Boohoo Group - Empowerment through partnership: Embracing new ideas to drive brand transformation

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH PARTNERSHIP: EMBRACING NEW IDEAS TO DRIVE BRAND TRANSFORMATION

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EMPOWERMENT THROUGH EMBRACING NEW IDEAS

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H PARTNERSHIP: S TO DRIVE BRAND TRANSFORMATION Laricea Ioana Roman-Halliday, former Head of Marketing - Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis at Boohoo Group, on catalysing the company’s innovative customer engagement strategies in partnership with Branch. ounded in 2006, Boohoo Group PLC is a leading British online fashion group home to a portfolio of 13 brands.

Stemming from the vision of Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, Boohoo Group is one of the fastest-growing fashion businesses in the world. The group is passionate about producing fabulous clothes for everyone, everywhere. Its broader mission? To become a global leader in fashion e-commerce in a way that respects its people, customers, suppliers, stakeholders and the world around us.

Laricea Ioana Roman-Halliday, former Head of Marketing Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis at Boohoo Group joins us to discuss how the companies she was looking after transformed its engagement strategies when it transitioned some of its major brands from brick-and-mortar outlets to e-commerce platforms.

In particular, we focus on Laricea’s experience when she oversaw the new app development for Dorothy Perkins, one of the biggest household names in British fashion, working closely with 3

Branch as an intrinsic strategic partner on the project.

In her role, Laricea headed up the marketing for Wallis, Burton and Dorothy Perkins – three major UK household brands which Boohoo Group bought from the Arcadia Group in 2021 for £25m.

“Shortly before I started at Boohoo, all the physical locations for the three brands I oversaw had been closed down and the focus switched to their online presence while becoming strictly e-commerce players,” begins Laricea. “So the biggest task I had as Head of Marketing was not about awareness because they were already household names. Instead, the top priority was to remind people that we still exist. Many shoppers assumed these brands disappeared and that was the most challenging thing from a marketing perspective.

“Usually when you join a brand, the focus is driving awareness and sales. But here, we needed to get customers back into consideration mode, re-establish a relationship with existing loyal customers in a new context without physical locations and also attract new customers in a fast-paced, competitive fashion industry.

“I joined Boohoo in January 2021 when the group was very much transitioning towards an appfocused approach and diversified channels, while also trying to consolidate the whole measurement 4

“IT BECAME CLEAR TH AND WOULD SHOP MO BUSINESS CASE TO DR and attribution aspects of the company. Meanwhile, we were trying to consolidate the brands in terms of partners and knowledge sharing.

“Before, there wasn’t much cooperation between brands because they used to function on their own, which is fair enough since they have completely different target audiences.

But the beauty of Boohoo Group is the fact that we have a brand for everyone.

“So we started on a great journey of

HAT APP USERS WERE A LOT MORE ENGAGED ORE OFTEN, PRESENTING A COMPELLING RIVE MORE DOWNLOADS OF OUR APPS” bringing them all together, sharing more knowledge and making apps the absolute focus for all of them.”

Laricea explains how this transformational journey hinged on moving away from established ways of operating at Boohoo Group, in particular by placing less emphasis on high-profile partnerships with big names in the industry and leaning into discovering fresh, cost-effective ways to drive new audiences.

Embracing digital innovation and technological transformation

were crucial components of this endeavour and Laricea highlights creating the new Dorothy Perkins app as demonstrative of this major strategy shift for the company.

“We started talking more and more about products and app growth as the central point of our brands,” recalls Laricea. “We looked at the data and customers who had the app spent on average seven times more than customers who didn't. It became clear that app users were a lot more engaged and would shop 5

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more often, presenting a compelling business case to drive more downloads of our apps.

“When I first joined, there was a lot of focus on traditional approaches like partnerships and offline events for the brands I was looking after.

There wasn't a lot of innovation in digital strategy, but there were promising deployments of paid search, paid social and affiliates even if there wasn't a lot of focus on them.

“The first thing I did was look at the data in terms of what was performing well in relation to the clear business KPIs of driving sales, increasing customer consideration and becoming top of mind for our target audiences.

“So in terms of driving sales, we were spending a lot of the budget on paid social channels. However, the channels that were actually driving sales were affiliates and paid search.

We turned the budget upside down, significantly cut paid social and invested it into affiliates. As we looked more and more towards affiliates, we also started utilising proper tracking attribution, taking into consideration one of the biggest issues in fashion: returns.

“Product returns is the hottest topic since the COVID-19 pandemic because people were unable to physically go to shops and try clothes on. Customers started ordering two or three items online 7

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in multiple sizes, sending back the ones that didn’t fit or they no longer wanted.

returns and the other costs involved, social media was a money-losing exercise.

“This trend poses a huge problem when it comes to marketing efficiencies, because if you look at the channel to gauge how it is performing and you only take into account media costs, you only know how much it costs you to run the campaigns. You would get a very skewed picture of what's working and what's not working.

“But with the other channels like affiliates and paid search, this was not the case. So I moved the budget around and I looked at social media from a different perspective. We shifted the focus of social media from driving sales to increasing awareness and consideration at the top of the funnel, reminding people that we’re still here.

“So in this instance, social media looked like it was performing well since it was driving sales at volume because the pool of people we targeted was so large. However, when we started taking into account

“Once we started doing that, we realised that we had a lot more space to grow because our cost per acquisition had gone down massively by taking social media out of the equation.”

Laricea emphasises how the crucial lesson from a digital perspective was Boohoo needed to look at other business metrics apart from media costs which factored in aspects like physical product returns. This catalysed and empowered further transition from traditional channels to new digital channels, particularly with paid search and affiliates.

“For instance, with affiliates, it was the only channel where we would pay them after the 30-day limit for returns,” says Laricea. “Affiliates rose to prominence as a channel where we could safely invest money knowing that we were actually seeing true conversion costs, because if someone returned a product within 30 days, we knew we

weren’t paying the affiliates for that conversion. As a group, we started consolidating and improving our deals while simultaneously improving our measurement and tracking of affiliates and paid search, which yielded fabulous results and massive growth.”

Laricea explains that marketing departments operate in a context of budget cuts and rising expectations, so while the progress with affiliates and paid search was promising there was more work to do innovating Dorothy Perkin’s digital strategy – which led Laricea and her team to focus on the company brand’s apps and work closely with Branch.

“In the past five years, people have

“BRANCH HAS BEEN FUNDAMENTAL IN OUR INITIATIVE TO INCREASE NEW APP DOWNLOADS AND INCREASE APP USAGE FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE IT DOWNLOADED”

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drifted away from established digital channels like social media where the conversion rates are tumbling but costs are spiralling higher,” says Laricea. “So we started looking for fresh ideas and new strategies and this is where

our strategic partnership with Branch began.

“My appreciation for the importance of apps emerged from my previous role at a gambling company where everything took place in the app. But at Boohoo, Branch stepped in with some enlightening educational pieces on the advantages of growing your app organically to drive sales and revenue. This entails having the right infrastructure, tracking data deeply and connecting the app to related endeavours like social media strategy – among many other complex factors.

“We started working with Branch initially on optimising our social

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media strategy where they helped us develop it as a consideration channel. But our partnership has blossomed from there and Branch has helped us refine our approach to tracking events, driving people towards downloading the app and running campaigns using web-to-app smart banner adverts on our websites. We have seen some tremendous responses in the process.

“Branch has been fundamental in our initiative to increase new app downloads and increase app usage for those people who already have it downloaded. They helped us refine the UX, for instance, by changing the user journey so that when they receive an email from us, rather than go into a browser, they are taken straight into the app because we knew they would spend more and be a lot more engaged. Branch enabled us to track all of these journeys through deep linking – from clicking on an email to getting to the app, or from clicking on social media to go into the app store. This helped us track and truly understand the impact of our campaigns.

“The partnership with Branch evolved into something bigger when we faced budget cuts in the marketing department and needed to explore innovative, organic approaches.

“The conversations started turning towards new ways to develop and grow the Dorothy Perkins app, 12

seeking ways to drive sales within it and on mobile phones. We knew our audience for Dorothy Perkins spent a lot of time on mobile devices, so it became the clear target device for us.

“This started the discussion in Branch around organic growth and working smarter with our channels.

We rolled this sentiment into all the channels we have. Beyond the app, mobile website and social channels the next natural step was email.

“We've got a huge database of very loyal users, who we wanted to keep onboard, and we wanted to engage more with them. But a lot of them did not have the app.

Creating banners within emails was a no-brainer. It’s an easy step to take but if you don't have deep linking and you're not able to track its usefulness dwindles. So we started working with Branch on the email side of our engagement, to create a deep link from our emails to the app.

“For the loyal users who already had the app, we focused on the customer journey. So if they clicked on an email banner that said dresses under £30, they would be taken straight in the app to the section of dresses under £30. By working with Branch we created a seamless user experience, rather than a broken one I myself often see as a customer where I'm clicking on an email banner that is taking me to the app – but it's taking me to the homepage rather than a relevant page.

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“A seamless user experience with email was again, another tactic that we deployed with Branch that worked fantastically well to get people to download the app but also to nurture our relationships with loyal customers.”

Another piece of the puzzle for Boohoo’s transformation of its marketing and digital engagement strategies was to focus on SEO, according to Laricea.

“We tapped into the power of SEO, a new frontier for Boohoo Group,” says Laricea. “We worked with Branch to track SEO as a fixed cost investment, with the goals of having better visibility and measuring down funnel events. A refreshed approach to SEO drove more app downloads and brand visibility, but we also realised in the journey that SEO opens up new audiences in a very cost-effective manner. Obviously, it doesn't happen overnight. But we hired a dedicated team for the brands that started working on an SEO strategy, which has already shown some excellent results in a short time.”

After transforming several in-house marketing strategies and channels with Branch, Laricea relays how the focus then turned outwards to influencer marketing.

“We had never been able to track influencer marketing before,” admits Laricea. “There was very little control over how it performed or 14

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how it worked, and we relied on the influencers to provide us with data – but these were not always the most useful insights.

“By working with Branch and again creating deep links, we started amplifying the brand with influencer partnerships. However, the difference was we now had an accurate measurement and attribution system in place while also driving a high ROI.

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download the app through bio links which was very helpful.”

But the strategic partnership with Branch was not limited to digital strategy, it expanded into Dorothy Perkin’s offline channels as well, reiterates Laricea.

“For instance, we shifted the approach to influencer posts with links to a certain outfit. We designed the process to take people either straight to the mobile web showing the actual outfit, the relevant part of the app or the app store if they did not have it downloaded.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between offline and online channels,” explains Laricea.

“Historically, we used a lot of traditional channels, for example, out of home, magazines and the press. Before working with Branch, we would never have been able to measure the impact of offline channels or go beyond them as a pure awareness or consideration endeavour.

“We also ran several campaigns with influencers encouraging people to

“However, they encouraged us to start including QR codes to bridge

“THEY (BRANCH) ENCOURAGED US TO START INCLUDING QR CODES TO BRIDGE THE ONLINE/OFFLINE GAP WHICH, WHILE A SEEMINGLY SIMPLE IDEA, WAS AN INCREDIBLY RELEVANT AND EASY WAY FOR US TO GET PEOPLE TO DOWNLOAD THE APP”

the online/offline gap which, while a seemingly simple idea, was an incredibly relevant and easy way for us to get people to download the app. But with the deep linking innovation Branch helped us deploy, we knew exactly how many people encountered specific offline campaigns and converted into new app users.

“It was a very clean but also costeffective way of driving our digital channels and assets.”

Reflecting on her experience working with Branch and the partnership more broadly, Laricea lauds the positive collaborative relationship forged between the two companies.

“It is an absolute pleasure to work with Branch,” beams Laricea. “We would put innovation calls in place

which were separate from our weekly performance calls. They would come up with the most amazing ideas in terms of what we could do next.

They are super innovative and our partnership with Branch had a huge business impact. As a client, we were always incredibly open-minded to new ideas because that’s part of who we are at Boohoo Group. We could depend on Branch to provide innovative suggestions for where to go next.”

So what does the future hold for Boohoo Group in the years to come?

Laricea stresses the importance of artificial intelligence within the fashion industry.

“Using AI to create an even better user experience for shoppers will be key,” predicts Laricea. “AI will be invaluable for enhancing customer relations, 17

whether that’s by answering their questions in detail, improving product descriptions or refining the returns process.

“I’m particularly excited by the prospect of AI helping to tell the rich stories of the products we offer to our customers. Many of our clothes have beautiful processes behind them, such as hand-drawn designs and ethical production methods, which we’re incredibly proud to share. But we have millions of products and AI could help us tell the history of the products, more efficiently and effectively.

“I also think AI will help enhance the shopping user experience by providing videos showcasing products as they’d fit on various body shapes, to see how that item of clothing looks on different people. There's a burgeoning trend for diversity in the fashion industry and AI could be a powerful tool in perpetuating this worthwhile progress.

“Lastly, I think for the fashion industry in the next couple of years there is exciting, innovative potential in harnessing the power of AI for on-site and in-app improvements. We should aim to improve the user journey, but also enhance our marketing campaigns – to make them better, more interesting, with more variety and personalisation at their very core.”

For further information about Boohoo Group, visit boohooplc.com.

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Connect with Laricea

KEEPING A FINGER ON THE PULSE Fashion is a fast-moving industry and Laricea loves staying on top of the latest and greatest trends.

“Podcasts are an excellent way to keep up with industry developments and I highly recommend the Business of Apps, Marketing in the Madness and The eCommerce Customer Experience which are all fascinating, insightful listens,” says Laricea. “Business of Apps is a fantastic podcast, anyone interested in apps like me should give them a listen. Marketing in the Madness helps listeners keep abreast of the latest developments and discussions, helping them constantly improve and innovate as marketeers. The eCommerce Customer Experience covers all sorts of interesting topics relevant for people working in the e-commerce industry.

“I also follow Adweek and their webinars are all available on demand, which are exceptionally useful and you can watch them at your own pace and convenience.

“Beyond these more professional resources, I also love reading The Week because it gives you a very objective point of view on current affairs.”

HEALTHY BODY AND MIND

“I use the Calm app to meditate three times a day, even if they’re only short spells of five minutes,” says Laricea. “Meditation is very useful as a way of resetting, especially when we all lead such busy lives. A brief meditation or breathing session can be enough to see the world with a completely different view.

“I exercise at home using the Joe Wicks Body Coach and Les Mills apps. These are both super convenient and affordable, so if you don’t have a lot of time or budget you can still exercise and keep fit.”

SHARING KNOWLEDGE Laricea wrote A Brand’s Purpose… Less Unicorn, more Zebra? during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book looks at businesses that have failed but then turned things around and thrived by starting with a purpose: redefining their brands.

“With A Brand’s Purpose, I was making the point that you can be very successful as a company without it costing the earth,” says Laricea.

“And for every book sold, there’s a tree planted!”

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