Ep. 126 – RETAIL TRENDS: w/Georgia Gkolfinopoulou [Marigold] How Consumer Behavior Has Changed!

Foreign.

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I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this, not that.

We are here for a special episode of do this not that.

We have an amazing guest.

I'm so excited.

So we have Georgia Cole Pulu.

I really hope I got that right.

I'm not sure if I did, but I think it was close enough.

No offense.

I hope not close enough.

It has to be right, but whatever.

But, um, she is from Marigold.

Marigold is an amazing company platform that's all about relationship marketing, email marketing.

They have over 40,000 customers.

And the reason I asked Georgia to join us today is that she's one of the lead marketing strategists at Marigold.

And a lot of times when we're talking about research that companies come out with, we're always like, well, how did they do that?

Who's actually involved with making that?

Can we actually hear from that person?

So I was like, georgia, you gotta come on.

Because she is the person working with her research team that's actually getting all of these trends and information together.

And we're going to be going over some great stuff today.

So, Georgia, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much.

Very flattered.

And the surname was indeed correct, so you don't have to worry about that.

Amazing.

This is the.

This is.

We're off to an excellent start, so.

And by the way, I feel for you because my last name, Shwetelson, I mean, it's like sometimes people say it and they, like, sound like they're throwing up.

They don't know what they're saying.

So I, me and you, we're on.

We're coming from the same thing that people mess up our names.

Anyway, thank you for being here.

So before we get into some of these really cool trends and consumer trends that your research is finding, tell us a little bit about Georgia.

How did Georgia become Georgia?

Where are you?

What's going on?

Absolutely.

So, again, super excited to be here with you today.

A bit of a background information on me.

Originally, I come from Greece.

I moved to London around six years ago, and I have been with Marigold for over a year, nine months almost.

So, yeah, as you said, my main role there is marketing strategies.

So I advise our clients when it comes to their marketing strategy.

And also part of this, because always we need to be very, very informed on how consumer behavior and how different changes are affecting specific sectors and verticals.

I'm also leading the market research within Marigold.

My background stands with CRM, E commerce and retail, which is one of the things that we're going to talk today.

So kind of in my nature and yeah, this is who I am.

I love it.

And it's really great to be able to do market research and have such an extensive customer base to be able to tap into at Marigold.

So I think that that's why I really rely on a lot of the trends that you all come out with.

So we're going to go through some different trends that you're seeing.

I just want to get an understanding of, like, what does it mean?

And, and, and where are we all headed?

Okay, so one of the ones that I saw that in the, in the trends report, which we'll make available in the show notes, and all that I thought was super interesting was where it said 85% of people say their favorite brands treat them like an individual.

Was that, like, surprising to you or is that kind of where we are now, where everyone wants to have customized marketing communications to them?

I think just to get started and to put things in context, what we saw is that throughout the pandemic and especially post pandemic, the consumer behavior changed completely.

And from a brand standpoint, a lot of organizations were pushed into accelerating their digital transformation journeys.

The reason for that was that we had to, as consumers now, adapt into an online world for a very long time.

So we learned and we adapted and we understood what makes a great customer experience.

And a very big part of a great customer experience today is personalization.

And I don't mean personalization by, you know, only on an email instance saying, oh, hi, Georgia, open for your offer.

We are talking about, you know, deep curated feeds, products based on consumer behavior, past purchases, and really what we see now.

And what consumers want is exactly what you said they wanted to be treated as individuals because they understand that, of course, their data holds specific economic value to businesses.

Therefore, it's time for them, you know, to get the best possible outcome for their experience as consumers do.

And you know what's really interesting about that and what I took out of that statistic specifically, and you tell me if this is wrong, is that you don't need to send everything to everybody.

And one of the ways that you treat somebody like an individual is say, oh, this offer is good for these People, this offer is good for those people.

Whereas I think in the past we've been like, all right, let's just send this to everybody and let's just hope it goes well.

Because one of the other statistics in the report that I saw was that 51% of consumers have been frustrated by irrelevant content or offers in the past six months.

Does that all tie together?

Is that what it means?

Like you don't send everything to everybody?

100%.

I mean, we are right now at the point where, you know, the blast communication strategy are almost, you know, slowly dying out.

Because again, consumers, first of all, they don't have enough time in their hands anymore to go through mass tones of information and find that one specific item or that one specific offer that might be useful to them.

So we are starting from that.

And then also, you know, it's really important to understand for brands that if somebody has a certain behavior over time.

So let's just say in this example, if I buy from brand X only jeans for over two years, but then this brand keeps on targeting me with generic content that includes bags and sweaters and shoes.

At some point I will be very fed up and say, maybe I don't need to read your emails anymore.

Perhaps I'll keep on shopping with you because I like your jeans, but I don't like your communications.

Therefore that Brand X is missing out on a very, very important channel where you have the opportunity to personalize in depth based on both demographic data, which is the all time classic, but also behavioral data.

When did they last shop with you?

When did they last click in one of your offers?

Is there anything else that I might be looking for which might be a bit hard for me to find?

And the other thing to think here is that, you know, time is of essence and time is money, right?

So the easier you make the access to preferred products and services for your consumers, the better and the more impactful for your overall, you know, customer retention, revenue retention as well.

So you know, that really is super interesting to me because as a putting my marketing hat on when I think about doing segmentation, I'm always thinking about it from the perspective of I'm going to segment so I can get more people to buy this product or react to this offer.

I'm not, but now I will thinking about segmentation from the recipient's perspective.

Where are they enjoying what they are receiving and will they then feel more connected to the brand moving forward?

You know, it's almost like you have to change your mindset of it's not just about getting your offer sold, it's about creating this experience that's really good for the recipient 100%.

And this is the other race brands are going through right now.

And this is like in multiple sectors.

It's not only details specific.

Especially, you know, as we said before, that the pandemic kind of pushed that digital transformation.

It also push the need for brands to become more customer centric because traditionally, and you know, as we all stand on a balance sheet as consumers, you wouldn't think of what does Jay or maybe Georgia want to see in our communications?

What do they enjoy?

As you said, reading.

But now that things change so rapidly, it's more and more evident the need of customer centricity and of course, taking other variables that sit outside the traditional, if I may, segmentation efforts, which is again, you know, where do we click the most, what do we read the most?

With what type of content do we interact?

And of course, most importantly, where do we interact with that content?

Because email is one channel.

But you know, some people still love their SMS text messages and some others might want to say, you know what, I love push notifications because they are immediate.

My inbox is very crowded.

So you see that there are very different variables right now that brands need to consider.

To go back to that initial point where we were discussing make consumers, you know, feel like they're actual individuals and that they value in the, you know, in the, in the brand that they're interacting with.

Yeah, it's a total mindset shift and I got to work on that.

I personally have to work on that.

I'm going to work on that.

So there was another set of data in the report that I thought was shocking and I'll tell you why.

So you've done this report for many years and there's this stat in there that says 63% of people will pay more to shop with brands that they're loyal to.

Now the shocking part was that a year ago it was 59%.

So it went up from 59% to 63% that people pay more to shop with brands that they're loyal to.

And the thing that was shocking to me is, you know, inflation and cost of goods and all this stuff.

People have less money in their pocket than they did a year ago.

And yet from your report, they're willing to spend more money on stuff that just because of their loyalty.

Is that surprising?

I think it comes as a surprising fact to brands that they never, you know, kind of invested heavily in their loyalty programs and in the Loyalty value propositions.

And this is a very big difference that we discuss, you know, internally and with our clients and externally in situations like the one today that you know, loyalty from a transactional standpoint, of course can serve brands and it serves brands very well in situations with, you know, the cost of living crisis, the inflation, where the loyalty is automatically translated into discounts, offers, cashback rewards.

But what's making really, you know, the customers stick and become advocates of a brand is the emotional part of the loyalty.

And this is where, you know, we tend to see that behavior of I don't mind paying more because I really love this brand and that's it.

And sometimes we also observe that, you know, that instead of making two or three or five purchases, they prefer to go and do that one purchase with the brand that they are very loyal to.

And the reason for that is obviously, you know, of course there is a monetary incentive because you need that to drive, as I said, the retention and the stickiness.

But also there are other things that people value the customer experience, the efficiency of the purchase, the speediness.

And again, it all goes back to that recognition that they are actual individuals.

So here is also where personalization and very constant communication comes into play.

And there are of course different variables.

But the result is exactly what you said, that people, they are at the point where if they value a brand, they don't mind about, you know, the five, $10 or even $20, that it might be more expensive than some other competitor brand that they've never tried to, to buy from.

And I think you touched on something that's really important because a lot of listeners, they may not have a loyalty program and maybe that's beyond what they're able to put in place.

But you can create loyalty without having a super sophisticated program.

Because you mentioned recognition, just recognizing the things that your customers have done, what they've spent with you, what they've interacted with you.

Maybe it says their birthday, it's their one year anniversary or signing up for your newsletter, whatever it is.

Recognition creates loyalty because people feel seen, they feel a part of something.

So don't just take loyalty that oh my God, I gotta have a whole points program and I'm not an airlines, you don't have to have that to create loyalty.

So let's shift for now, let's shift towards the last segment of this crazy podcast.

And I didn't tell you beforehand that we were going to do this, but that's what this podcast is.

So the segment of this thing is called, since you didn't ask where you talk about things that have nothing to do with anything work related or whatever.

But here's my question.

You seem like a very smart person.

You seem like an intellectual because you do research and stuff.

And I am the opposite of that.

I am not an intelligent or intellectual type person.

And I'm saying that because I watch horrible reality TV and I'm wondering, do you like only watch like the Crown and, and Masterpiece Theater or are you like watching really bad stuff too?

Yeah, so that's a very interesting topic.

I don't only watch the Crown, I actually binge watch in like more than I showed.

Law and Order is one of my favorite things ever.

And the other thing I started watching because of course I had to, you know, become a bigger part of the, of the British culture is a, is a soap opera that they have here.

It's called the EastEnders.

It has been playing for an insane amount of years, of course with different actors as it goes through.

But I like to spend some time throughout the day to just binge watch some, some stuff that don't make me think.

And I do watch the Office, the American version in repeat, always.

There you go.

And did you see this week they came out with announcement they are rebooting the Office and they got a slew of new actors and whatever and actresses.

It's going to be amazing.

And it's very interesting to me that you live in London, yet you watch the US Version of the Office.

What's wrong?

Why don't you like Ricky Gervais?

What's going on?

I love him.

He's one of my favorite comedians.

However, I don't know, for some reason I just stuck with the US version and I just keep on going back and back to it and honestly, I love it.

Yeah, it's the best.

I feel like I am Michael Scott, sadly.

But that's okay.

All right, so let me tell everybody.

You will be able to go in the show notes and download Marigold Consumer Trends Index Report.

It is amazing.

Everything we talked about today and a lot more is in there.

You could also go to jschweddelson.com Marigold it is there.

It is free, it is comprehensive and we're going to put George's LinkedIn in the show notes.

You should connect with her, you should follow her because she's right, really smart and shares all sorts of cool stuff.

Georgia, any other final words for humanity here?

Any final words for humanity?

Yeah, I think my final word is, I think what you said before that you don't really need a very robust solution to create loyalty if you cannot afford it because not all businesses are of the same size.

But honestly, by starting to recognize people and what they mean to your brand by simple appreciation Communications.

Thank you for being with us for X amount of months.

Oh Happy Birthday.

Get like a special gift.

I think it goes very long way and it's a very good start and foundation to start building that loyal customer base that you need.

Amazing.

Love it.

Completely agree Georgia thanks for being here.

And everybody, thanks for checking out the episode.

Take it easy.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

But the party's not over.

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