Is GHD’s CRM Practice as Fabulous as Its Hairstyling Tools?

GHD is the GOAT when it comes to hair styling tools. Let’s see how the brand’s CRM strategy ranks compared to other brands

Adebisi Adewusi

August 11, 2021

Welcome to the 53rd chapter of our ongoing 7 Commandments of Basic CRM series, where we analyze your favorite brands’ CRM Marketing tactics.

Born out of a mission to create endless ‘good hair days,’ GHD (Good Hair Day) is a company that sells high-end hair styling tools. How do you think the British brand scores when it comes to CRM practices?

Let’s dive in.

1. Be Transparent 10/10

GHD is often in the news. In a recent interview with Cosmétiquemag, the CEO of GHD Jeroen Temmerman, gave some updates on the British brand’s product development, growth forecast and how it has been innovating to attend to the changes in customer behavior.

As customers continue to demand transparency, companies must make openness a part of their culture. We’re impressed that GHD doesn’t limit openness to quarterly calls and press releases.

Maintaining a perfect score going forward will require being more open regarding company’s values and the people behind the brand and the products. Too.

2. Incentives and Perks 10/10

When it comes to discounts and freebies prices, GHD delivers. Rolling out the red carpet, we got a 10% off our first order.

Other perks include we found include-

15% on Selected Core Electricals*

20% off hot brushes to celebrate summer

Free UK Next Day Delivery
10% off Student Discount

Offering such variety of promotions is a powerful took at the hands of savvy CRM teams. And GHD does a great job of helping customers save money. Nothing to whine about here

3. Be Relevant 8/10

GHD builds relevance by offering customers innovative products that meet their needs. Enter: GHD’s first cordless straightener!

Launched in July, GHD’s cordless straightener allows women to style/retouch their hair in the blink of an eye. This is a real added value for women looking for effortless styling on the go.

Scouting around GHD’s website, we saw a COVID-19 update informing us that the brand’s customer service team would be working from home. While GHD offers next-day delivery for UK customers, we sadly didn’t see any other flexible delivery options. But we must admit we do love the 21 Day No Quibble Return Policy!

GHD also seems to be big on diversity. According to a post from the brand’s LinkedIn page, 70% of GHD‘s team globally are female.

4. Be Helpful 10/10

Check your boobs! Is an important reminder we all need. GHD teamed up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) to launch its annual limited edition pink collection and campaign, called Take Control Now, to ensure women of all ages are reminded to self-check more regularly.

‘Take Control Now’ is embossed on the collection to remind customers to self-check.

£10/$10/€10 from every pink limited-edition purchase goes to Breast Cancer Now in the UK and Irish Cancer Society.

In addition, GHD recently gifted 50 sets of premium styling appliances to students of the Heart of England training academy. In our eyes, helping students to build their kit bag screams. “ghd cares!”

5. RealTime Personalization 2/10

For this commandment, the only form of personalization we noticed was the ability to choose our location.

When we placed a pink collection straighter in our shopping cart, our HP wasn’t personalized in realtime to reflect our product selection. While we got some upselling and cross-selling in the form of “killer combos,” these offers weren’t personalized – that’s a very product-centric approach, as opposed to a customer-centric one.

Zero retargeting on social media and online. For realtime personalization, GHD falls below the bar.

When it comes to hair styling tools, we know one size doesn’t fit all. GHD should actively explore curating exciting personalized experiences for its customers by using customer data for smarter recommendations and better retention execution.

Become the best CRMer you can:
CRM Hack: Monitoring the User’s Heartbeat
What Does It Mean to Treat a Customer’s Email With Respect?
To Lock or Not to Lock Customers (into CRM Journeys)
What the Efforts to Promote Responsible Gaming Look Like Form the Inside

6. Master UX 6/10

GHD checked almost all the boxes when it comes to delivering a smooth user experience. The brand’s website is easy to navigate, we found a FAQ section and reviews to help us with our purchase.

But we weren’t happy about the absence of a sales or discount page. Having a dedicated sales page makes it easy for bargain shoppers to find something they can afford. In addition, we found the text on some parts of the website difficult to read. There wasn’t enough space between the words, and the distance between the lines was little.

Not an experience up to par with many of the brands we analyzed so far.

7. Leverage Social Media 9/10

GHD has a steady following on social media. On Facebook, GHD has 2M followers, 652k followers on Instagram and 54k followers on Twitter.

The brand posts regularly on Facebook. The content is a great mix of hairstyling inspiration, product promotion, freebies, hairstyling tips and tricks and hilarious hair memes. Love the educational stuff.

GHD’s Instagram account had us screaming “HAIR GOALS!” and succeeded in giving us major mane envy.

Making good use of Instagram, GHD posts a lot of educational content using Reels and IGTV.

We also saw a healthy mix of hot hair trends, promotional and humourous content.

GHD frequently posts on Twitter but the engagement level is low compared to Facebook and Instagram.

In all, GHD does a good job of connecting with its audience through social media and encourages product engagement. The fact they post different content on different platforms is not to be taken for granted.

Now for our verdict. Drum roll please……

Overall, GHD is getting 55/70 here (78%) – enough for a solid 18^th place out of the 53 brands we analyzed so far.

Out of the 15 total points deducted, more than half (8) were lost on the all-critical Realtime Personalization category.

While we agree the brand isn’t in a situationship with its customers, we know the personalization is key through which relationships can be much better. Brands that scale their personalization see can 33% increase in customer lifetime value.

We recommend GHD adopts realtime personalized marketing by using relevant customer data to automatically generates personalized and relevant customer communication across the customer journey. Read more about personalized recommendations here.

Adopting realtime personalized marketing will improve GHD’s relationship with customers and catalpult it’s CRM results to celebrity status.