Nike Delivers Award-Winning Customer Experiences

We put the famous athletic brand to the CRM test. Check how they score and rank against other fashion brands we graded so far

Adebisi Adewusi

March 29, 2022

Nike is an athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for sports and fitness activities. Let’s see how well Nike treats its customers.

Be Transparent 10/10

Nike publicly discloses information about its internal operations. Nike’s Impact Report shows customers how the brand has been working towards creating a diverse and inclusive workforce, its investments in programs that help kids access play and sport, and its sustainable innovations. Nike makes its financials available to the public and has a Manufacturing Map tool to help customers learn about the independent factories contracted to make Nike and Converse products.

Nike’s efforts towards being open about its activities helps build transparency and encourages customer loyalty. We give the brand a 10 here!

Perks and Incentives 10/10

Perks and incentives remain important in building lasting customer relationships. Let’s see how Nike makes its customers happy with freebies and deals.

Nike Members get free standard shipping on every order

Students get 10% off

40% off mark downs

10% Off for first responders and medical professionals

10% Off for military personnel

Nike has a membership program that offers customers exclusive access to offers, exclusive Nike products, and rewards throughout the year

Nike does a great job helping customers save money and communicates its perks and incentives throughout the customer journey. Nothing to complain about here 🙂

Be Relevant 10/10

For this commandment, we check if Nike offers customers relevant products and services.

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We found that Nike uses relevant content to keep customers engaged. For example, Nike Journal offers customers coaching advice and culture articles about advocates moving the world forwards through self-expression.

Nike’s podcast – “Trained”, features experts revealing practical and surprising lessons in holistic fitness.

Nike also uses apps such as Nike App, Nike Run Club, Nike Training to give customers access to the latest gear, engaging stories, and a worldwide community. For example, the brand’s SNKRS app allows sneakers lovers access to the latest launches, hottest events, and exclusive releases that Nike has to offer.

Nike makes shopping convenient for customers by offering flexible delivery options such as store pick up and curbside pick up. And installment payment through Klarna.

For finding ways to help customers find their community and stay active, Nike gets 10/10.

Realtime personalization 5/10

Logging into the Nike website, we could choose the location we wanted to shop. We noticed some differences in the homepage and content in each country. Nice!

To test Nike’s realtime personalization capabilities, we placed a pair of Nike ZoomX Invincible Run shoes in our cart. Returning to the HP, we didn’t see any change in the content or messaging to reflect what was in our cart, our onsite search, or our browsing behavior.

Apart from showing us other running shoes, we might like, we didn’t see any other cross-selling or up-selling techniques being implemented on the website.

Finally, after leaving Nike’s website, we weren’t targeted with sponsored ads on social media or the internet. In all, Nike’s realtime personalization strategy isn’t the best we’ve seen so far. The brand missed opportunities to deliver realtime personalization. For instance, by leveraging our data, Nike could have presented us with some personalized recommendations on the checkout page.

Nike loses a couple of points for not living up to today’s realtime personalization expectations.

Be Helpful 10/10

Nike is doing a lot to help its community. Here’s are some ways how the brand is giving back.

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund provides scholarships, career readiness preparation and access to job opportunities
A four-year $40 million commitment on behalf of NIKE, Jordan Brand, and Converse to advance a more just and equitable society for Black Americans
Partnerships with NAACP Empowerment Programs, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), Black Girls CODE, and Black Girl Ventures – with each organization receiving funding ranging from $500,000 to $1 million
Partnerships with Goalsetter to increase financial literacy among America’s youth and lots more

Today’s customers are looking beyond price and quality when making purchases. It’s great to see Nike walking its talk when it comes to giving back.

Master UX 8/10

Navigating Nike’s website was easy. The homepage user interface experience is decent and we were able to navigate the categories. The filtering criteria were specific, which made finding products easy. For instance, we could filter running shoes by run type, support level, and shoe feel.

The product page was functional with descriptions, user reviews, and ratings. Nike uses videos to display products, so we got enough visual information about the products we viewed. Nike’s FAQ page is well designed and answers customers’ questions.

Overall, Nike’s website UX performance is decent. However, we think Nike can make its website more user-friendly by adding some innovative features.

Leverage Social Media 7/10

Nike has an active presence on social media with 208+ million followers on Instagram, 36+ million followers on Facebook, and a growing 9 million followers on Twitter.

Projecting the ‘Just Do It’ image, Nike’s Instagram feed is curated to inspire its audience. Posts are mostly inspirational and promotional. We like how Nike uses the hashtag #BornReady to give followers something to engage with. Nike does a great job of leveraging Instagram Reels and videos to catch its audience’s attention.

Nike doesn’t post on Facebook. The last post we found was for January 28th, 2018.

Nike posts frequently on Twitter. The posts are promotional and inspirational.

In all, Nike’s social media strategy is platform-specific and the content is relevant to its target audience. The brand does a great job of leveraging visual content to catch its audience’s attention.

Not having an active Facebook presence drops the brand’s social media score. We suggest that Nike considers posting regularly on Facebook if it wants to remain active there.

Overall, Nike is getting 64/70 (91%). The brand really tries to build a great relationship with its customers. But the brand falls short on real personalization.

Customers want to be treated like royalty. So realtime personalization is super important. We recommend Nike adopts real-time personalized marketing by using customer data to deliver personalized customer experiences across its website. Read more about personalized marketing here.

This will help Nike deliver more personalized shopping experiences to its customers and take its CRM results to a superstar level.