Lulu and Georgia Doubled Repeat Buyers in Just Nine Months
How the home goods brand took control of their growth
Amidst economic pressures, Lulu and Georgia sees exponential growth in repeat customers with Bluecore, leveraging retail technology to increase digital marketing ROI to new heights.
increase in first-time buyers
increase in repeat purchases
increase in email subscriber growth
Home goods retailers experienced record site visits and online sales in 2020 as stay-at-home orders had people itching to spruce up their spaces. But as people got back out into the world, those numbers dropped, especially with rising inflation and interest fees slowing down homeownership.
This trend didn’t look promising for Lulu and Georgia, an ecommerce home goods retailer looking to get back to its pandemic sales volume, fast. The brand started working with Bluecore in August 2022 with the goal of transforming casual shoppers into lifetime loyalists. And in just nine months, they did.
Bluecore’s platform engages shoppers across email, site, SMS, and paid media with patented technology and predictive models proven to increase customer retention and lifetime value. Pairing that with their own customer and product engagement data, Lulu and Georgia was able to create new buying moments that went beyond home purchases and market-dependent trends.
More email subscribers, more first-time purchases
Lulu and Georgia’s website attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. The catch: Most of them were anonymous and most were not buying.
With Bluecore’s predictive intelligence, Lulu and Georgia used lookalike VIP audiences in paid media. By driving shoppers who had the highest likelihood of purchasing to the site, the brand was able to better manage their acquisition costs. Once people were on the site, the brand was able to grow their opted-in email subscriber list by 5% quickly with Bluecore’s Email Capture. That enabled them to identify as many shoppers as possible, setting a strong foundation for personalization. As Lulu and Georgia gains more valuable data, the better they’re able to fuel 1:1 messaging and communicate relevant recommendations and content to all of those shoppers.
Increasing their opted-in subscriber base by 5% drove significant customer reach, giving Lulu and Georgia the opportunity to nurture these new subscribers to their first purchase. To keep that momentum going, time was of the essence.
Home goods don’t tend to be spontaneous purchases. In fact, the average shopper researches these products at least six times before buying. “The home goods space is unique in that consumers do not purchase furniture as frequently as they do in other retail segments,” adds Bluecore CEO Fayez Mohamood. “This means that Lulu and Georgia not only needed to be in front of shoppers at the exact moment of consideration but also even when there are years between purchases.”
To pull this off at scale, Lulu and Georgia focused on automating hyper-relevant triggers to convert shoppers quickly. Sent in response to various shopper behaviors, triggered messages have 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher clickthrough rates than batch-and-blast emails, according to the Epsilon Email Institute.
Triggers proved effective for Lulu and Georgia, accounting for 40% of the brand’s email revenue despite making up less than 5% of their email volume. However, the winning tactic was utilizing more than the typical triggers such as cart and browse abandonment emails.
The retailer sent triggers focused on real-time changes to the product catalog like new arrivals and price drops to shoppers who showed interest in those specific products. The Low Stock Trigger was particularly effective, creating a sense of urgency around items before the retailer ran out.
Going beyond the basics and automating merchandise-driven triggers helped Lulu and Georgia increase first-time buyers by 133%.
Driving repeat purchases by predicting purchases
Retailers know loyal customers are the best customers. Bluecore quantified that with their 2022 Benchmark Report, which found that 54% of retail purchases come from 30% of a brand’s customers. Lulu and Georgia sought to increase that pool, an ambitious but doable goal thanks to Bluecore’s predictive models.
Activating them within the platform is as simple as pointing and clicking within the platform’s audience and template builders, allowing retailers to easily launch campaigns with 1:1 recommendations that are most relevant for each shopper and what items they’re most likely to purchase. With these predictive models, Lulu and Georgia was able to communicate based on shoppers’ price sensitives, preferences on colors, styles, materials, and predicted preferences for categories and products.
The retailer leaned on three models in particular: Next Best Purchase, Category Affinity, and Discount Affinity. Combining the three, Lulu and Georgia infused personalized recommendations in nearly all of their emails. After identifying a one-time purchaser, they built an email with a unique offer as well as a predicted next purchase and additional recommendations based on category affinity. Discount Affinity helped them drive conversions while also preserving margins by only offering discounts or free shipping to customers who needed them to convert. They did this both in email communications and within onsite modals.
Lulu and Georgia had traditionally segmented one-time buyers according to what they already bought, which illustrates the typical gap between high-consideration home goods purchases. How often does the average shopper buy a couch?
Bluecore data found that with each additional purchase — even items with lower price points, such as lamps — shoppers become even more likely to continue buying from a brand. The likelihood that a first-time shopper will make a second purchase is 23%, though the likelihood that a two-time shopper will make a third purchase is 37% and it keeps going up from there.
Built-in predictive models helped Lulu and Georgia experience this success firsthand, increasing repeat purchases by 229% while building strong relationships with a legion of loyalists.
Triggers played a big role here as well, becoming crucial in creating higher lifetime value. Lulu and Georgia created a Rewards Trigger, which sends shoppers 1:1 credit reminders — including the dollar amount of the available reward — along with relevant product recommendations, contributed to 27% higher revenue per email.
“Bluecore has let us automate and scale a very personalized approach to marketing, which enables us to move faster, be hyper-efficient, and do more with less in a competitive environment,” says Julia Metaxas, Vice President of Growth at Lulu and Georgia. “Now, rather than being at the whim of the market, we’re in control of our growth, no matter what’s happening in the world. We’re now seeing a far more immediate return on our marketing spend while also making a long-term impact, such as increasing customer lifetime value.”
What’s next for Lulu and Georgia? The retailer plans to keep driving its 1:1 messaging home, scaling their wins from the past nine months with even more loyal shoppers.