Managing a family of brands can be a daunting challenge, but it’s one that 1-800-Flowers.com has embraced.
During a session titled, “Leveraging Multi-Brand Customers to Drive Value with 1-800-Flowers,” at the 10th annual Loyalty Expo, Rahul Chand, senior director, enterprise loyalty marketing for 1-800-Flowers, talked about the company’s plan to create and focus on these multi-brand customers to increase retention through a variety of streams.
The company’s family of brands includes 1-800-Flowers.com, Fannie May Confections, Harry & David, Cheryl’s, 1-800-Baskets.com, The Popcorn Factory, FruitBouquets.com, and Wolferman’s.
Increasingly, 1-800-Flowers.com leverages its Celebrations Rewards and Celebrations Passport programs to create multi-brand customers: Customers that shop with more than one brand. The long-term result is the same, higher LTV, but with a distinctly different customer journey. The goal for the brand is to get more customers to try another brand within the 1-800-Flowers umbrella, and while the frequency and retention rate at each brand may not increase, the overall family of brands hopes to see greater LTV by having the customer become a customer of more than one brand.
Chand focused on the company’s key objective: Building a celebratory ecosystem.
The critical points he noted are:
- Develop a multi-brand customer relationship, enticing and incenting our customers with great products, a simplified shopping experience
- Engaging loyalty programs and leveraging a deep understanding of customer data to increase retention, frequency, and lifetime value
- Celebrations comprise the overarching theme that ties everything together and allows customers to quickly and easily understand our combined value prop
- Maximize customer relationships across brands based on customer needs, history, and data
- The shared loyalty program is the foundation that seamlessly connects the brands
- Loyalty programs are the glue that holds the brands together and the mechanism for one brand to introduce another
Motivating the multi-brand customer
Program communication:
- Program Enrollment page needs to be consistent across all brands and all channels
- The value proposition of the program (e.g. able to earn and burn) across the family of brands should be front and center
- Reward the desired behavior
- Points for shopping with more than one brand
- Points for trying a new brand
Chand said that it’s not just about the offer.
Why are the different brands relevant to the customer?
- Target the communication based on customer data
- Have clear communication on Reward Redemption options
Relevancy Matters: Most relevant brands in front of the customer at any given time
- Lower the hurdle for trying a new brand
- Free sampler with enrollment
- Program benefits that address customer pain points (e.g. S&H fees)
- Leverage Surprise & Delight promotions to reward your best members and introduce a brand
- Provide a genuine recommendation for trying a new product and brand
Member experience in a multi-brand ecosystem
Chand noted the program and brand need necessary for the optimum customer experience.
-Program needs: Consistent, lifestyle driven, flexible, encourage multi-brand shopper.
-Brand needs: Integrated, personalized by brand, customized, drive brand-specific sales.
Managing individual brand concerns:
Challenge: Brand managers focused on higher hitting their brand specific revenue goals, while Enterprise loyalty team focused higher LTV across the enterprise via increase cross-brand shopping.
- Lower the brand’s customer acquisition cost.
- Rich source of customer acquisition.
- Allow seasonal brands to maintain longer relationships with customers.
What results has 1-800-Flowers.com seen?
- Program metrics have all shown vast improvements as we’ve moved from single brand-focused strategy to the celebratory ecosystem.
- Rewards members are 100 percent more likely to shop from two or more brands and Passport members are over 400 percent more likely to shop from two or more brands.
- Both single brand and multi-brand LTV numbers for members in loyalty program higher YOY.