The fashion industry is impacted by many ever-changing and 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 US witnessing digital sales jump from 16% to 27%. The increase in 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 from 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 can often generate less income than items with significantly fewer volumes.
We look at the depth to be gained from analysing individual metrics which reveal 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 various product variables, and allows you to make 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%. Optimizing 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 your customers are buying a rare, one-off wedding dress or perhaps they are selecting a new pair of running socks. They might wear those same socks for the next five years, but they won’t be returning to the same wedding retailer in a hurry.
Understanding how customer lifetime value impacts your business is critical in creating a mature strategy. Once you know the probability of customers returning to your brand, you can use this to target specific users and inform data-driven marketing decisions.
