Part 8: 7 Ways to Get Creative with Data
You’ve planned the photoshoot down to the tiniest detail. You’ve carefully selected the merchandise. You’ve agonized over the creative concepts. Every email, every landing page, every catalog page looks better than ever! But what if I told you that each of these could work even harder. When you combine data insights with creative, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
Here are a few ideas for making smart, data-driven decisions to inform creative:
- AOV
Even modest increases in your average order value (AOV) can make a powerful impact on overall sales, so we recommend that our clients feature add-ons prominently in the creative presentation. Add-ons should be at a nice, easy price point (think “impulse buy”); but pairing them with best sellers gives them the best chance to be seen. They can also complement an offer threshold (e.g. Free Shipping on orders of $75+) as customers will often use the add-on to meet the threshold. Collectively, this has the potential to nudge the AOV up and make a difference to your bottom line.
2. Margins
We all know that you should lead with strength: presenting your best-sellers in prominent hot spots. However, if your goal is to increase profitability, look at the contribution (sales less cost of goods) rather than topline sales when choosing products to feature on the front and back cover and other prominent placements. This will direct you to items that are not just popular with customers, but strong contributors to your margin.
3. Gifting
It’s crucial to know how much gift purchase happens on your list. The good news is that it’s fairly easy to find out: either ask at check-out (a check box to indicate that it’s a gift), or ask via a simple survey.
It’s important to understand seasonality as well. Many food-by-mail brands have a heavier gifting audience around key holidays like Mother’s Day and Christmas, while the remainder of the year the audience might have more self-purchase.
So, what do you do with this information once you have it?
One of our food-by-mail clients noticed that they had a large contingent of gifting customers. This indicated the need for a strong gifting message and images throughout the marketing ecosystem, especially at peak season. Emails, landing pages and catalog all featured images that showcased beautifully wrapped gift boxes alongside the products, also featuring add-ons that were appropriate for the gifting season at tantalizing price points to stimulate incremental sales.
4. Versioning New vs. Returning
Long-time customers purchase differently than prospects. Version creative assets to match each audience’s preferred categories and price points.
What does this look like in practice? Every email list has a portion of their list that subscribed to emails, but haven’t yet purchased. To move these “still thinking about it” folks from rumination to action, pay special attention to the categories, offering products and price points that first-time online purchasers favor.
With a catalog, version the cover. Look at the offline new-to-file names and find out what they frequently purchase. Feature that product or category on your prospecting cover.
Repeat the process to move a single category buyer into multi-category: look at which categories commonly overlap and present these together. While you’ve seen this tactic on e-commerce websites under the heading “You may also like” or “Frequently purchased together,” there’s no reason it can’t be also used in emails, direct mail and catalogs.
5. Reactivation
Research can also provide valuable information to drive creative insights, with questions focused on information that helps you reach your goals.
Want to reactivate lapsed customers? Survey past customers to find out why they stopped buying and what offers might entice them to return. Incorporate your findings into your creative work. For example, one client’s recent survey revealed that lapsed customers valued free shipping and quality over any other motivators. This insight led to new, appealing photography that showcased the product quality. Free shipping offers were tested at different price points. Both of these messages were then amplified throughout the reactivation effort, which successfully moved a significant portion of these lapsed customers back to active purchasers.
6. Personas
One of our B2B clients found that their primary and secondary customer segments had drastically different wants and needs. While one segment wanted lots of communication, education and support, the other wanted a transactional relationship only, with the easiest possible purchase and minimal support. We used creative versioning to get the most compelling message and to each customer group, focusing on the aspects that were most important to them – either ease or the strong support relationship.
7. Show value
Data should also be used to guide creative budget allocation, proving which activities will easily pay for themselves. For example, online split testing revealed that when we used lifestyle-photography for one of our clients, it led to a 28% higher click rate than laydown or silo photography, ultimately leading to higher conversions and sales. The increase in response made a powerful argument that high-quality lifestyle photography was an investment that would pay for itself.
These are just a few of the ways we’ve helped clients make smart, data-driven creative decisions. We can help you too. Send an email to laurena@jschmid.com if you need some guidance. We can help!
Tags: #breakthroughcreative, data, data analytics, Data Driven Marketing, Lauren Ackerman