Showpo chief marketing officer Mark Baartse will join a panel of CMOs at Ragtrader Live.
To learn more strategic insights from the power session, get your tickets here.
In the meantime, here are some of his top three insights.
Artificial intelligence: you still need people
Last year,Baartse was recognised as one of Australia's top 50 CMOs by cmo.com.au. Baartse has led Showpo's marketing strategy since 2016 and credits a balanced approach to driving marketing objectives. "We now have AI solutions behind our CRM, search, social and visual merchandising. Despite the hype of AI, we still see the need for more people. It has been exciting to expand the team across a range of areas including brand, CRM, social and digital."
Loyalty programs: re-think how you do it
Baartse encourages brands to read a study around loyalty from Professor Byron Sharp, from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Researching over 50 years worth of data from the likes of Proctor & Gamble, Coke and Unilever, the study found most loyalty programs were revenue neutral. "Your traditional loyalty program...involves giving away a certain amount of margin. You give someone 10% off, you're making 30% margin, you take .3% hit in profit. A large percentage of those customers were likely to purchase anyway, so you've just given away money for nothing." The real question he says, is how to structure a loyalty program in a way that is revenue positive rather than a simple hit on margins.
Marketing: long term over short term
There's a time and place for campaigns, but Baartse also encourages retailers to take stock of long-term objectives. "Campaigns are about 5% of revenue and business as usual is about 95% of revenue." The CRM capabilities of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram should also be considered, with "virtually all the capabilities and a lot more". Showpo enjoys a strong social media following, with 1.3 million Facebook followers and 1.6 million on Instagram.