Latest News From The Catex Conference

by Chloë Thomas

Chloe at LordsLast week I spent a fascinating day at the Catex Annual Summit, held this year at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. In the afternoon I was presenting a Content Marketing Workshop (coming soon as an online course!), but in the morning I got to hang out with all the delegates and sit through some fascinating presentations.

So here’s my summary of the key takeaways:

Stay of execution

The biggest news of the day is that the dreaded EU Data Protection Update is now being subjected to 3,974 amendments, and won’t be debated in the European Parliament until at least September.

Without going into all the details, it looks highly unlikely that this will come into force this side of 2014. But please if you haven’t yet sent letters to your MP and EUMP, do. (see my original post here).

Customer Experience Design

aka – consistently giving great customer service, and keeping your brand consistent.

This session was presented by Rosie Freshwater of LeapFrogg.

First she ran through the 4 stages of the consumer buying cycle:

  1. There are brands in the “Known Brand Pool” – the companies the consumer knows do “shoes”, or “laptops”
  2. When the customer goes into the “Active Buying Period” they start researching, evaluating, and listening
  3. That leads to the “Purchase Moment”
  4. After that they either go into the “Loyalty Loop”, or if not sufficiently pleased will go back to the “Known Brand Pool”

To be successful (especially in the premium retail sector where LeapFrogg focus) you need to be marketing to consumers in all 4 stages.

The first step to doing this is to map out every touch point a customer has with you and grade how good it is – that will then give you a list of areas to improve. Start with one of these, get it right, and then move onto the next. So don’t try and fix it all in one go!

Email List Growth

Ian Hammersley of smartebusiness did a fantastic presentation all about recruiting new email addresses, and using segmentation to drive powerful results.

You can download his slides here, which are well worth a look, so here’s my top takeaways:

  • Refer a friend – won’t get your much data, but what it gets you will be great quality
  • Track the performance of the different data segments you collect
  • Use Facebook competitions to encourage email sign ups
  • Put a scratch card competition in your parcels, and on your store counter – when they scratch they have to go to your site to find out what they win => 40% email sign up response!
  • Segment your database into “Recruit”, “Retain”, and “Reactivate”
  • Test a post-purchase email that gives the buyer a voucher to give to friends and family