Dear Ms. Nikki Neuburger, Chief Brand Officer at lululemon,
I’m writing to you because on December 16, 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 today 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.
Back then, we gave your brand a score of 56/70, or 80%, which put you in 9th place out of 31 brands. Today, after analyzing 69 brands, lululemon ranks 17th on the list.
Now, let’s re-evaluate those scores, shall we?
Transparency 10/10 (old score: 10/10)
The company is often in the news for its business plans and initiatives. Most recently, lululemon hosted analysts at a New York event, where its executives discussed new growth targets and operational changes. It also released its fourth-quarter earnings on March 30 and announced plans to expand into new product niches, such as tennis clothes and golf wear.
Incentives and Perks 5/10 (old score: 1/10)
The main difference from our last visit to lululemon’s site – where the only promotional offer we received was gift cards – is the $400 discount on MIRROR (until May 9), one of lululemon’s flagship products. MIRROR is literally a mirror, which offers a library of workouts with over 10,000 classes on-demand, 50+ genres, and new live classes daily. It’s an incredible idea. And the incentive is also not bad.
Be Relevant 10/10 (old score: 9/10)
Two and half weeks before Mother’s Day (May 8), lululemon’s HP urges visitors to buy a gift for their mom with multiple calls to action and items. It also offers services like pick up in-store or curbside, shareable Wish Lists, and free hemming – to ensure a flawless Mother’s Day. Nice touch!
Be Helpful 10/10 (old score: 10/10)
It’s nice to see that lululemon is doubling down on its commitment to sustainable purchasing. After the company tested a re-commerce platform for customers in Texas and California, which was also prompted by rising consumer prices, it recently announced a rollout of the “Like New” program.
In addition, lululemon is working toward several sustainability goals, including making 100% of its products with sustainable materials and end-of-use solutions by 2030.
Realtime Personalization 5/10 (old score: 7/10)
After adding items to our bag, we received a “goes well with” item recommendation. However, when we went back to the homepage, there was no sign of personalization. And when we visited our social media accounts in real-time, we didn’t see any re-targeting efforts made by the brand.
Master UX 10/10 (old score: 9/10)
Credit the upgraded score here to the “Meet MIRROR” page, which offers an impressive and memorable UX. The rest of the interface is straightforward and perfectly showcases the company’s products.
Leverage Social Media 7/10 (old score: 10/10)
The company’s content on social media is still very engaging, and it does an excellent job of customizing the content to each platform’s characteristics. Unfortunately, we had to deduct points due to the low frequency on Facebook.
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Overall, lululemon‘s new score is 57/70, which translates to 81% – an improvement of 1% from the last analysis, which lands it in the 14th place (out of 69) in our rankings, together with three other brands (N Brown Group, West Elm, and The North Face).
To learn more about how you and lululemon can take full advantage of all the latest, cutting-edge 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 your future relationship with them. It’s a bit like going on a blind date: what you hear about him/her/they beforehand can determine the date’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, economic downturn, and historical social and political turmoil – people turned their eyes to brands almost as much as they have to governments. As a result, brand expectations in times of trouble became even more crucial to a company’s CRM success.
When the internet got flooded with articles advising marketing and CRM leaders on making sure their brand is suited for this new reality, we decided to take action. 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 we’re here to follow these reactions and adjustments as they happen.