% of site visitors–surfacing relevant product recommendations and content during their very first session–based on what they’re doing and which products they’re engaging with, even if they are not yet identified. This approach has already increased the number of new visitors opting into Lulu and Georgia’s brand communications by 5%, resulting in significantly more known subscribers that the brand can now speak to on a one-to-one basis.
- Inspire these new subscribers to make their first purchase. Lulu and Georgia knows that shoppers research home goods products 6+ times before making a purchase. Throughout this research phase, Bluecore tuned into shoppers’ “signals” to learn about everything from an individual’s price sensitivities and day-to-day shopping behaviors to their nuanced product preferences, including product type, color, size, style, material, items they’re likely to purchase in the future, and which types of recommendations drive the highest-value responses. Bluecore used this constantly evolving data to automate hyper-specific triggers and relevant interactions with shoppers, while in session, resulting in a 133% increase in net-new customers.
- Reduce the time it takes for customers who have bought once to buy again. The time between purchases is typically longer in home goods than it is in other retail verticals and getting one-time buyers to purchase again, and sooner, is a priority for Lulu and Georgia. Bluecore’s retail data reveals that the likelihood that a first-time shopper will make a second purchase is 23%. But once customers buy for a second time, their likelihood of making a third purchase leaps to 37%. The repurchase rate then increases steadily from there. Prior to Bluecore, Lulu and Georgia was able to segment its one-time buyers according to what they purchased, but it ran into roadblocks around creative and content, and didn’t know which products it should promote to each customer next. Bluecore was able to inspire Lulu and Georgia’s one-time customers to buy a second time using its “Next Best Purchase” model and category affinities (for instance, does the customer gravitate toward wall decor or rugs?). Directly after a customer’s first purchase, Bluecore predicted which products to showcase next; the best content, offers and recommendations to send each customer. This work resulted in a 229% increase in repeat purchases. In addition, Lulu and Georgia’s triggered email campaigns now account for 40% of its email revenue despite representing less than 5% of its overall email volume.
“We chose to partner with Bluecore because we knew they could rise to the challenge of replicating the pandemic ‘tail wind’ we previously experienced. Now, rather than being at the whim of the market, we’re in control of our growth, no matter what’s happening in the world,” said Julia Metaxas, Vice President of Growth at Lulu and Georgia. “Bluecore has let us automate and scale a very personalized approach to marketing, which enables us to move faster, be hyper efficient, and do more with less in a competitive environment. We’re now seeing a far more immediate return on our marketing spend while also making long-term impact, such as increasing customer lifetime value.”
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In addition to leveraging its technology to automate Lulu and Georgia’s digital marketing efforts, Bluecore brings extensive retail experience to its work with the retailer. Many of the company’s practitioners and leaders previously worked for leading brands and retail industry innovators. Bluecore has unique insight into nuanced challenges faced by the industries it serves and has built its technology specifically to address them through approaches including activating and monetizing customer data, turning shopper signals into more relevant experiences, and increasing testing efficiency so that it can discover which tactics work and implement them, at scale, faster.
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“The home goods space is unique in that consumers do not purchase furniture as frequently as they do in other retail segments,” said Fayez Mohamood, CEO of Bluecore. “This means that Lulu and Georgia not only needed to be in front of shoppers at the exact moment of consideration, but also even when there are years between purchases. Doing this at scale is an incredibly tall order for a marketing team that has to prioritize both retention and loyalty at all times, and is only possible through technology and data. We are proud of the partnership we’ve developed with Lulu and Georgia, and the growth we’ve created in an increasingly challenging environment.”
Lulu and Georgia is now scaling what it achieved in year one with Bluecore with even more ambitious plans for building and automating new programs that will continue its growth and predictably achieve year-over-year comps.