Dear Mr. Cory Bayers, Vice President, Global Marketing at Patagonia,
I’m writing to you because on May 5th, 2020, we at PostFunnel – a publication dedicated to everything relationship marketing – analyzed your brand’s site experience according to the “7 commandments for basic CRM.”
These are the basic principles brands should follow in today’s zeitgeist to improve their chances of building meaningful customer relationships.
You can read more about the method at the bottom of this page.
Since we ran the CRM analysis on your brand a while ago, we wanted to revisit it today to see what has changed. After all, we know these things are dynamic.
You can find the original analysis here.
Funny enough, Patagonia has a special place in the history of PostFunnel’s “7 Commandments of Basic CRM” series, as our original analysis of the brand was the very first in this ongoing franchise.
Back then, we gave your brand a score of 43/70, or, the equivalent of 61%. Now, 65 MORE brands into the series, Patagonia’s score is enough for 55th place, well below average.
Most points were deducted for Personalization, where your brand received a cool 0 out of 10. Major points were lost on the social media (3/10) and “discounts’ (4/10) commandments.
Now, let’s re-evaluate those scores, shall we?
Transparency 10/10 (old score: 10/10)
Patagonia publicly discloses information about its supply chain. We found a link at the bottom of its homepage that provided information on the brand’s environmental and social responsibility programs.
Patagonia is often in the news for its business practices. We found a news story about Patagonia joining other retailers to announce that it would boycott the Outdoor Retailer trade show if it was moved to Salt Lake City, saying Utah’s leaders have not protected public land.
The days of loyalty to brands based on name recognition are over. Customers now rate brands based on what information they disclose publicly. Publicly taking a stand on an issue is a great way to show a brand’s values. This helps build transparency and encourages customer loyalty.
Patagonia gets another 10 for still letting customers know what goes on behind the scene.
Incentives and Perks 10/10 (old score: 4/10)
Patagonia offers customers two ways to save money.
- Web specials: At the moment, Patagonia is having a 40% off winter sale, offering big discounts on performance pieces like jackets, backpacks, and more.
- Free ground shipping for orders over $99.
Considering outdoor gear can be expensive, Patagonia does a decent job of helping customers save money. But we’d have liked to see Patagonia’s perks and incentives communicated more prominently throughout the customer journey, but still – a major improvement from our original analysis.
Be Relevant 10/10 (old score: 8/10)
The way brands intertwine the real world into their communications position themselves to nurture more meaningful relationships with customers – who can relate with the brand’s comms.
The people of Patagonia know it very well. For Black History Month, Patagonia released ‘Run to the source,’ a documentary film exploring the connection between Black British history and the River Thames.
Supporting DIY, Patagonia encourages customers to keep good gear out of landfills by sharing DIY repair and care guides and repair services to keep good gear going.
The brand also has WornWear.com, where customers can trade their used gear for credit that can be used in Patagonia retail stores, WornWear.com and Patagonia.com.
For giving customers the opportunity to get old together with their gear and spotlighting issues that matter, Patagonia gets 10/10.
Be Helpful 10/10 (old score: 10/10)
Patagonia puts its profits where its purpose is by donating 1% of sales to preserving and restoring the natural environment.
Since 1985, the brand has awarded over $140 million in cash and in-kind donations to domestic and international grassroots environmental groups making a difference in their local communities.
We like how Patagonia communicates its give-back initiative on the product page. The 1% for the plant banner lets us know part of our purchase will go to supporting a grassroot-organization.
Patagonia also funds projects within the communities of Patagonia retail stores through its Retail Grants Program.
Patagonia scores top marks for its commitment to giving back and making a difference in the world. This is a brand that always puts “helpfulness” top priority, and it shows.
Realtime Personalization 5/10 (old score: 0/10)
Does Patagonia treat its customers like royalty? Let’s find out. Logging to Patagonia’s site, we were able to choose our location and language.
To test Patagonia’s location personalization capabilities, we first selected the US as our location and then switched to Europe. We compared the two website pages and noticed changes in the home page content. Nice!
To test Patagonia’s realtime personalization abilities, we spent a lot of time in the women’s hoodies & sweatshirts section and finally added a Women’s Ahnya Pullover to our cart. Sadly, Patagonia didn’t offer us any form of real-time personalization. Our HP wasn’t adjusted in realtime to reflect our site behavior as we navigated through the site – not even after signing up and adding products to our basket.
However, we noticed some relevant upselling and cross-selling on the product and checkout pages.
Patagonia has paused its Facebook advertising, so we weren’t retargeted with ads on Facebook. No ads tailed us elsewhere online.
Patagonia missed some opportunities to deliver realtime personalization. For instance, by simply using our contextual data, they could have presented us with relevant product recommendations, messaging and content at each point of the customer journey.
In all, Patagonia gave us a decent shopping experience. But the brand’s CRM strategy takes a hit for not delivering realtime personalized experiences to customers.
Still, we’ve seen some noticeable improvements from last time.
Master UX 8/10 (old score: 8/10)
Patagonia’s website is easy to navigate. The homepage user interface experience is properly categorized and the main navigation drop-down menu is user-friendly.
The filtering criteria were specific for product selection, which made finding products easy. The product page was functional with descriptions, user reviews, and ratings. The product images were large, so we got enough visual information about the products we viewed.
Patagonia’s website has a sizing tool that helps customers find the perfect size.
We were also able to see the environmental impact of the product we viewed. Patagonia’s FAQ page is well executed. The FAQ page covered a broad range of issues, is informative and easy to locate.
Overall, Patagonia’s UX experience website was pleasant. Nothing to complain about.
Leverage Social Media 5/10 (old score: 3/10)
Patagonia has a presence on social media with 4.7 million followers on Instagram, 1,7m followers on Facebook, and almost 560 followers on Twitter.
Patagonia posts on Facebook. But as at the time of writing this article, the last post on Facebook was on February 23rd, 2002. The brands’ content is a mix of product promotion and user-generated content.
Patagonia makes good use of Instagram. The brand posts are related to the outdoors and we saw a lot of user-generated content.
Patagonia frequently posts on Twitter. Beyond product promotion, we noticed that Patagonia uses its Twitter handle to post, retweet and comment on social issues.
In all, Patagonia does a decent job of connecting with its audience through social media. We didn’t notice any cross-posting and we love how the brand uses videos and captions to promote the outdoor lifestyle. However, we think resuming posting on Facebook and including a branded hashtag, user generated content, and a little more educational content, will all help the brand drive engagement with its social media audience.
Time for our verdict. Drum roll, please…
Overall, Patagonia is now getting 58/70 (83%). This is a major improvement, that puts them at 11th place, tied with Vrbo – this is a HUGE leap from almost two years ago.
But, while we agree the brand does show some love to its customers, we know the relationship can be much better. The brand falls short on personalization and its social media needs a little fix.
We recommend Patagonia creates a realtime personalized website experience for each customer by using relevant customer data. This will help Patagonia offer tailored product recommendations and personalized customer communication in line with its customer’s contextual data. Find out more about how to unlock realtime personalization at scale here.
Adopting realtime personalized marketing will improve Patagonia’s relationship with outdoor enthusiasts and improve its CRM results.
To learn more about how you and Petco can take full advantage of all the latest, cutting-edge realtime marketing personalization and customer segmentation practices, feel free to reach out to the folks at Optimove at any time. That happens to be their expertise!
About the 7 Commandments for Basic CRM Tactics in A Post-Coronavirus World:
We have a saying here at PostFunnel: All marketing is relationship marketing. Why? Because every touchpoint with a potential customer impacts the kind of relationship, they will have with a brand, if and when they become customers. Even branding has. It’s like what people hear about their upcoming blind date can determine the actual meeting’s success.
In recent years, it meant that the ways brands support global, social, environmental, and even political causes have become increasingly critical to their relationships with customers.
Then, 2020 happened. With its global pandemic’s tragedy, economic downturn, and historical social and political turmoils – people turned their eyes to brands, almost as much as they have to governments. Expecting and judging brands by how they conduct themselves throughout such events was never more crucial to a company’s CRM success.
One after the other, the internet got flooded with articles advising marketing and CRM leaders on making sure their brand is suited for this new reality. So, we combed dozens of them – and came up with a list of 7 staples that appeared in most of those articles.
The seven most essential commandments a brand must follow these days to make sure they put themselves in the best position possible to develop long, meaningful relationships with their customers.
The 7 Commandments:
1) Transparency. Show the human side of your brand
2) Give incentives and perks (that make sense)
3) Be relevant (with your language, offering)
4) Be helpful (improve your communities’ lives)
5) Personalize in realtime (cause, duh)
6) Master UX (slow, clunky websites are no longer an option)
7) Leverage social media (don’t just treat it as a sales channel)
Yup, that’s all. Your CRM efforts will struggle to achieve their full potential without being at least decent at all of these.
And, let’s be honest, it’s not too much to ask of a brand, right?
Yet, you’d be surprised how many well-known brands fall short too often when analyzed through these lenses.
Still, it makes some sense – these changes are happening fast, and not all brands can react and adapt quickly enough and on all fronts.
And we’re here to follow these reactions and adjustments as they happen.