[00:00] [Music playing with title card: SheerID + FRASERS GROUP – Adweek Webinar: Unlock Gen Z’s Loyalty]
[00:02] Danielle Moore (Senior Manager – Adweek Content Studio): Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Adweek webinar, where we’ll be talking about how to unlock Gen Z’s loyalty. Today’s webinar is sponsored by SheerID. I’m Danielle Moore, Senior Manager here with Adweek’s Content Studio, and I’ll be your host. Before we get started, I do just want to take a minute and make sure everyone knows what to expect from today’s webinar and is familiar with the features of our platform here.
[00:22] Danielle: Today’s presentation, which is really more of a conversation, will go somewhere in the 35 to 40 minute range, after which we will have some time for audience Q&A. So, if at any point you have a question for one of our speakers today, just use that Q&A tool right beneath the video window on your screen and we will get to as many questions as we can at the end of the presentation.
[00:41] Danielle: Also, definitely not too late to invite your colleagues to join us at today’s webinar. About 15 minutes ago, you should have received a final reminder email from us, and in there, you can find a link to the webinar registration page that you can share with your colleagues. Still plenty of time for them to join us live today, but if they can’t, do know that today’s webinar is being recorded, and they can always catch the on-demand version. In fact, that recording will be available to all registrants and we will send out a link when it’s available around 3:30 Eastern today, so keep an eye out for that.
[01:10] Danielle: As always, if you enjoy today’s webinar, definitely check out the full Adweek webinars calendar at adweek.com/webinars to see all of our upcoming events. You can also find that linked in the event resources area below. Also, in that event resources area, we have quite a few resources from both Adweek and SheerID that are related to the conversation today that you can feel free to check out. So be sure to take a look at all of that.
[01:33] [Transition to speaker slide]
[01:33] Danielle: Now, let me introduce you to today’s speakers. We’re very happy to be joined by Anjanette Hill Mendoza, Chief Customer Officer at SheerID. Anjanette leads SheerID’s post-sales customer-facing teams. She has more than 25 years of customer life cycle and success experience. And we’re also pleased to welcome Danny Woodland, Performance Marketing Manager at Frasers Group. Danny oversees performance marketing for retailers across the group’s portfolio, which includes Sports Direct, Everlast, and other leading sports and lifestyle brands.
[02:04] Danielle: All right, we’ve got a lot of great content to dive into today. So without further ado, let me bring our speakers up on screen here to get us started. Welcome Danny and Anjanette. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[02:13] Anjanette Hill Mendoza (Chief Customer Officer – SheerID): Of course, thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate you doing the introduction, setting the ground rules for our conversation today with Danny, and just generally doing a great job of preparing us for this webinar. And welcome, Danny.
[02:25] Danny Woodland (Performance Marketing Manager – Frasers Group): Thank you for having me.
[02:27] Anjanette: Perfect, perfect. So I’m going to start with just a little bit this morning. Danny and I have spoken together. She’s one of our key customers here at SheerID. But wanted to start with a little bit of grounding of why we’re having this conversation. According to SheerID’s 2024 Consumer Report, there’s some surprising things about Gen Z that every brand needs to know. From their preference for authenticity and inclusivity to their inclination towards social activism and digital-first interactions, Gen Z is a pretty unique and influential demographic.
[02:55] Anjanette: They value brands that resonate with their values, like Frasers Group, um, offer personalized experiences and maintain a really strong presence on social media platforms. So, in our discussion today, Danny and I will talk about these insights a little bit further, share some real-world examples from Danny’s organization, and then just provide some actionable tips for effectively connecting with Gen Z. But Danny knows this and I prepared her already in advance—before we get into the meat of that very professional conversation, I always like to start with a little question that gives you an insight into who Danny is, um, and how great of a person she is and why we love her so much. So Danny, why don’t we start with: can you tell me if you had one superpower, what would that be?
[03:35] Danny: I’d probably be invisible for just—just for the day so I could probably get through my emails. Um, they just keep coming and coming and I can’t keep up any longer.
[03:47] Anjanette: [Laughs] I think most of us would like to do that. We talked earlier about maybe just, you know, superpower of creating an AI bot that’s going to answer all those emails for you so that you can go do all the strategic work that we know you are really great at doing. So, awesome. All right. Today, as Danielle mentioned, we are going to do more of a conversation. I think that flows a little bit better than us presenting slides towards you. There’s some resources, including the 2024 Consumer Report that we did, that’s in your, in your event resources tab. So please feel free to run over there and grab that if you’d like.
[04:18] Anjanette: But Danny and I are going to have more of a conversation today about what Frasers Group is doing, how they’re thinking about Gen Z and otherwise. So we’re going to dive right in. As we mentioned, there’s some unique things about Gen Z. It’s a generation that many of us are starting to lean into because their spending power is already huge at over $450 billion. Um, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds each year because many of those individuals are up-leveling in the workforce and, and getting better and making more money. And so can we start with Danny—why and how did Frasers Group start with Gen Z uh, advertising campaigns and connecting with them?
[04:52] Danny: Yeah, so I think for us, we own a multitude of brands. Um, we’re talking like 40-plus here. And we saw that the brands that we have scope over so many different sectors, from sport to luxury to premium to buying a sofa. And what we did is we invested in a data uh, company called XCM Horizon, who basically home all of our data from in-store and online. And what we found was that actually the majority of our customers were between the ages of like 16 to 24, and we did not have the right tone of voice for these customers at all. We were very much targeting towards people my mom’s age and, you know, probably my sister’s age, who is a little bit older than me. And it was just all wrong, to be honest with you.
[05:42] Danny: So that’s where it all kind of came about. We obviously worked with the likes of UNiDAYS and Student Beans before, and we just weren’t really gaining enough insight into these customers. So we kind of wanted to see how we could leverage our tone of voice across different brands whilst working with someone who would allow us to have the insight into those customers. So that’s where you guys came in, basically.
[06:08] Anjanette: Oh, fantastic. It sounds like data is the key to all the things, and I know that about you, that you are very data-oriented as am I. So using that data to get you really started and then to take that and put it into actionable steps further, including the time that you’re spending with us at SheerID.
[06:24] Danny: Yeah. No, 100 percent.
[06:27] Anjanette: Okay. So SheerID recently researched about 1,000 Gen Zers, um, Danny, over 18 in the US and in the UK where you’re located, about how their current economy is impacting their purchasing decisions. And we know it’s pretty tough for a lot of folks these days. What we found is that majority are still pretty pessimistic and they’re currently selecting products that deliver value to them, but also maintain their values. Um, and that’s different from most other generations where we’re like, “We just need to go spend the money on the things that we need.” So how have you woven that value message into your programs with this community?
[06:59] Danny: Yeah, so you touched on it. We’re basically trying to build a community with these people whereby they’re feeling valued and, you know, a lot of that comes into personalization, whether it’s through email, whether it’s through touchpoints on the website, um, whether it’s, you know, their paid social ads they’re getting sent. Like, I think you want to make sure that you’re building a community whereby they feel valued and they feel heard.
[07:22] Danny: Um, so what we basically done is we’re starting at the moment to really understand what these customers want from us. Uh, we have like a multitude of brands, like I said, and, you know, some of them are more leaning towards sport, but some of them want to be able to afford their luxury, but not at the highest price point in the world, because I know not everyone can afford it. So for us, we would really homing in on the data to understand like what it is that these customers really want from us—like what brands do they want to see from us, what, um, you know, experiences do they want to get from us? Because I feel like if you build a community with these people, they’re going to come back. They’re also going to use uh, you know, word of mouth, which is probably one of the most—probably the best marketing tool out there.
[08:08] Danny: Um, which we didn’t really have before. We—we know we did a lot of research and AB testing and some people were like, “Yeah, we would refer you,” and other people were like, “No, we wouldn’t.” Um, and it always was the younger generation that wouldn’t refer us just because they didn’t feel like they had any value coming from us. They weren’t really being shown anything or taught anything from us, so it wasn’t adding to their day-to-day life values. And that’s basically what they want now is to basically feel like they’re being part of this community that you’re building and that they feel specialized and honored.
[08:41] Anjanette: Absolutely. Danny, when we talked previously, you talked about a loyalty card and program. So can you elaborate a little bit about that with respect to this particular generation?
[08:52] Danny: Yeah, so we noticed there was a massive gap in our market. Um, you know, we—in for Sports Direct, for instance, we’re very much positioned against the likes of JD Sports and Pro:Direct, and they all had these reward schemes or these loyalty programs. We currently do not have one. We’re launching it in September this year. But what we found is that Gen Zers were really responding to having that loyalty program and building that community with them.
[09:18] Danny: And what we’re doing within ours, which is slightly different to everyone else, is we’re actually doing personalized offers for the person. So we’re watching what they’re purchasing, we’re watching what they’re looking at, um, on the app, online, and in-store, and being more targeted with what we’re showing them, which has made a huge difference already with just like the AB testing that we’ve been doing with select customers and even staff members as well. We’ve been testing it on them.
[09:44] Danny: So that’s like a big thing for us. We’re going to roll it out across all of our brands at the moment, but we’re going to launch with Sports Direct because it’s our key brand and we feel like it’s the one that targets the most Gen Zers. Um, so we were really excited to see what that looks like and how that works. And obviously, we’ll be constantly learning from it and adapting it and changing it and also getting feedback from customers as well, which I think not a lot of businesses do nowadays. They’ll kind of leave that to customer services, whereas actually as a digital team, we’re taking it upon ourselves to really home in and listen to what the customer wants and doing AB testing and getting some of them to come into store and tell us what’s going on and why they’re not liking the app or what we can improve. So I think for that, as well, they’re also getting that personal touch where they’re actually meeting people who work behind the scenes of the brand, which I think is invaluable.
[10:34] Anjanette: I agree, I agree. So now probably is a good time for you to give us a little bit more information about Frasers Group. I know that you have what feels like a gazillion brands that you’re working with. Um, I’m going to ask you about building cross-brand loyalty, which is why I would love for you just to give us a little quick introduction to Frasers Group for those of us in the US. Perhaps we don’t know how many more brands you have, so that they get a context for like why is cross-brand so important to you.
[10:59] Danny: So at Frasers Group, we’re a multi-brand retailer whereby what I mean is we quite literally own, I think it’s like 50-plus—don’t hold me to those numbers though, you can look it up online—um, of brands that cross against different pillars, as we call them. So we have a sports pillar, a premium pillar, and a luxury pillar. Um, and all of our brands that we own fall within those pillars whereby they each have their own strategy that’s coming towards a bigger business goal. But obviously, not every pillar is going to have the same strategy because they’re very different customer audience, um, price point, and all these other things as well. Um, but we’re also based in the UK, but we’ve recently, as of early this year, launched in Europe as well with Sports Direct, so we’re really starting to like grow our business. We’re also in Malaysia for Sports Direct as well, which is the one that’s kind of really driving our—our like international growth at the moment.
[11:55] Anjanette: So much. So talk to me about how you’re thinking about getting folks from, say, a Sports Direct to a Flannels from a loyalty perspective.
[12:02] Danny: Yeah, so it’s a difficult one. Like, like I said, they’re all different price points, like not every customer’s going to be interested in sport and in high fashion. We’re fully aware of that. But what we’re doing within our loyalty, um, you know, app that we’re building, this membership scheme, is we’re giving people the opportunity to see what other faces, as we call them, brands we also own within that app.
[12:26] Danny: So a lot—we found that a lot of our customers actually don’t know that we own the likes of Flannels and House of Fraser and Jack Wills and they’ll only shop at Sports Direct. And we found once we were telling them, you know, “Look, we own all of these other brands that you probably shop at already but didn’t know,” they’re like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” And we found that the lifetime value of these customers are way higher than just an individual brand customer. So we found, I think they’re 17 times more valuable than just an individual customer to us if they shop across even one more of our brands. They become, you know, the pinnacle of what we basically want our customers to be. We’re trying to build an ecosystem whereby a customer doesn’t need to go anywhere else but Frasers Group to buy pretty much anything you need in your day-to-day life apart from groceries.
[13:16] Anjanette: Fantastic, that’s great. So let’s talk a bit—a little bit about how you even get them into the experience to at the Sports Direct—you’re thinking about that. Um, so exclusive experiences are something that Gen Z really seeks out, right? They’re in our study, 90 percent of our college students stated that they research brands to see if they have student offers before they even make a purchase, which is a huge advantage, right, if you’ve got a student offer. So what time—what type of benefits are you seeing your student offer provide you in your Gen Z campaign?
[13:46] Danny: Yeah, so we—we did a lot of like AB testing as to what we were going to offer the customer, because some people do percentage off, some people do monetary value. And we did a lot of AB testing and we actually found that 63 percent of people preferred having the percentage, but actually our conversion rate went up by like, I think it was 42 percent when we did the percentage compared to the money-off value. Which for me seemed bizarre, and I haven’t got right into the psychology of it all, but like I believe it’s just the percentage seems more feasible. And we also saw that our AOV and our basket—like our items to basket went up with the percentage because they just felt like they were getting more off all the time.
[14:28] Danny: Um, but what we’ve been able to do is we started doing it recently whereby we actually hold like running clubs now through the app. And you can only access them through the app. And Gen—like the uplift with that with Gen Z has been phenomenal. Running in the UK is a massive thing at the moment. Um, we’ve just had the marathon not that long ago, so everyone’s on that running hype. But I think for us, we’ve been able to really put these events on and, you know, bring our customers in and not just put influencers in there and—but actually get face-to-face time with those customers and them actually feel like they’re being valued and getting something back from the brand. It doesn’t cost them anything to come to these events and they’ll, you know, they normally get given like a free t-shirt that says Sports Direct on it.
[15:08] Danny: Or we’ve done a few with like Flannels where it’s like Flannels X and we’ve invited them down and it’s been like a whole party in the basement of our Flannels store in London. But we’ve had actual customers there and it’s been like a really nice experience with them and we’ve had a really good—excuse me—feedback from that as well. So I think that’s how we’ve kind of been able to leverage that bit as well and the word of mouth has grown phenomenal since then with all these events that we’ve started putting on. And I think we’re only going to continue to do them and hopefully do them a little bit more targeted towards different age groups as well. We know, you know, we’re talking about Gen Z, but there are other customers out there that you still need to make sure they feel valued at the same time. So yeah.
[15:51] Anjanette: Yeah. So now that you’ve figured out the—or you’re starting to figure out the loyalty and how you get them from one brand to the other as well as the offers that resonate—a percentage or those very unique experiences like a party in the basement of Flannels—um, tell me about why you decided to use a verification solution in this kind of a situation.
[16:09] Danny: I think for us, our business is very like cost-effective. So it was a cost-saving exercise to start with. But now that we, you know, we’re approaching a year being with you guys and the value that we get from verification tools such as yourselves compared to the likes of Student Beans or UNiDAYS is that first-party data. So being able to really understand who that customer is, you know, when did they graduate, what uni are they at. We’ve been able to then use that to like geo-target people through paid social and all this kind of stuff because we have the data and we know our customers are there.
[16:43] Danny: And also, it’s just making sure that, you know, we’re catching them at such a young age, especially Gen Z. Like we want to grow with them. We want them to be—feel like we’re growing with them and we’re going along their life journey with them, whether it’s through like graduating, buying their first house, getting engaged, getting married. Like we want to know these things so that we can then feel like we’re celebrating it with them and they also feel like they’re being valued as a customer and like, “Oh, this brand actually cares that I’ve had this happen to me,” or, you know, “Oh my God, they know—they remembered I graduated.” Not everyone does that. And I know I only graduated about four or five years ago and for—for me, I got a few emails about graduating and I just was like, “Oh, this is so nice.” And I still shop at those places today because I felt valued when I was coming into that age of having more money and being able to spend a bit more free than I was when I was a student. So yeah, I think for us, like verification was—is—is invaluable to us now. The first-party data we have is basically what we build a lot of our um, other um, digital marketing channels off and being able to use that to help our trade teams and our brand teams and all that kind of stuff is invaluable to us.
[17:54] Anjanette: Yeah, it makes me super happy. I’ve been in customer experience for a really long time and for me, it’s all about a life cycle, right? Like where does your customer start and then where do they progress? And certainly when you’re getting that level of data from first-party data, you start to be able to celebrate those life events and milestones with them that endears you to that brand and then you start to, especially from a Gen Z perspective, really, really want to stay with that brand as you mentioned—that you’re still those folks who told you “congratulations on your graduation,” you know, you’re still shopping there today because of those kind of things. That’s awesome.
[18:25] Anjanette: Perfect, thank you so much. Can we talk just a little bit more about your AB testing in that kind of a situation, um, when you’re doing communications and nurture? Tell me about the AB testing you’re doing with this particular generation.
[18:37] Danny: So we’re doing a lot more through email and paid social are our two channels that we use AB testing quite a lot in, um, especially for these Gen Zers because that’s basically all they use is their social media and then they check their emails on the phone and on the go. So we did a lot of AB testing before we went live with you guys as to what, you know, offer we should put out there and like I mentioned earlier, we tried a monetary value and we tried a percentage off. And actually, we found one, it was easier for us to control percentage off in terms of our margins and all that kind of stuff that every business has.
[19:15] Danny: But also, you know, I don’t feel like a 10-pound off felt very valuable to me. And I was at the time—they—I was probably the closest to Gen Z we had in our company and they kept being—asking me all these questions. And I think I just feel like a percentage off it just says something in your brain that just ticks and you’re like, “That just seems nicer.” And you add more to your basket and you kind of get carried away sometimes, and that’s what we want as a—as a brand. We want you to get carried away with being like, “Oh, I’ve got a percentage off so I can just add that one more thing into my basket,” because although it might not seem a lot to you, that means our basket value and our basket items gone up and that—that metric is really key to us in our business.
[19:56] Danny: So yeah, AB testing is something we’re constantly doing, um, and we will never stop doing. We always do it within a controlled environment. Like I said, we’ve been AB testing our new app, we’ve been testing our loyalty program, even just with like members of staff um, just to understand like what it is that people want. Um, and I think every—every business does it, right? But I think not everyone actions everything off the back of them. But we have an optimization team who quite literally pull all the data for us from these AB testing and put a roadmap together of like what we need to implement and what we need to take away and, you know, we’re constantly retesting things that we’ve implemented and then we take them out again because they’re not working anymore. You know, everyone’s changing all the time and we’re trying to keep up with the changes, um, so yeah, I think that’s how we AB test but I’m sure everyone has a different way of doing it.
[20:48] Anjanette: Absolutely, thank you for walking us through that. It’s—it’s interesting because I wanted to talk a little bit more about the offer, right? We were fascinated by that when we’re having the pre-conversation about this, the difference between the dollar value or a pound value off versus the percentage value off, those kind of things. Let’s talk a little bit about customer acquisition cost if we can. We know that those things are going crazy. Um, Meta alone has risen their price by 60 percent over the last couple years. How are you maximizing your acquisition investments to foster these repeat purchases, and you mentioned customer loyalty and lifetime value and those kind of things?
[21:21] Danny: Yeah, so my—my background is all affiliates. So I’ve worked in affiliates my whole life—well, my whole working life. And I think for us, we are always—everyone’s trying to find it cheaper, right? But what we do is we actually utilize our channels in completely different ways. So affiliates we use as a new customer acquisition channel, whereby we’re driving people to site, we’re driving them to the PLPs and the PDPs that we need them to. But we use PPC as our loyalty one because we know that they’ve been searching for us, so, you know, why not come back? Google’s cheaper than affiliates anyway, so come on back to us.
[21:58] Danny: And then we use paid social in a slightly different way. We use it for awareness and then also conversion. And we’ve actually found that by having a full funnel strategy across all of our different marketing channels is we’ve actually found that our CPMs and our CPAs and everything have actually dropped because we’re using the data that we have behind everything to make strategic changes and make sure that everything we’re doing is aligned with what the business wants and all of that.
[22:30] Danny: I think we also leave it up to the more like the SEOs and the direct—like we’ve done our job, we brought them in. And then it all streams back to how can you keep that customer loyal to you, um, especially in this day and age with, you know, the cost of living crisis in the UK is astronomically bad at the moment. So it’s how can we make those people want to come back to us? And we’ve found that on Flannels, for instance, which is one of our more luxury brands, we’ve started offering those more like high-street luxury. So like Adidas Originals and things like that, and that’s been keeping our customers happy. And, you know, the likes of Coach rather than a Jacquemus and all those kinds of things. So, you know, we’re constantly adapting to how our customers want and what they need from us as well. But I think, you know, we utilize all of our channels in a very different way, um, but they all have the same—they all have the same goal at the end of the day.
[23:25] Anjanette: Certainly. So Gen Zers reported to us that student offers make them feel pretty appreciated and valued by brands, which are two emotions that drive that loyalty that you keep saying, right? So after, you know, you think about customer acquisition cost, what measurements are you using to track the success of your campaigns? Is it loyalty? Is it lifetime value? What are the—what are the data points that you’ve got to report up to saying, “Hey, we did a great thing”?
[23:49] Danny: Yeah, so we look at uh, repeat sessions. So um, within our GA4 we can see who’s a like a repeat person rather than a unique session. We use LTV as a massive contributor as to, you know, whether they’re any value to us. I mean, everyone’s valuable to us, but whether certain channels—for instance, my channel—is very much got a higher lifetime value than paid social because, you know, you’re always swiping on your phone, you’re always looking for the next thing.
[24:18] Danny: Um, we look at revenue. Every—every brand does. Um, and then we look at AOV, and we also look at conversion items, which not every custom—like brand does, but we look at like the basket items and how many items they’re actually putting in their basket, rather than how many conversions we’ve made, because one conversion could actually be like five or six items, which would be far more valuable to a conversion that has one item. Um, so we don’t actually take too much interest in the transaction number, but more what the conversion items number is. Um, and those are kind of some of the key metrics that we use.
[24:54] Anjanette: Perfect, thank you so much. I love talking about data with you because you’re the girl who understands it and that’s how my brain thinks too. Um, I usually start with the data and then go to my gut. So appreciate that kind of a thought process. Um, let’s talk a little bit more about Gen Z and that they’re very attuned to this authentic personalized communication. They also understand that their data is being used, right? They’re—they’re not pretending that it’s not. Um, they’re privacy-aware in our opinion, but not privacy-frightened. Um, there was some time ago—I’m going to date myself—before Facebook and all the things, um, where people did not want to put that data on, but they’re really willing to share where there’s a value exchange. So how are you supporting that in your program?
[25:35] Danny: Yeah, I think for us, we’re just making sure that the customer feels heard. Once they feel like they’ve been heard, they quite literally give you anything you want in exchange for that. Um, obviously because we’re a—like multi-brand retailer, we’ve kind of strategically positioned ourselves whereby when they sign up for our verification tool and, you know, tell us they’re a student, we’re actually saying “sign up to Frasers Group email,” not just that individual brand. So therefore, we’re leveraging that customer across multitude of our brands.
[26:09] Danny: And I think for us, everything’s homed in one place for our CRM, so they’ve been able to really, you know, personalize and look into what those people are buying and, you know, have they activated their discount? Have they come back? Um, you know, all of these kinds of things. And I—I mean I love data. I could go on about this forever but I won’t. But I just feel like for us the value—you—we just have to make sure that they’re being heard and they’re getting what they want from this transaction because at the end of the day, it is a transaction that we’re trying to get them to do. Um, so anything we can do to do that for them, like we will do pretty much. And yeah, I think that’s pretty much the base of it basically.
[26:50] Anjanette: Okay perfect. One more question on the data stuff. Um, so how do you ensure you’re collecting high-quality data and how do you share that within the brands? We talked previously about uh, self-attestation.
[27:03] Danny: Yeah, so I think for us, first-party data, with everything that’s going on with Google, um, and, you know, cookie policies and all this kind of stuff, first-party data is what every brand and company should be looking to use because it’s coming directly from the source, right? It’s coming directly from you or I or Jim down the road. And um, I think not—not enough companies use first-party data. And for us, that is invaluable because we can grow customer profiles out of that and we can make sure that what we’re doing is so streamlined to that person and so direct.
[27:40] Danny: And I think cross-brand, it’s—it is hard sometimes to make sure that you’re using that right tone of voice and all this kind of stuff, but you just have to remember that that customer is the same person who was on Sports Direct but is now on Flannels. Like they—they obviously interacted with the tone of voice you had there, so don’t change it too much when you go somewhere else because then they’re going to get scared and they’re going to feel like they’re—they’re in an unknown territory to them. So, yeah, I think we’ve learned a lot in terms of our like tone of voice as a company through Gen Z, which is kind of surprising to me to be honest, um, but it’s been a—a massive game changer for us.
[28:17] Anjanette: Danny, one last question for you and then we’re going to probably open it up to some folks who’ve been asking questions of the folks in the background and thank you so much for those folks who are supporting Danny and I. Um, tell me one thing you’re excited about with regard to your college student program and in the next year and working with SheerID.
[28:34] Danny: Yeah, I think for us like we’ve only just started. We’ve only scratched the surface. We’ve only been with you guys just less than a year now. And from the data that you guys have been able to give us, we’re actually going to develop our own graduate program, whereby we’re growing with those customers. So I think for us we’re just looking towards the growth of, you know, Gen Z and student verification, but we’re also going to open it up to different communities. So the likes of NHS workers, first aid, army, police, you name it, we’re going to try and open it up to all of them and really understand those customers as well because at the moment, you know, they’re probably all going into retirement soon and they probably have the next biggest purchasing power compared to Gen Z at the moment.
[29:14] Danny: So um, yeah, I think we’re just looking forward to the growth and, you know, you guys have such a fantastic team where you are that you guys have been so helpful in helping us understand what—what it is that we actually needed and wanted from you. Um, and now that we’ve got that relationship, it’s yeah, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.
[29:31] Anjanette: Oh good, I’m glad to hear that. [Laughs] Um, what I’m most excited to hear though Danny is that you’re looking to create these authentic connections with your consumers, right? The folks who are with you, you want to understand them regardless of which segment community they’re in, that you really want to spend some time and understanding who they are, using the data to your advantage and then creating programs that make the most sense for those individuals and then drive all of the LTV and repeat sessions and additional revenue and higher cart values and all those different things with you. So I’m super excited about that for you. So thank you so much for partnering with us on that.
[30:05] Danny: No, you’re more than welcome.
[30:08] Danielle: Danielle?
[30:09] Danielle Moore: All right. Thank you both so much for that great discussion. So many insights there to chat through. Um, as you mentioned, we do have time to take a couple of audience questions. We’ll get to as many as we can over the next 5 to 10 minutes or so. To our audience members, please know that if we don’t get to your question today, we always make sure they get forwarded over to our speakers so they have the opportunity to possibly reply offline.
[30:29] Danielle Moore: Just a quick reminder here from Adweek that today’s webinar will be—has been recorded and will be available later today around 3:30 Eastern or so. Also keep an eye out for that email and be sure to check out the event resources area uh, for those resources that they were referring to throughout the presentation if you’d like to get a closer look. Uh, so with all that, let’s jump into some of these questions.
[30:51] Danielle Moore: So, the first question we have here—Danny, when it comes to Gen Z, what are they expecting from that in-store experience that you’re talking about? Is it your experience that they want to buy online or in-store, a mix? Talk us through that.
[10:37] Danny: I think it’s a weird one. I think it’s changing to go more in-store. I think a lot of them are coming in and being like, “I’ve seen this online,” but, you know, after COVID and everything, everyone’s like, “Let’s get out there, let’s go shopping.” Um, so I think for us it’s like a—a very good mix, but we see a lot of people coming in and they normally have the app or they have it saved down on their phone and they’re like, “Look, I saw this online. Do you have it in-store?” Because they—they want to try it on. They’re not sure what size they are anymore and, you know, as a woman sizing is weird enough as it is, but even for men like they don’t know if they want it oversized and all that kind of stuff. So we’re trying to make the omnichannel experience as streamlined as possible. Obviously, it’s never going to be perfect, um, but I think for us it’s like a—it’s a good mix but we’re seeing like in-store is definitely driving uh, a lot of our sales in terms of Gen Zers and um, all that kind of stuff at the moment. So, yeah. I hope that answers the question.
[32:06] Danielle Moore: Yeah, totally does. Makes perfect sense that post-COVID um, there’s a bit more of an enthusiasm for going to the store and it’s like it took on a whole new experience and novelty. And like Anjanette was saying earlier, like Gen Z’s always looking for these exclusive experiences. So if you have a great in-store experience, that I think is—is a huge advantage. So makes perfect sense to me.
[32:27] Danielle Moore: Um, the next question here, I think this flows in pretty naturally, uh, in terms of when you’re talking about the in-store experience that brings up the uh, concept of like location targeting. So this question refers to that. Um, how is Frasers Group leveraging geolocation targeting to enhance Gen Z’s shopping experience? Is that something you’re diving into?
[32:47] Danny: Yeah, so we are constantly opening new stores. Um, it’s something that we are really as a company really doing a lot of brick-and-mortar is actually where we first started from and I don’t think that will ever go away for us, we’re only ever investing more and more into it. So we’ve actually been able to use the geolocation for a lot of these to say, “Hey, like we got a new store opening in your uni town,” or, um, you know, “Oh hey, there’s one opening not even that far away from you,” sort of thing.
[33:15] Danny: So we’ve been able to actually use it in our CRM data to be able to, you know, target these people and actually tell them when we’ve got stores opening, or if there’s a cool experience happening, especially for people near London. We always have a lot going on in our London offices and around our London offices. So we use it. We—it depends on what the event is, we’ll change the radius um, to make sure that we feel like we’re including as many people as possible.
[33:37] Danny: And yeah, I think those are kind of the key ways that we use it at the moment. Our paid social girls use it a lot more than um, I do on my day-to-day, but those are just some of the ways that I’ve been—I’ve—I’ve seen it work and it’s actually been really great, especially with store launches. We had one in Cardiff not that long ago and there are a lot of people there that we were not expecting to be there just because of this one email that we sent with the data that we had collected through SheerID. So yeah.
[34:02] Danielle Moore: Yeah. Well, thanks for walking us through that. Uh, one thing that struck me as you were talking is like this notion of voice and having the right tone to speak to Gen Z. And someone is asking for you to expand on that a little bit. So they say: “Danny, can you expand more on why the voice of the company matters uh, particularly when it comes to affiliate marketing, since that is very much in your background as well?”
[34:22] Danny: Yeah. I think tone of voice is everything, right? You want to make sure that your business is the same everywhere you go. So whether you’re in-store, whether you’re online, whether you’re reading a paid article that someone’s written about you, you want to make sure that it’s always relating back to the values you have as a brand. And I think knowing your tone of voice is knowing almost like what your business is worth to you.
[34:44] Danny: And how we see it is that, you know, not every brand we have has the same tone of voice, but every brand we have has the same message behind their tone of voice. So it’s, you know, we want to create this ecosystem whereby everyone and anyone wants to come to us because we have everything you could possibly need in one place. And I don’t know about you guys, but if someone—if I get an email and the tone of voice just has that little bit of something, I’m more likely to read it, I’m more likely to click through. And at the end of the day, it’s all about the metrics in my world. I work in digital, so metrics are a big thing for us. Um, but yeah, I think tone of voice is invaluable to a business and if you can get it right, then you’re on to a winner with pretty much every customer. But you have to make sure that it’s relating back to your customer. We have the customer is the forefront of everything we do here at Frasers. We are constantly thinking about the customer and how we can help them and what we can do to better ourselves for them. Um, so yeah.
[35:39] Danielle Moore: Thank you for that. Uh, so our next question here, I’ll just read it out. Uh, so someone says: “Gen Z has a lower attention span than others.” I would argue that’s maybe a little bit of a stereotype, I’d be curious to see what the data says on that. Uh, but to that point, what are some elements apart from personalization that you think are a must-have in order to engage them better?
[36:01] Danny: It’s weird actually. We were talking about this with like the paid social girls the other day, and they’re finding that shorter content is more engaging as long as you’re getting the message across. They don’t want to have all the fluffy stuff at the beginning and all the fluffy stuff at the end. They just want to know exactly what it is that you’re selling, exactly when you’re doing it, and how much it costs. It’s pretty much all they ever want to know.
[36:22] Danny: So we make sure that through everything that we do in terms of, you know, emails that we send, there’s always a price next to the item. We never ever put anything in there. We always make it really obvious if there’s a discount as well, so that they’re like, “Oh, that’s great, super helpful.” But I think being short and snappy with what you’re doing and what you’re saying has a massive impact.
[36:43] Danny: And, you know, we—we don’t—we do a lot of investment in like influencers and stuff like that, but you’ll find on TikTok and everything like that, our videos are very short. We’re never doing anything more than 30 seconds. I think it is. And we’re always constantly making sure that the engagement rates are there, and if they’re not, then we learn from that straight away and we don’t do it again. Um, so I think, yeah, being short and snappy—um, I—I know I’m like that. If I see something I just want to know what it is and how much it costs straight away. Um, but yeah, I think—I think you’re right. I do think they are probably a little bit lethargic and they don’t want to sit there and like wait for 40 seconds to see what it is that you’re actually offering. So it’s making sure that your product or whatever it is that you’re selling is at the forefront of, you know, any ad that you’re putting out there.
[37:29] Danielle Moore: Yeah. Makes perfect sense and super interesting to—to hear that the data backs up that um, in terms of Gen Z wanting at least shorter content and more succinct uh, modes of delivering all of this. So um, unfortunately, that is the—all the time that we have for questions for today’s event, but as I mentioned earlier, we’ll make sure we get any that we didn’t get forwarded over to our speakers. Um, I’d like to thank our speakers as well as our sponsor, SheerID. Some final reminders from Adweek: make sure you check out that event resources area with all of this great info, that consumer report, some other resources uh, and be sure to keep an eye out for the link to the on-demand recording, which will be available later today. As always, if you enjoyed today’s webinar, be sure to check out the Adweek webinars calendar to learn more about our upcoming events at adweek.com/webinars, also linked below. Again, huge, huge thank you to Danny and Anjanette, the folks supporting us on the back end as well. Thank you to our audience for being here today. And as always, we look forward to seeing everyone on an upcoming Adweek webinar. Thank you all!
[38:25] [Speakers waving goodbye]
[38:28] [Music playing with closing title card: SheerID + FRASERS GROUP – Adweek Webinar: Unlock Gen Z’s Loyalty]
[00:02] Danielle Moore (Senior Manager – Adweek Content Studio): Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Adweek webinar, where we’ll be talking about how to unlock Gen Z’s loyalty. Today’s webinar is sponsored by SheerID. I’m Danielle Moore, Senior Manager here with Adweek’s Content Studio, and I’ll be your host. Before we get started, I do just want to take a minute and make sure everyone knows what to expect from today’s webinar and is familiar with the features of our platform here.
[00:22] Danielle: Today’s presentation, which is really more of a conversation, will go somewhere in the 35 to 40 minute range, after which we will have some time for audience Q&A. So, if at any point you have a question for one of our speakers today, just use that Q&A tool right beneath the video window on your screen and we will get to as many questions as we can at the end of the presentation.
[00:41] Danielle: Also, definitely not too late to invite your colleagues to join us at today’s webinar. About 15 minutes ago, you should have received a final reminder email from us, and in there, you can find a link to the webinar registration page that you can share with your colleagues. Still plenty of time for them to join us live today, but if they can’t, do know that today’s webinar is being recorded, and they can always catch the on-demand version. In fact, that recording will be available to all registrants and we will send out a link when it’s available around 3:30 Eastern today, so keep an eye out for that.
[01:10] Danielle: As always, if you enjoy today’s webinar, definitely check out the full Adweek webinars calendar at adweek.com/webinars to see all of our upcoming events. You can also find that linked in the event resources area below. Also, in that event resources area, we have quite a few resources from both Adweek and SheerID that are related to the conversation today that you can feel free to check out. So be sure to take a look at all of that.
[01:33] [Transition to speaker slide]
[01:33] Danielle: Now, let me introduce you to today’s speakers. We’re very happy to be joined by Anjanette Hill Mendoza, Chief Customer Officer at SheerID. Anjanette leads SheerID’s post-sales customer-facing teams. She has more than 25 years of customer life cycle and success experience. And we’re also pleased to welcome Danny Woodland, Performance Marketing Manager at Frasers Group. Danny oversees performance marketing for retailers across the group’s portfolio, which includes Sports Direct, Everlast, and other leading sports and lifestyle brands.
[02:04] Danielle: All right, we’ve got a lot of great content to dive into today. So without further ado, let me bring our speakers up on screen here to get us started. Welcome Danny and Anjanette. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[02:13] Anjanette Hill Mendoza (Chief Customer Officer – SheerID): Of course, thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate you doing the introduction, setting the ground rules for our conversation today with Danny, and just generally doing a great job of preparing us for this webinar. And welcome, Danny.
[02:25] Danny Woodland (Performance Marketing Manager – Frasers Group): Thank you for having me.
[02:27] Anjanette: Perfect, perfect. So I’m going to start with just a little bit this morning. Danny and I have spoken together. She’s one of our key customers here at SheerID. But wanted to start with a little bit of grounding of why we’re having this conversation. According to SheerID’s 2024 Consumer Report, there’s some surprising things about Gen Z that every brand needs to know. From their preference for authenticity and inclusivity to their inclination towards social activism and digital-first interactions, Gen Z is a pretty unique and influential demographic.
[02:55] Anjanette: They value brands that resonate with their values, like Frasers Group, um, offer personalized experiences and maintain a really strong presence on social media platforms. So, in our discussion today, Danny and I will talk about these insights a little bit further, share some real-world examples from Danny’s organization, and then just provide some actionable tips for effectively connecting with Gen Z. But Danny knows this and I prepared her already in advance—before we get into the meat of that very professional conversation, I always like to start with a little question that gives you an insight into who Danny is, um, and how great of a person she is and why we love her so much. So Danny, why don’t we start with: can you tell me if you had one superpower, what would that be?
[03:35] Danny: I’d probably be invisible for just—just for the day so I could probably get through my emails. Um, they just keep coming and coming and I can’t keep up any longer.
[03:47] Anjanette: [Laughs] I think most of us would like to do that. We talked earlier about maybe just, you know, superpower of creating an AI bot that’s going to answer all those emails for you so that you can go do all the strategic work that we know you are really great at doing. So, awesome. All right. Today, as Danielle mentioned, we are going to do more of a conversation. I think that flows a little bit better than us presenting slides towards you. There’s some resources, including the 2024 Consumer Report that we did, that’s in your, in your event resources tab. So please feel free to run over there and grab that if you’d like.
[04:18] Anjanette: But Danny and I are going to have more of a conversation today about what Frasers Group is doing, how they’re thinking about Gen Z and otherwise. So we’re going to dive right in. As we mentioned, there’s some unique things about Gen Z. It’s a generation that many of us are starting to lean into because their spending power is already huge at over $450 billion. Um, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds each year because many of those individuals are up-leveling in the workforce and, and getting better and making more money. And so can we start with Danny—why and how did Frasers Group start with Gen Z uh, advertising campaigns and connecting with them?
[04:52] Danny: Yeah, so I think for us, we own a multitude of brands. Um, we’re talking like 40-plus here. And we saw that the brands that we have scope over so many different sectors, from sport to luxury to premium to buying a sofa. And what we did is we invested in a data uh, company called XCM Horizon, who basically home all of our data from in-store and online. And what we found was that actually the majority of our customers were between the ages of like 16 to 24, and we did not have the right tone of voice for these customers at all. We were very much targeting towards people my mom’s age and, you know, probably my sister’s age, who is a little bit older than me. And it was just all wrong, to be honest with you.
[05:42] Danny: So that’s where it all kind of came about. We obviously worked with the likes of UNiDAYS and Student Beans before, and we just weren’t really gaining enough insight into these customers. So we kind of wanted to see how we could leverage our tone of voice across different brands whilst working with someone who would allow us to have the insight into those customers. So that’s where you guys came in, basically.
[06:08] Anjanette: Oh, fantastic. It sounds like data is the key to all the things, and I know that about you, that you are very data-oriented as am I. So using that data to get you really started and then to take that and put it into actionable steps further, including the time that you’re spending with us at SheerID.
[06:24] Danny: Yeah. No, 100 percent.
[06:27] Anjanette: Okay. So SheerID recently researched about 1,000 Gen Zers, um, Danny, over 18 in the US and in the UK where you’re located, about how their current economy is impacting their purchasing decisions. And we know it’s pretty tough for a lot of folks these days. What we found is that majority are still pretty pessimistic and they’re currently selecting products that deliver value to them, but also maintain their values. Um, and that’s different from most other generations where we’re like, “We just need to go spend the money on the things that we need.” So how have you woven that value message into your programs with this community?
[06:59] Danny: Yeah, so you touched on it. We’re basically trying to build a community with these people whereby they’re feeling valued and, you know, a lot of that comes into personalization, whether it’s through email, whether it’s through touchpoints on the website, um, whether it’s, you know, their paid social ads they’re getting sent. Like, I think you want to make sure that you’re building a community whereby they feel valued and they feel heard.
[07:22] Danny: Um, so what we basically done is we’re starting at the moment to really understand what these customers want from us. Uh, we have like a multitude of brands, like I said, and, you know, some of them are more leaning towards sport, but some of them want to be able to afford their luxury, but not at the highest price point in the world, because I know not everyone can afford it. So for us, we would really homing in on the data to understand like what it is that these customers really want from us—like what brands do they want to see from us, what, um, you know, experiences do they want to get from us? Because I feel like if you build a community with these people, they’re going to come back. They’re also going to use uh, you know, word of mouth, which is probably one of the most—probably the best marketing tool out there.
[08:08] Danny: Um, which we didn’t really have before. We—we know we did a lot of research and AB testing and some people were like, “Yeah, we would refer you,” and other people were like, “No, we wouldn’t.” Um, and it always was the younger generation that wouldn’t refer us just because they didn’t feel like they had any value coming from us. They weren’t really being shown anything or taught anything from us, so it wasn’t adding to their day-to-day life values. And that’s basically what they want now is to basically feel like they’re being part of this community that you’re building and that they feel specialized and honored.
[08:41] Anjanette: Absolutely. Danny, when we talked previously, you talked about a loyalty card and program. So can you elaborate a little bit about that with respect to this particular generation?
[08:52] Danny: Yeah, so we noticed there was a massive gap in our market. Um, you know, we—in for Sports Direct, for instance, we’re very much positioned against the likes of JD Sports and Pro:Direct, and they all had these reward schemes or these loyalty programs. We currently do not have one. We’re launching it in September this year. But what we found is that Gen Zers were really responding to having that loyalty program and building that community with them.
[09:18] Danny: And what we’re doing within ours, which is slightly different to everyone else, is we’re actually doing personalized offers for the person. So we’re watching what they’re purchasing, we’re watching what they’re looking at, um, on the app, online, and in-store, and being more targeted with what we’re showing them, which has made a huge difference already with just like the AB testing that we’ve been doing with select customers and even staff members as well. We’ve been testing it on them.
[09:44] Danny: So that’s like a big thing for us. We’re going to roll it out across all of our brands at the moment, but we’re going to launch with Sports Direct because it’s our key brand and we feel like it’s the one that targets the most Gen Zers. Um, so we were really excited to see what that looks like and how that works. And obviously, we’ll be constantly learning from it and adapting it and changing it and also getting feedback from customers as well, which I think not a lot of businesses do nowadays. They’ll kind of leave that to customer services, whereas actually as a digital team, we’re taking it upon ourselves to really home in and listen to what the customer wants and doing AB testing and getting some of them to come into store and tell us what’s going on and why they’re not liking the app or what we can improve. So I think for that, as well, they’re also getting that personal touch where they’re actually meeting people who work behind the scenes of the brand, which I think is invaluable.
[10:34] Anjanette: I agree, I agree. So now probably is a good time for you to give us a little bit more information about Frasers Group. I know that you have what feels like a gazillion brands that you’re working with. Um, I’m going to ask you about building cross-brand loyalty, which is why I would love for you just to give us a little quick introduction to Frasers Group for those of us in the US. Perhaps we don’t know how many more brands you have, so that they get a context for like why is cross-brand so important to you.
[10:59] Danny: So at Frasers Group, we’re a multi-brand retailer whereby what I mean is we quite literally own, I think it’s like 50-plus—don’t hold me to those numbers though, you can look it up online—um, of brands that cross against different pillars, as we call them. So we have a sports pillar, a premium pillar, and a luxury pillar. Um, and all of our brands that we own fall within those pillars whereby they each have their own strategy that’s coming towards a bigger business goal. But obviously, not every pillar is going to have the same strategy because they’re very different customer audience, um, price point, and all these other things as well. Um, but we’re also based in the UK, but we’ve recently, as of early this year, launched in Europe as well with Sports Direct, so we’re really starting to like grow our business. We’re also in Malaysia for Sports Direct as well, which is the one that’s kind of really driving our—our like international growth at the moment.
[11:55] Anjanette: So much. So talk to me about how you’re thinking about getting folks from, say, a Sports Direct to a Flannels from a loyalty perspective.
[12:02] Danny: Yeah, so it’s a difficult one. Like, like I said, they’re all different price points, like not every customer’s going to be interested in sport and in high fashion. We’re fully aware of that. But what we’re doing within our loyalty, um, you know, app that we’re building, this membership scheme, is we’re giving people the opportunity to see what other faces, as we call them, brands we also own within that app.
[12:26] Danny: So a lot—we found that a lot of our customers actually don’t know that we own the likes of Flannels and House of Fraser and Jack Wills and they’ll only shop at Sports Direct. And we found once we were telling them, you know, “Look, we own all of these other brands that you probably shop at already but didn’t know,” they’re like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” And we found that the lifetime value of these customers are way higher than just an individual brand customer. So we found, I think they’re 17 times more valuable than just an individual customer to us if they shop across even one more of our brands. They become, you know, the pinnacle of what we basically want our customers to be. We’re trying to build an ecosystem whereby a customer doesn’t need to go anywhere else but Frasers Group to buy pretty much anything you need in your day-to-day life apart from groceries.
[13:16] Anjanette: Fantastic, that’s great. So let’s talk a bit—a little bit about how you even get them into the experience to at the Sports Direct—you’re thinking about that. Um, so exclusive experiences are something that Gen Z really seeks out, right? They’re in our study, 90 percent of our college students stated that they research brands to see if they have student offers before they even make a purchase, which is a huge advantage, right, if you’ve got a student offer. So what time—what type of benefits are you seeing your student offer provide you in your Gen Z campaign?
[13:46] Danny: Yeah, so we—we did a lot of like AB testing as to what we were going to offer the customer, because some people do percentage off, some people do monetary value. And we did a lot of AB testing and we actually found that 63 percent of people preferred having the percentage, but actually our conversion rate went up by like, I think it was 42 percent when we did the percentage compared to the money-off value. Which for me seemed bizarre, and I haven’t got right into the psychology of it all, but like I believe it’s just the percentage seems more feasible. And we also saw that our AOV and our basket—like our items to basket went up with the percentage because they just felt like they were getting more off all the time.
[14:28] Danny: Um, but what we’ve been able to do is we started doing it recently whereby we actually hold like running clubs now through the app. And you can only access them through the app. And Gen—like the uplift with that with Gen Z has been phenomenal. Running in the UK is a massive thing at the moment. Um, we’ve just had the marathon not that long ago, so everyone’s on that running hype. But I think for us, we’ve been able to really put these events on and, you know, bring our customers in and not just put influencers in there and—but actually get face-to-face time with those customers and them actually feel like they’re being valued and getting something back from the brand. It doesn’t cost them anything to come to these events and they’ll, you know, they normally get given like a free t-shirt that says Sports Direct on it.
[15:08] Danny: Or we’ve done a few with like Flannels where it’s like Flannels X and we’ve invited them down and it’s been like a whole party in the basement of our Flannels store in London. But we’ve had actual customers there and it’s been like a really nice experience with them and we’ve had a really good—excuse me—feedback from that as well. So I think that’s how we’ve kind of been able to leverage that bit as well and the word of mouth has grown phenomenal since then with all these events that we’ve started putting on. And I think we’re only going to continue to do them and hopefully do them a little bit more targeted towards different age groups as well. We know, you know, we’re talking about Gen Z, but there are other customers out there that you still need to make sure they feel valued at the same time. So yeah.
[15:51] Anjanette: Yeah. So now that you’ve figured out the—or you’re starting to figure out the loyalty and how you get them from one brand to the other as well as the offers that resonate—a percentage or those very unique experiences like a party in the basement of Flannels—um, tell me about why you decided to use a verification solution in this kind of a situation.
[16:09] Danny: I think for us, our business is very like cost-effective. So it was a cost-saving exercise to start with. But now that we, you know, we’re approaching a year being with you guys and the value that we get from verification tools such as yourselves compared to the likes of Student Beans or UNiDAYS is that first-party data. So being able to really understand who that customer is, you know, when did they graduate, what uni are they at. We’ve been able to then use that to like geo-target people through paid social and all this kind of stuff because we have the data and we know our customers are there.
[16:43] Danny: And also, it’s just making sure that, you know, we’re catching them at such a young age, especially Gen Z. Like we want to grow with them. We want them to be—feel like we’re growing with them and we’re going along their life journey with them, whether it’s through like graduating, buying their first house, getting engaged, getting married. Like we want to know these things so that we can then feel like we’re celebrating it with them and they also feel like they’re being valued as a customer and like, “Oh, this brand actually cares that I’ve had this happen to me,” or, you know, “Oh my God, they know—they remembered I graduated.” Not everyone does that. And I know I only graduated about four or five years ago and for—for me, I got a few emails about graduating and I just was like, “Oh, this is so nice.” And I still shop at those places today because I felt valued when I was coming into that age of having more money and being able to spend a bit more free than I was when I was a student. So yeah, I think for us, like verification was—is—is invaluable to us now. The first-party data we have is basically what we build a lot of our um, other um, digital marketing channels off and being able to use that to help our trade teams and our brand teams and all that kind of stuff is invaluable to us.
[17:54] Anjanette: Yeah, it makes me super happy. I’ve been in customer experience for a really long time and for me, it’s all about a life cycle, right? Like where does your customer start and then where do they progress? And certainly when you’re getting that level of data from first-party data, you start to be able to celebrate those life events and milestones with them that endears you to that brand and then you start to, especially from a Gen Z perspective, really, really want to stay with that brand as you mentioned—that you’re still those folks who told you “congratulations on your graduation,” you know, you’re still shopping there today because of those kind of things. That’s awesome.
[18:25] Anjanette: Perfect, thank you so much. Can we talk just a little bit more about your AB testing in that kind of a situation, um, when you’re doing communications and nurture? Tell me about the AB testing you’re doing with this particular generation.
[18:37] Danny: So we’re doing a lot more through email and paid social are our two channels that we use AB testing quite a lot in, um, especially for these Gen Zers because that’s basically all they use is their social media and then they check their emails on the phone and on the go. So we did a lot of AB testing before we went live with you guys as to what, you know, offer we should put out there and like I mentioned earlier, we tried a monetary value and we tried a percentage off. And actually, we found one, it was easier for us to control percentage off in terms of our margins and all that kind of stuff that every business has.
[19:15] Danny: But also, you know, I don’t feel like a 10-pound off felt very valuable to me. And I was at the time—they—I was probably the closest to Gen Z we had in our company and they kept being—asking me all these questions. And I think I just feel like a percentage off it just says something in your brain that just ticks and you’re like, “That just seems nicer.” And you add more to your basket and you kind of get carried away sometimes, and that’s what we want as a—as a brand. We want you to get carried away with being like, “Oh, I’ve got a percentage off so I can just add that one more thing into my basket,” because although it might not seem a lot to you, that means our basket value and our basket items gone up and that—that metric is really key to us in our business.
[19:56] Danny: So yeah, AB testing is something we’re constantly doing, um, and we will never stop doing. We always do it within a controlled environment. Like I said, we’ve been AB testing our new app, we’ve been testing our loyalty program, even just with like members of staff um, just to understand like what it is that people want. Um, and I think every—every business does it, right? But I think not everyone actions everything off the back of them. But we have an optimization team who quite literally pull all the data for us from these AB testing and put a roadmap together of like what we need to implement and what we need to take away and, you know, we’re constantly retesting things that we’ve implemented and then we take them out again because they’re not working anymore. You know, everyone’s changing all the time and we’re trying to keep up with the changes, um, so yeah, I think that’s how we AB test but I’m sure everyone has a different way of doing it.
[20:48] Anjanette: Absolutely, thank you for walking us through that. It’s—it’s interesting because I wanted to talk a little bit more about the offer, right? We were fascinated by that when we’re having the pre-conversation about this, the difference between the dollar value or a pound value off versus the percentage value off, those kind of things. Let’s talk a little bit about customer acquisition cost if we can. We know that those things are going crazy. Um, Meta alone has risen their price by 60 percent over the last couple years. How are you maximizing your acquisition investments to foster these repeat purchases, and you mentioned customer loyalty and lifetime value and those kind of things?
[21:21] Danny: Yeah, so my—my background is all affiliates. So I’ve worked in affiliates my whole life—well, my whole working life. And I think for us, we are always—everyone’s trying to find it cheaper, right? But what we do is we actually utilize our channels in completely different ways. So affiliates we use as a new customer acquisition channel, whereby we’re driving people to site, we’re driving them to the PLPs and the PDPs that we need them to. But we use PPC as our loyalty one because we know that they’ve been searching for us, so, you know, why not come back? Google’s cheaper than affiliates anyway, so come on back to us.
[21:58] Danny: And then we use paid social in a slightly different way. We use it for awareness and then also conversion. And we’ve actually found that by having a full funnel strategy across all of our different marketing channels is we’ve actually found that our CPMs and our CPAs and everything have actually dropped because we’re using the data that we have behind everything to make strategic changes and make sure that everything we’re doing is aligned with what the business wants and all of that.
[22:30] Danny: I think we also leave it up to the more like the SEOs and the direct—like we’ve done our job, we brought them in. And then it all streams back to how can you keep that customer loyal to you, um, especially in this day and age with, you know, the cost of living crisis in the UK is astronomically bad at the moment. So it’s how can we make those people want to come back to us? And we’ve found that on Flannels, for instance, which is one of our more luxury brands, we’ve started offering those more like high-street luxury. So like Adidas Originals and things like that, and that’s been keeping our customers happy. And, you know, the likes of Coach rather than a Jacquemus and all those kinds of things. So, you know, we’re constantly adapting to how our customers want and what they need from us as well. But I think, you know, we utilize all of our channels in a very different way, um, but they all have the same—they all have the same goal at the end of the day.
[23:25] Anjanette: Certainly. So Gen Zers reported to us that student offers make them feel pretty appreciated and valued by brands, which are two emotions that drive that loyalty that you keep saying, right? So after, you know, you think about customer acquisition cost, what measurements are you using to track the success of your campaigns? Is it loyalty? Is it lifetime value? What are the—what are the data points that you’ve got to report up to saying, “Hey, we did a great thing”?
[23:49] Danny: Yeah, so we look at uh, repeat sessions. So um, within our GA4 we can see who’s a like a repeat person rather than a unique session. We use LTV as a massive contributor as to, you know, whether they’re any value to us. I mean, everyone’s valuable to us, but whether certain channels—for instance, my channel—is very much got a higher lifetime value than paid social because, you know, you’re always swiping on your phone, you’re always looking for the next thing.
[24:18] Danny: Um, we look at revenue. Every—every brand does. Um, and then we look at AOV, and we also look at conversion items, which not every custom—like brand does, but we look at like the basket items and how many items they’re actually putting in their basket, rather than how many conversions we’ve made, because one conversion could actually be like five or six items, which would be far more valuable to a conversion that has one item. Um, so we don’t actually take too much interest in the transaction number, but more what the conversion items number is. Um, and those are kind of some of the key metrics that we use.
[24:54] Anjanette: Perfect, thank you so much. I love talking about data with you because you’re the girl who understands it and that’s how my brain thinks too. Um, I usually start with the data and then go to my gut. So appreciate that kind of a thought process. Um, let’s talk a little bit more about Gen Z and that they’re very attuned to this authentic personalized communication. They also understand that their data is being used, right? They’re—they’re not pretending that it’s not. Um, they’re privacy-aware in our opinion, but not privacy-frightened. Um, there was some time ago—I’m going to date myself—before Facebook and all the things, um, where people did not want to put that data on, but they’re really willing to share where there’s a value exchange. So how are you supporting that in your program?
[25:35] Danny: Yeah, I think for us, we’re just making sure that the customer feels heard. Once they feel like they’ve been heard, they quite literally give you anything you want in exchange for that. Um, obviously because we’re a—like multi-brand retailer, we’ve kind of strategically positioned ourselves whereby when they sign up for our verification tool and, you know, tell us they’re a student, we’re actually saying “sign up to Frasers Group email,” not just that individual brand. So therefore, we’re leveraging that customer across multitude of our brands.
[26:09] Danny: And I think for us, everything’s homed in one place for our CRM, so they’ve been able to really, you know, personalize and look into what those people are buying and, you know, have they activated their discount? Have they come back? Um, you know, all of these kinds of things. And I—I mean I love data. I could go on about this forever but I won’t. But I just feel like for us the value—you—we just have to make sure that they’re being heard and they’re getting what they want from this transaction because at the end of the day, it is a transaction that we’re trying to get them to do. Um, so anything we can do to do that for them, like we will do pretty much. And yeah, I think that’s pretty much the base of it basically.
[26:50] Anjanette: Okay perfect. One more question on the data stuff. Um, so how do you ensure you’re collecting high-quality data and how do you share that within the brands? We talked previously about uh, self-attestation.
[27:03] Danny: Yeah, so I think for us, first-party data, with everything that’s going on with Google, um, and, you know, cookie policies and all this kind of stuff, first-party data is what every brand and company should be looking to use because it’s coming directly from the source, right? It’s coming directly from you or I or Jim down the road. And um, I think not—not enough companies use first-party data. And for us, that is invaluable because we can grow customer profiles out of that and we can make sure that what we’re doing is so streamlined to that person and so direct.
[27:40] Danny: And I think cross-brand, it’s—it is hard sometimes to make sure that you’re using that right tone of voice and all this kind of stuff, but you just have to remember that that customer is the same person who was on Sports Direct but is now on Flannels. Like they—they obviously interacted with the tone of voice you had there, so don’t change it too much when you go somewhere else because then they’re going to get scared and they’re going to feel like they’re—they’re in an unknown territory to them. So, yeah, I think we’ve learned a lot in terms of our like tone of voice as a company through Gen Z, which is kind of surprising to me to be honest, um, but it’s been a—a massive game changer for us.
[28:17] Anjanette: Danny, one last question for you and then we’re going to probably open it up to some folks who’ve been asking questions of the folks in the background and thank you so much for those folks who are supporting Danny and I. Um, tell me one thing you’re excited about with regard to your college student program and in the next year and working with SheerID.
[28:34] Danny: Yeah, I think for us like we’ve only just started. We’ve only scratched the surface. We’ve only been with you guys just less than a year now. And from the data that you guys have been able to give us, we’re actually going to develop our own graduate program, whereby we’re growing with those customers. So I think for us we’re just looking towards the growth of, you know, Gen Z and student verification, but we’re also going to open it up to different communities. So the likes of NHS workers, first aid, army, police, you name it, we’re going to try and open it up to all of them and really understand those customers as well because at the moment, you know, they’re probably all going into retirement soon and they probably have the next biggest purchasing power compared to Gen Z at the moment.
[29:14] Danny: So um, yeah, I think we’re just looking forward to the growth and, you know, you guys have such a fantastic team where you are that you guys have been so helpful in helping us understand what—what it is that we actually needed and wanted from you. Um, and now that we’ve got that relationship, it’s yeah, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.
[29:31] Anjanette: Oh good, I’m glad to hear that. [Laughs] Um, what I’m most excited to hear though Danny is that you’re looking to create these authentic connections with your consumers, right? The folks who are with you, you want to understand them regardless of which segment community they’re in, that you really want to spend some time and understanding who they are, using the data to your advantage and then creating programs that make the most sense for those individuals and then drive all of the LTV and repeat sessions and additional revenue and higher cart values and all those different things with you. So I’m super excited about that for you. So thank you so much for partnering with us on that.
[30:05] Danny: No, you’re more than welcome.
[30:08] Danielle: Danielle?
[30:09] Danielle Moore: All right. Thank you both so much for that great discussion. So many insights there to chat through. Um, as you mentioned, we do have time to take a couple of audience questions. We’ll get to as many as we can over the next 5 to 10 minutes or so. To our audience members, please know that if we don’t get to your question today, we always make sure they get forwarded over to our speakers so they have the opportunity to possibly reply offline.
[30:29] Danielle Moore: Just a quick reminder here from Adweek that today’s webinar will be—has been recorded and will be available later today around 3:30 Eastern or so. Also keep an eye out for that email and be sure to check out the event resources area uh, for those resources that they were referring to throughout the presentation if you’d like to get a closer look. Uh, so with all that, let’s jump into some of these questions.
[30:51] Danielle Moore: So, the first question we have here—Danny, when it comes to Gen Z, what are they expecting from that in-store experience that you’re talking about? Is it your experience that they want to buy online or in-store, a mix? Talk us through that.
[10:37] Danny: I think it’s a weird one. I think it’s changing to go more in-store. I think a lot of them are coming in and being like, “I’ve seen this online,” but, you know, after COVID and everything, everyone’s like, “Let’s get out there, let’s go shopping.” Um, so I think for us it’s like a—a very good mix, but we see a lot of people coming in and they normally have the app or they have it saved down on their phone and they’re like, “Look, I saw this online. Do you have it in-store?” Because they—they want to try it on. They’re not sure what size they are anymore and, you know, as a woman sizing is weird enough as it is, but even for men like they don’t know if they want it oversized and all that kind of stuff. So we’re trying to make the omnichannel experience as streamlined as possible. Obviously, it’s never going to be perfect, um, but I think for us it’s like a—it’s a good mix but we’re seeing like in-store is definitely driving uh, a lot of our sales in terms of Gen Zers and um, all that kind of stuff at the moment. So, yeah. I hope that answers the question.
[32:06] Danielle Moore: Yeah, totally does. Makes perfect sense that post-COVID um, there’s a bit more of an enthusiasm for going to the store and it’s like it took on a whole new experience and novelty. And like Anjanette was saying earlier, like Gen Z’s always looking for these exclusive experiences. So if you have a great in-store experience, that I think is—is a huge advantage. So makes perfect sense to me.
[32:27] Danielle Moore: Um, the next question here, I think this flows in pretty naturally, uh, in terms of when you’re talking about the in-store experience that brings up the uh, concept of like location targeting. So this question refers to that. Um, how is Frasers Group leveraging geolocation targeting to enhance Gen Z’s shopping experience? Is that something you’re diving into?
[32:47] Danny: Yeah, so we are constantly opening new stores. Um, it’s something that we are really as a company really doing a lot of brick-and-mortar is actually where we first started from and I don’t think that will ever go away for us, we’re only ever investing more and more into it. So we’ve actually been able to use the geolocation for a lot of these to say, “Hey, like we got a new store opening in your uni town,” or, um, you know, “Oh hey, there’s one opening not even that far away from you,” sort of thing.
[33:15] Danny: So we’ve been able to actually use it in our CRM data to be able to, you know, target these people and actually tell them when we’ve got stores opening, or if there’s a cool experience happening, especially for people near London. We always have a lot going on in our London offices and around our London offices. So we use it. We—it depends on what the event is, we’ll change the radius um, to make sure that we feel like we’re including as many people as possible.
[33:37] Danny: And yeah, I think those are kind of the key ways that we use it at the moment. Our paid social girls use it a lot more than um, I do on my day-to-day, but those are just some of the ways that I’ve been—I’ve—I’ve seen it work and it’s actually been really great, especially with store launches. We had one in Cardiff not that long ago and there are a lot of people there that we were not expecting to be there just because of this one email that we sent with the data that we had collected through SheerID. So yeah.
[34:02] Danielle Moore: Yeah. Well, thanks for walking us through that. Uh, one thing that struck me as you were talking is like this notion of voice and having the right tone to speak to Gen Z. And someone is asking for you to expand on that a little bit. So they say: “Danny, can you expand more on why the voice of the company matters uh, particularly when it comes to affiliate marketing, since that is very much in your background as well?”
[34:22] Danny: Yeah. I think tone of voice is everything, right? You want to make sure that your business is the same everywhere you go. So whether you’re in-store, whether you’re online, whether you’re reading a paid article that someone’s written about you, you want to make sure that it’s always relating back to the values you have as a brand. And I think knowing your tone of voice is knowing almost like what your business is worth to you.
[34:44] Danny: And how we see it is that, you know, not every brand we have has the same tone of voice, but every brand we have has the same message behind their tone of voice. So it’s, you know, we want to create this ecosystem whereby everyone and anyone wants to come to us because we have everything you could possibly need in one place. And I don’t know about you guys, but if someone—if I get an email and the tone of voice just has that little bit of something, I’m more likely to read it, I’m more likely to click through. And at the end of the day, it’s all about the metrics in my world. I work in digital, so metrics are a big thing for us. Um, but yeah, I think tone of voice is invaluable to a business and if you can get it right, then you’re on to a winner with pretty much every customer. But you have to make sure that it’s relating back to your customer. We have the customer is the forefront of everything we do here at Frasers. We are constantly thinking about the customer and how we can help them and what we can do to better ourselves for them. Um, so yeah.
[35:39] Danielle Moore: Thank you for that. Uh, so our next question here, I’ll just read it out. Uh, so someone says: “Gen Z has a lower attention span than others.” I would argue that’s maybe a little bit of a stereotype, I’d be curious to see what the data says on that. Uh, but to that point, what are some elements apart from personalization that you think are a must-have in order to engage them better?
[36:01] Danny: It’s weird actually. We were talking about this with like the paid social girls the other day, and they’re finding that shorter content is more engaging as long as you’re getting the message across. They don’t want to have all the fluffy stuff at the beginning and all the fluffy stuff at the end. They just want to know exactly what it is that you’re selling, exactly when you’re doing it, and how much it costs. It’s pretty much all they ever want to know.
[36:22] Danny: So we make sure that through everything that we do in terms of, you know, emails that we send, there’s always a price next to the item. We never ever put anything in there. We always make it really obvious if there’s a discount as well, so that they’re like, “Oh, that’s great, super helpful.” But I think being short and snappy with what you’re doing and what you’re saying has a massive impact.
[36:43] Danny: And, you know, we—we don’t—we do a lot of investment in like influencers and stuff like that, but you’ll find on TikTok and everything like that, our videos are very short. We’re never doing anything more than 30 seconds. I think it is. And we’re always constantly making sure that the engagement rates are there, and if they’re not, then we learn from that straight away and we don’t do it again. Um, so I think, yeah, being short and snappy—um, I—I know I’m like that. If I see something I just want to know what it is and how much it costs straight away. Um, but yeah, I think—I think you’re right. I do think they are probably a little bit lethargic and they don’t want to sit there and like wait for 40 seconds to see what it is that you’re actually offering. So it’s making sure that your product or whatever it is that you’re selling is at the forefront of, you know, any ad that you’re putting out there.
[37:29] Danielle Moore: Yeah. Makes perfect sense and super interesting to—to hear that the data backs up that um, in terms of Gen Z wanting at least shorter content and more succinct uh, modes of delivering all of this. So um, unfortunately, that is the—all the time that we have for questions for today’s event, but as I mentioned earlier, we’ll make sure we get any that we didn’t get forwarded over to our speakers. Um, I’d like to thank our speakers as well as our sponsor, SheerID. Some final reminders from Adweek: make sure you check out that event resources area with all of this great info, that consumer report, some other resources uh, and be sure to keep an eye out for the link to the on-demand recording, which will be available later today. As always, if you enjoyed today’s webinar, be sure to check out the Adweek webinars calendar to learn more about our upcoming events at adweek.com/webinars, also linked below. Again, huge, huge thank you to Danny and Anjanette, the folks supporting us on the back end as well. Thank you to our audience for being here today. And as always, we look forward to seeing everyone on an upcoming Adweek webinar. Thank you all!
[38:25] [Speakers waving goodbye]
[38:28] [Music playing with closing title card: SheerID + FRASERS GROUP – Adweek Webinar: Unlock Gen Z’s Loyalty]
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