How Up-Close and Personal Is Boldking’s CRM Practice?

We took a microscopic look at the men's grooming brand’s basic CRM marketing tactics. Check how they rank against other brands

Adebisi Adewusi

August 5, 2021

Welcome to the 52nd part of our ongoing 7 Commandments of Basic CRM series, where we analyze your favorite brands’ CRM Marketing tactics.

This time, we look at Boldking – an online shaving and care brand based in Amsterdam that believes shaving should be more enjoyable and affordable. How do you think the men’s grooming brand scores when it comes to CRM practices?

1. Be Transparent 2/10

Digging through Boldking’s website and the web, we found no recent news or announcement from the brand regarding its operations, or any other effort showcasing its human side. We only found a post on Linkedin announcing a giveaway for the brand’s 8th birthday.

Transparency is key to building a lasting relationship with customers. Sharing information about internal operations and the people behind the products is an indication to customers that a brand values openness and has nothing to hide.

Boldking loses quite some points for keeping customers in the dark about its activities.

2. Incentives and Perks 6/10

When we logged on BoldKing’s website, we weren’t welcomed with a discount or perk. Very disappointing. 🙁

But we got a free shipping offer at checkout.

In addition, we discovered that customers could get a discount, free shipping and a free product if they choose the Repeat& Save plan.

Generally, Boldking doesn’t offer a lot of incentives and perks. We’d have loved to see more incentives like referral bonuses and discounts for making either a first time or a repeat purchase, or for signing up to the brand’s newsletter.

In our opinion, the free shipping offer was communicated during checkout – which was quite late in the customer journey. We think Boldking should have displayed the free shipping offer on its HP and each page of the site. Consistently informing customers of incentives and perks throughout the customer journey encourages them to buy.

3. Be Relevant 6/10

With millions of disposable razors winding up in landfills each year, Boldking helps save the earth one razor at a time. On the brand’s HP, we saw a Recycling page that informed us about Boldking’s recycling programme where customers can return blunt blades for recycling.

We didn’t see any information regarding how Boldking responded or is responding to COVID-19. Coming off a year like 2020, this made us wonder if Boldking is in tune with the rest of the world.

4. Be Helpful 8/10

Today’s customers expect charitable initiatives from the brands they choose to support. For this commandment, we check to see whether the brand has been giving back. To celebrate its 8th birthday, Boldking highlighted its partnership with pantar amsterdam, a social enterprise that offers employment to people forgotten by the job market.

While we applaud Boldking for supporting its community, this philanthropic effort was posted on the brand’s social media pages so it was a little difficult for us to locate. It’d be great to have this information on their site.

5. Realtime Personalization 2/10

Logging to Boldking’s site, we were taken to the brand’s Netherlands page by default. We had to rely on visual cues to change our site preference to suit our location and language.

Going back to the brand’s HP after adding a face cream to our cart, the HP wasn’t personalized to reflect our browsing behavior. On up-selling and cross-selling, we were offered a mini skincare trio at a reduced price at checkout. Nothing was personal about this offer.

No other cross-selling or up-selling techniques were implemented throughout the customer journey.

We weren’t retargeted with ads or items in our cart on social media or online after leaving the website.

Boldking fails to deliver on realtime personalization. With consumers more likely to shop with brands that offer a spectacular personalized shopping experience, realtime personalization is a “must-have” for brands looking to build a strong relationship with customers.

6. Master UX 6/10

Boldking has a clean website that is easy to use and navigate. But the brand has no reviews on its product pages. This made it difficult for us to determine whether the product we viewed suited our needs. We also couldn’t find a FAQ section. FAQs deliver great value to customers looking for a fast answer. So, not having a FAQ section negatively impacts the user experience.

7. Leverage Social Media 4/10

Boldking has a modest social media presence. The brand has 12.2k followers on Instagram, 1,300 followers on Twitter and 60 thousand likes on Facebook.

The brand doesn’t frequently post on Facebook. The last post we saw was for June 18. Having an inactive social media account is a big NO-NO.

The brand posts mostly promotional content on Twitter – nothing educational or entertaining. Also, the frequency is quite low.

For Instagram, Boldking frequently updates its page. While the promotional content here is similar to what we found on Twitter, the page is filled with more humorous content that’s sure to make its followers crack a smile.

In all, we think Boldking should do more to use social media to fully to engage its customers.

3 To-Dos for Boldking

Create realtime 1:1 experiences by leveraging visitor recognition technologies to change your site’s content to cater to a specific individual and offering relevant recommendations to customers based on their browsing behavior. Adopting this sort of realtime personalization will enable you to deliver an unforgettable shopping experience to customers and significantly improve your CRM game.

Find out more about personalization here.

For transparency, publishing company reports and other internal information will give Boldking some points. Also showcasing the people behind the brand and the company’s values.

On social media – get active on Facebook! Schedule posts using a social media tool-so you don’t miss a day. Also, consider using short videos to drive engagement. It’s your place to shine!

Overall, Boldking is getting 34/70, (48%), positioning them at the bottom of our list. We hope Boldking listens to our advice and takes action towards improving its CRM practices.

Here are the full rankings of all the brands we analyzed to date: