The fashion industry is impacted by many ever-changing and often deceptive variables. Whether it’s the flux of return rates, low product margins or considering customer lifetime value, the rapid growth of retail is making it more important than ever to truly understand your data.
Global ecommerce saw more growth during April and May of 2020 than in the previous decade, with the UK witnessing digital sales jump from 18% to 30%. The growing number of browsing methods, devices and lead opportunities is a catalyst for more bespoke, mature marketing.
Using a basic snapshot of SKU (product) level data, it’s possible to gain a greater perspective over individual product profits, allowing you to make informed and data-driven decisions on where to invest your marketing.
In this whitepaper, we discuss the power of considering individual product data and filling in the gaps that come with blended return on advertising spend (ROAS) targets.
Breaking down each section with example data, we look at innovative ways to nurture an in-depth understanding of the entire customer journey and three of the industry’s key challenges:
Product margins are a significant hurdle in the fashion industry. It is easy to be misled by deceptive data in the commonly used ROAS targets, directing investment towards a product with high revenue. However, in reality, high-volume products with small margins often generate less income than items with significantly fewer volumes, or could even be operating at a loss when other factors are then layered on top.
We look at the depth to be gained from looking at individual metrics and revealing the true value of each product. By looking under the hood of your data, it becomes possible to see what is really happening after considering the many variables on each product, allowing you to interpret the truth within your data and navigate informed and profitable decisions.
The next challenge central to the world of fashion is returns. The average online return rate of 23% is staggering when compared to the in-store return rate of less than 1%. Optimising your strategy towards your most profitable products is vital to mitigating the crucial financial and economic impacts of returns.
It’s evident that returns are important to both customers and retailers. Nurturing an in-depth understanding of your entire customer journey will allow you to boost your performance, customer experience and profits.
Every customer, brand and product will have a different relationship with customer lifetime value. Maybe you’re buying a rare, one-off wedding dress or perhaps you’re selecting a new brand of running socks. You might wear those same socks for the next five years, although you won’t be returning to the same wedding retailer in a hurry.
Understanding how customer lifetime value impacts your business is critical to creating a mature strategy. Once you know the probability of customers returning to your brand, you can use this to inform data-driven decisions to your marketing, targeting specific users and utilising this insight.
