Many companies pay lip service to a common theme among loyalty marketers: Listening to your customers can lead to brand loyalty. At 1-800-Flowers.com, that theme evokes much more than lip service.
“Part of our DNA as a company is to listen to our customers and always be a leading innovator in terms of adopting new technologies that help us engage with our customers wherever and however they prefer,” CEO Jim McCann said during the company’s April 26 third-quarter earnings call, according to Seeking Alpha. “Recent announcements highlight this focus, including our partnering with Facebook to develop and deploy the first commerce bought on their messenger platform and today’s announcement of our partnering with Amazon is one of the external ecommerce brands on the Alexa platform. We were often told innovation is a critical part of our business and we will continue to be at the forefront of technology to enhance the customer experience and help our customers connect and express themselves for all their celebratory occasions.”
By expanding its product offering and creating an all-star lineup of iconic gift brands, McCann said 1-800-Flowers is uniquely positioned to enhance top and bottom line growth in the years ahead.
“The growth we achieved in the seasonally slower third quarter reflects solid performance in our Cheryl’s and 1-800-Baskets brands, as well as in Harry & David, which is up more than 3% net to the first nine months of this (fiscal) year,” he explained. “We are very pleased with the benefits we driving across our platform related to the integration of Harry & David and we continue to be excited by the opportunities we see to further improve its growth rate in the years ahead. Executing on one of these opportunities earlier this month, we completed the move of Harry & David along with Wolferman’s and Stock Yards brands onto our multi-brand website. We believe this will significantly enhance our cross merchandising and marketing capabilities and help accelerate growth for all of our businesses across the platform.”
What’s more, company officials have made solid progress in terms of laying the groundwork to become the leading player in the gourmet food gift space.
“However, during the third quarter our top and bottom line results in this segment were impacted by the underperformance of our Fannie May brand,” McCann noted. “Fannie May’s business has not yet bounced back to the strong performance it had been showing prior to the fire that destroyed its warehouse and distribution center a year ago this past Thanksgiving Day. We have put in place a number of initiatives in both marketing and merchandising that are designed to improve customer traffic to the Fannie May brand. We are confident that Fannie May will be well-positioned to show significantly improved performance as we head into the key holiday season in fiscal 2017.”