Special Projects

Is Carter’s Pampering Customers the Right Way?

Let’s find out if the American designer of children's apparel is treating customers to CRM’s basic best practices

Dafna Sheinberg

Welcome back to PostFunnel’s 46th episode of the 7 CRM Commandment Series. Today, we get to Carter’s.

So, how do you think the baby clothes giant scores and ranks against other brands when it comes to basic CRM practices?

1. Be Transparent 0/10

That’s where we look to see if a brand is showing its human/humane side.

A recent article by Threat Post reported that Carter’s Leaked 410K Customer Records. The article details that the baby clothes retailer exposed the personal data of its customers, dating back years – according to a new disclosure.

“By modifying the URLs (to which the shortened URLs were redirecting), it was possible to access backend JSON data, which revealed even more personal information about customers that wasn’t exposed by the confirmation pages, such as: Full names, delivery addresses, and phone numbers,” the report explained.

This kind of data on customers could be used in fraudulent phishing attacks and/or scamming victims into revealing sensitive info, like credit card numbers.

“Those shortened URLs were easily discoverable to hackers due to a lack of sufficient entropy or compensating security protocols,” the vpnMentor analysts wrote. “Carter’s also put no authentication in place to verify that only the person who’d made the purchase could visit the confirmation page.”

Carter’s was unreachable for any comments on the matter. It’s never easy to admit you’ve made a mistake or are wrong, but the only way out is through an apology, first. Instead of avoiding it, this would have been the perfect opportunity to connect with its audience – by being honest, straightforward, and sensitive.

2. Incentives and Perks 10/10

The first time we entered the site, Carter’s offered us an extra 20% off our first purchase!

In fact, the entire HP was packed with incentives and perks from the brand:

  • Rewards and loyalty programs
  • Multi-pack bundle deals
  • Buy 3+ get 50% off, Buy 2 get 40% off, Buy 1 get 25% off on swimwear
  • More discounted sales on “America’s favorite jammies” – up to 50% off
  • Clearance sale section
  • And more…

Now, that’s the kind of welcome we expect to get from a brand these days!

3. Be Relevant 10/10

Carter’s clearly displays the following curbside pickup banners for customers to see:

When clicking on it for more details, customers are presented with tons of options to buy online and choose how they pick up the products. All of which include fast, contactless, and free options.

Another way the brand is acting in relevance to these times has to do with supporting Pride Month. Also, on its HP, we were presented with this banner:

When clicking on the banner, customers have the option to shop Carter’s new and symbolic pride collection. The page also includes quotes from LGBT+ families to normalize differences.

Finally, we all like listening to podcasts, especially when they’re hosted by an influencer or celeb. Carter’s is offering customers the ability to hear live one of everyone’s favorite “Bachelor” moms in a podcast this Friday – a lovely way to keeping the brand relevant to customers even without a transaction taking place.

4. Be Helpful 5/10

We noticed on LinkedIn that Carter’s posted a unique summer internship program that helps 16 individuals from various colleges and universities throughout the country gain hands-on knowledge and corporate experience.

Asides from that, we couldn’t find any other occasion where the brand is giving back to the community in any way that may include a monetary fund or donation, or promoting global causes, and this is what we look for in this commandment. Especially from leading brands as such.

5. Realtime Personalization 5/10

When adding 5-year-old boy clothing to our cart, we were presented with upsell options. What we liked here was the unique copy that the brand uses to sell, “Similar shoppers to you topped their cart off with,” creating a more conversational/naturally flowing shopping experience.

However, when adding items to our cart and going back to the HP, it was not personalized and instead presented us with the following newborn banner:

 

Finally, no realtime retargeting efforts were made by the brand in realtime on our social media.

TIP: Personalizing the shopping experience throughout different channels, including the website of course, not only allows you to deliver a relevant experience to individual visitors at scale but also drives conversion and retention. That’s why directing customers to homepages filled with personalized product recommendations based on their historical and realtime behavior is crucial to your CRM success.

6. Master UX 10/10

From a usability perspective, Carter’s website is snug. Through carousels, chats, searches, and drown-down menus, the brand makes it convenient for visitors to find the content and items they are looking for — without being distracted.

Carter’s provides customers with the following categories to choose from when shopping:

Taking it one step further to be inclusive to all, Carter’s offers the customer the ability to shop in a boy, girl, or gender-neutral section. Absolutely love it!

Finally, the detailed shopper reviews are the cherry on top of a perfect UX – these reviews are great as they provide shoppers with everything they need to know before making a purchase.

7.  Leverage Social Media 7/10

On Facebook, Carter’s has 4.4M likes; on Instagram, they have 2.1M followers, and on Twitter, they have 33.2K followers. Obviously, a very solid following on all the social media networks.

Carter’s posts in high frequency and is very active on both Instagram and Facebook. The brand posts content for its parent customers that promotes products and engages them in unique ways. For instance, this outfit folding hack:

But on Twitter – we were disappointed to see that the last tweet from the brand was in February:

Therefore, we deducted a few points on this one. Using social media channels to promote the brand’s values (and not only its products), publishing content that is unique and relevant to each platform’s style and audience, is a major tool in sustaining meaningful customer relationships.

**

Overall, Carter’s is getting a 47/70 here (67%), positioning them in 35th place – right below… Buy Buy Baby! Ah, we love it when the competition comes together.

It’s undoubtedly coincidental that Carter’s happened to fall one point below one of its main competitors. By quickly glancing at Buy Buy Baby’s CRM analysis, it seems like their realtime personalization tactics are strategically intact compared to Carter’s.

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

  1. Pets at Home91%
  2. Lowe’s90%
  3. Petco90%
  4. The Home Depot87%
  5. Target87%
  6. Uniqlo86%
  7. Paul Smith84%
  8. Vrbo83%
  9. N Brown Group81%
  10. West Elm81%
  11. The North Face81%
  12. Holland and Barret80%
  13. lululemon80%
  14. Morrisons80%
  15. JD Sports79%
  16. Brooks Running79%
  17. Best Buy78%
  18. Angie’s List77%
  19. Gap77%
  20. Etsy76%
  21. Nando’s75%
  22. The Body Shop74%
  23. Gymshark73%
  24. William Hill73%
  25. Essence72%
  26. Deckers 71%
  27. Inditex71%
  28. Iceland Foods71%
  29. Total Wine & More70%
  30. Tommy Hilfiger70%
  31. Walgreens70%
  32. Kohl’s70%
  33. United Colors of Benetton69%
  34. Buy Buy Baby68%
  35. Carter’s 67%
  36. Fiverr67%
  37. The White Company66%
  38. Next63%
  39. Babbel63%
  40. Patagonia61%
  41. Express60%
  42. Burberry60%
  43. Zara59%
  44. Treatwell58%
  45. COS57%
  46. Dream1153%

 

We publish a new analysis every other week, so watch this space for more brand analyses coming your way!