{"id":28987,"date":"2021-11-28T03:04:32","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T03:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/why-ms-will-never-be-the-same-again\/"},"modified":"2021-11-28T03:04:33","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T03:04:33","slug":"why-ms-will-never-be-the-same-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/why-ms-will-never-be-the-same-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Why M&S Will Never Be the Same Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Few brands are as entrenched in the UK\u2019s culture as Marks & Spencer. Founded in 1884, the company has seen every rise, fall, shift and disruption in retail\u2019s modern era and kept a loyal customer-base throughout its history.<\/p>\n

But recent years have raised new challenges for M&S with more shoppers choosing to make their purchases online. For a brand that\u2019s built its reputation around quality products and exceptional in-store customer service, the shift to online presented a challenge: how could it deliver the same level of experience digitally as it does in-store?<\/p>\n

Then COVID-19 hit, and M&S had to accelerate its transformation plans to stay connected and continue serving its customers. According to Alex Williams, Head of Growth and Personalisation at M&S, the pandemic brought challenges for every retailer, but it also put the wind in their sails to evolve, and M&S is united as a business in achieving this aim.<\/p>\n

Reimagining the digital customer experience<\/h3>\n

In the spring of 2020, M&S launched \u201cNever the Same Again,\u201d an ambitious plan which draws on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of accelerating a company-wide transformation and driving M&S forward as a digital-first retailer.<\/p>\n

One of the plan\u2019s core pillars is a commitment to turbocharging growth on M&S.com. Underlying its digital strategy is a push to personalise M&S\u2019s digital shopping experience for M&S customers across two of its largest online categories, clothing and home, with the help of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.<\/p>\n

Since then, Williams and his team have been building M&S\u2019s entire digital experience around insight into customers\u2019 shopping habits, leveraging this data to serve up relevant product recommendations. For instance, a customer browsing M&S\u2019s cashmere jumpers will be presented with a collection of tops that may also be of interest. The recommendation engine then goes further by displaying accessories and outerwear that can be styled with the selected cashmere jumper to complete the look. \u201cWhy not try\u201d items, based on the customer\u2019s previously browsed or purchased products, also provide further inspiration and opportunity to boost basket value.<\/p>\n

M&S\u2019s goal is to personalise each of the billions of interactions it has with customers each year across every channel they use, including M&S\u2019s website, mobile app, email, and social media. For Williams, the power of digital is the ability to see every single interaction, even down to the impressions level, and use that to fuel M&S\u2019s data science through Adobe Target, as well as through the company\u2019s internal teams.<\/p>\n

Just months after kicking off its transformation programme, M&S saw online sales for clothing and home goods jump almost 50%. That could not fully make up for the drop in footfall caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it marked a turning point for the company in the middle of a challenging time for all retailers.<\/p>\n

Active users of the M&S app also doubled. As impressively for Williams, the digital relaunch of its SPARKS loyalty programme attracted 3 million new subscribers, each of which has a customer lifetime value that\u2019s roughly four times that of a non-SPARKS member.<\/p>\n

Experiment, evolve and personalise<\/h3>\n

Since the spring of 2020, M&S\u2019s experimentation-friendly culture has been pivotal in strengthening its digital performance. Experimentation, testing, and learnings have become strategic elements of the retailer\u2019s personalisation roadmap, with teams across the business encouraged to challenge old ways of working and bounce new ideas off one another.<\/p>\n

Drawing on the testing capabilities of Adobe Target, M&S has run 75% more experiments on its digital properties this year compared with last year. Crucially, the ability to experiment quickly has accelerated the enhancements to M&S\u2019s digital offering, putting the company in a great position to continue optimising and refining its approach.<\/p>\n

This culture of experimentation also paid dividends for the retailer\u2019s relationships and sales. By making the switch from generic messages to personalised recommendations on one its website carousels, M&S saw click-through rates increase by more than 80% and add-to-bag-rates increase by 56%. As Catherine Mullen, a Product Manager accountable for driving growth through recommendations explains, just one simple change, fuelled by Adobe Target, revealed the transformative power of personalised customer experiences.<\/p>\n

Just as importantly for the retailer\u2019s boardroom, the percentage of revenue attributed to that carousel jumped 318%. Even these bread-and-butter improvements to M&S\u2019s personalisation approach delivered strong results quickly, in this case doubling the performance of a carousel after some simple testing and adjustment.<\/p>\n

Not just personalised, but personal<\/h3>\n

This is a reset moment for M&S in every sense. The company\u2019s heritage and brand reputation are indisputable, and now it\u2019s on track to build on these differentiators with an equally unique and personal digital offering ready for the new era in experience.<\/p>\n

M&S began its transformation journey with some ambitious goals and the progress it has made in recent months has put digital transformation front of mind for everyone in the organisation. Nearly one year after launching \u201cNever the Same Again,\u201d every team in the business is galvanized under a common goal \u2013 to establish M&S as the most personal retailer out there, no matter where or how its customers shop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source : Adobe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few brands are as entrenched in the UK\u2019s culture as Marks & Spencer. Founded in 1884, the company has seen every rise, fall, shift and disruption in retail\u2019s modern era and kept a loyal customer-base throughout its history. But recent years have raised new challenges for M&S with more shoppers choosing to make their purchases …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28989,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28990,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28987\/revisions\/28990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}