How to be ‘Fab-lytic’ with Consumer Analytics: A Fabletics Case Study

For storefront businesses, tracking a trend in foot traffic, favorite items and drawer revenue comes pretty easy with a daily routine. In e-commerce, where you don’t come face to face with your visitors, consumer and web analytics become vital in analyzing (and improving) your business performance.

Many companies, especially in the retail industry, are finding the benefits of e-commerce to outweigh the costs of a storefront because analytics can lead to higher customer satisfaction and therefore greater loyalty. The past few months one e-commerce only retailer in particular has caught the eye of many marketers for their analytics-driven strategy and model.

In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that sales of yoga clothes went up 45%, but participation in yoga only went up 4.5% (Germano, 2014). Fabletics, fronted by America’s sweetheart Kate Hudson, has been a frontrunner in maximizing on this retail trend and taken the women’s athletic wear category by storm with their members first, analytics driven business model.

“There’s so many aspects as to what the business plan is and why we believe it’s been successful,” Hudson told Vogue. “There was a hole in the online athletic-wear community of affordable athletic wear that was hip and fashionable, and when I heard that I thought what an interesting thing – because that is where you reach women. Why wouldn’t you want to reach women on a wider scope to motivate them to become more active? To me that’s what it’s all about.” (LOVEALYVIA, 2014).

How has Fabletics set themselves up for success? Through an analytics driven, e-commerce subscription model that strives to provide the best in customer satisfaction bringing increased retention and maximum customer value.


How’s it Work?

When a new user visits Fabletics, they’re immediately asked to provide data. Asked for your fitness frequency, attitude, preferences and style, Fabletics is able to learn enough about you as a first-time visitor to provide recommendations on the best suited fitness outfits for you based on style and functionality. According to Lindsay (2014):

“To overtake the competition, e-commerce sites must create compelling, relevant shopping experiences for every one of their customers. But the clear upshot is that personalization thrives in an e-commerce environment. It’s debatable that there’s no other type of website more innately aligned with the ins and outs of personalization than a shopping site.”

Fabletics has taken personalization to the next level, incentivizing users to become VIP members in order to continue receiving it. Those who sign up for the subscription-based service receive recommended outfits each month. This creates a deeper relationship between Fabletics and an individual consumer; more deeply tracks an individual’s preferences and, for the cherry on top, allows consumers to save on their purchases.  The business model is smart, innovative and enticing – a win for the business and a win for the consumer.

Smart Model – Smart Marketing

Most appealing about e-commerce only businesses are their capabilities for smarter marketing. Beyond incentivizing members to openly and continually share their individual preferences, Fabletics has tapped their resources to utilize available data to reach their target audiences. Perhaps its because I’m a young professional woman who undoubtedly wears yoga pants (although I do not yoga), but Fabletics had been inundating me across Pandora, Google, Pinterest and Facebook for three months before I took the plunge and joined the club.

With tools like Facebook Exchange, DoubleClick, Conversant, Connexity and Facebook Custom Audiences; they’ve pulled data and served targeted marketing messages. According to Connexity (2014), “shopping patterns are the best predictors of consumer behavior.” Utilizing their experience in hosting some of the world’s largest e-commerce shopping sites, Connexity builds customer-shopping profiles and connects retailers to new prospective customers who are either in-market or considering similar purchases.

Beyond prospecting new customers and member sign-ups, Fabletics follows their members’ trends and remarkets to them for future purchases. Using Google Analytics and DoubleClick, Fabletics tracks individuals’ visits to the site and specific browsing habits and when no purchase is made or the 1^st of the month is on the horizon they’ll begin serving specific marketing with that individual’s most likely picks across various platforms, primarily email and social media. According to Google Analytics (2014), “While you can implement Dynamic Remarketing by creating only an all users list, creating more narrowly targeted lists lets you focus your ad content and budget where it will have the most impact.”

Finding Further Success

“Personalization is critical to e-commerce sites. We are in a deeply relationship-driven period in digital marketing, and consumers want to feel those one-on-one connections with the brands for which they’re opening their wallets. Gather the data, continue to cull information, and be prepared to make adjustments in real-time—now and forever—so you can deliver the kind of personalized greeting, dynamic content, and powerful drives-to-buy that get results and turn unknown shoppers into loyal buyers.” (Lindsay, 2014)
Bringing even further depth to their data analysis for individual users and innovation to their marketing strategy, Fabletics should consider improvements like:

·       Time of day conversion knowledge – instead of mass sending the VIP reminder that your monthly picks are available, learn an individual’s most likely time to convert and browse the site to send the email and shorten the conversion cycle

·       Price comparison analysis – let user’s know just how much they’re sharing compared to other athletic wear retailers

·       Negotiating shopping cart – convert those wavering to purchase with items sitting in their shopping cart with real-time deal offers to close the deal

·       Recognize most loyal referrers – recruit even more customers to refer friends and family with public recognition and reward for their efforts (i.e. social recognition of gift for free outfit for referring 10 friends who purchased last month)

·       More social integration – further integrate with social platforms with click to purchase inside the networks within pop-up boxes or application tabs without having to leave the site

·       Guest checkout – convert data-protectors and increase sales with a guest checkout option. It could be limited to one guest checkout per IP address and promote deeper incentives for becoming a member by driving home the privacy policy with more detailed language to create trust

References
Connexity. (2014). About. Retrieved from http://connexity.com/about/
Fabletics. (2014). How fabletics works. Retrieved from http://www.fabletics.com/how-it-works
Germano, Sara. (2014, August 20). Yoga poseurs: athletic gear soars, outpacing sport itself. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/yoga-poseurs-athletic-apparel-moves-out-of-the-gym-to-every-day-1408561182
Google. (2014). Create audiences for dynamic remarketing. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3457161?hl=en
Langault, Marie-Josee. (2014, October 14). Move over lululemon, fabletics new yoga line changes the rules [Blog Post]. Origin. Retrieved from http://www.origindesign.ca/move-over-lululemon-fabletics-new-yoga-line-changes-the-rules
Lindsay, Kevin. (2014, May 23). Shopping gets personal: how personalization redefined e-commerce. Adobe Digital Marketing Blog. Retrieved from http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/personalization/shopping-gets-personal-personalization-redefined-e-commerce/

LOVEALYVIA. (2014, August 26). Kate Hudson fabletics (principles of marketing and research). Couture Bay. Retrieved from https://couturebay.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/kate-hudson-fabletics-principles-of-marketing-and-research/