Country Road has increased marketing spend by 70% this year and confirmed the rate will continue into FY24.
The investment comes as the brand doubles down on new marketing channels, including the launch of a data-led app in October last year.
Speaking at Ragtrader Live Sydney, Country Road head of marketing Lina Cabai said the retailer has been utilising customer insights to inform strategy.
"Thanks to an incredible wealth of transactional data from our rewards program, which does account for almost 80% of our total sales, we've been able to quantify that when a customer moves to the Country Road mobile app, they are 22% more valuable to us," Cabai said.
"Their behaviour changes, they shop more often, with half of those incremental purchases being made in our bricks and mortar stores."
Cabai said this has given the brand the confidence to test and invest, with the app expecting more updates ahead.
"Using our wealth of loyalty data, we now know that two-thirds of customers who shop Country Road on the app are completely new to the brand.
"We also know that existing customers who start shopping Country Road on The Iconic become 3% less valuable to our brand. We're OK with that, because ultimately, we're getting the gains in the acquisition space.”
Country Road has increased its sales by 19% on last year, with a record 56% growth in customer acquisition and a 17% increase in its overall customer base.
“And we've achieved significant gains in brand health metrics within our core customer demographic,” Cabai said.
“We first test, we learn, and of course we fail, but we're confident when we've got it right,” Cabai said. “That's where we have the opportunity to really scale.
“And that's not only an approach that we take to our brand, but it's actually also an approach that we take to the business at large as well.”
"You don't just ask the board to more than double your marketing unless you're getting some runs on the board."
In addition to investment in digital channels, Country Road will push into OOH channels for the first time. The brand also launched with The Iconic over a year ago to target the younger market.