Trends

Coffee & Commerce with Cascone: Creating Community Connections with Jessica Frost

By Sarah Cascone

At the onset of COVID-19, one thing became clear: Retailers needed guidance. In an effort to help brands operate effectively and efficiently in this digital world, we launched Coffee & Commerce with Cascone: A biweekly series with bite-sized episodes tackling the latest in retail, featuring established marketers from today’s biggest brands.

Coming off their recent win for Smartest Use of Retail Data in the Bluecore Retail Regeneration Awards, we talked to GreaterGood.com’s Chief Brand Officer Jessica Frost. Specifically, Bluecore’s Senior Director of Marketing, Sarah Cascone, sat down with Jessica to discuss the pandemic, giving back to the community and how GreaterGood.com used retail data to create “humanized” messaging and reach their audience during a tough time.

CASCONE: Welcome back to Coffee & Commerce. Joining me today is Jessica Frost, Chief Brand Officer of GreaterGood.com, which is a giving community with a few dozen cause-focused sites that have been making an impact around the globe for 20 years strong. GreaterGood has written the playbook for what it means to be a mission-driven brand.

And Jessica, who runs email marketing and creative, spends most of her time figuring out how to create deeper connections with their givers and shoppers. Jessica, thanks for joining me today!

JESSICA: Thanks for having me, Sarah, it’s good to see you again. Virtually, but still we’ll take it!

CASCONE: You just won one of Bluecore’s Retail Regeneration Awards for Smartest Use of Retail Data, which recognizes someone who put critical data at her team’s fingertips to drive business goals with intelligent campaigns. What does this award mean to you, given the direction of the industry and this past year’s acceleration to digital?

JESSICA: Yeah, it’s been a heck of a year for all of us, hasn’t it? The odd thing being in this industry that we’ve all experienced is a bunch of digital growth and a lot more sales online. The struggles underneath that for our teams and for our communities has been very challenging for all of us, I know. So, our company is founded to try to make the world a better place. And we do that for people, pets and the planet. And so we have a history of trying to jump in whenever a disaster happens. Typically in the past, it’s been natural disasters such as tsunamis and tornadoes and those types of things that can affect people and their pets.

And this time was different, right? It wasn’t a short-term localized event. The pandemic is affecting the entire globe. We work around the globe and it’s affecting everyone, so it’s been challenging because we want to try to help as many people as we can in as many causes as we can.

For instance, we hit the ground running with providing PPE for medical workers, nursing staff and frontline workers. We’re over three and a half million mass donated. We’re going to get to four pretty quickly here. So when something like this happens and we really need to step up, it’s wonderful that the digital world and ecommerce sales took off, because that’s one way that we fund all of this. Every time you shop with GreaterGood.com, something goes back to the cause that you want to support, and you can also put a direct donation right in your cart, along with your cute sandals or whatever else you’re buying. So we wanted to take advantage of that opportunity and our community really did step up.

So it was about trying to respond to that in a human way while using the technology of Bluecore to zero in on those messages. And so it was tricky.

CASCONE: Tell me more about that: How you were leveraging the data in that way to kind of discern who you’re talking to, because in general you want to be sensitive to every individual. They’re going through a whole slew of different things. What was that process like?

JESSICA: It’s an ongoing process. There are a few examples out in the world. Sometimes you’re the helper and sometimes you’re the one that needs help. And so within a community like this, you could represent either, especially during something like this that is so catastrophic and touches everyone. So, trying to use the data to find who’s shopped recently, who’s donated recently to be able to say: “Okay, these are folks that are still able to give, and the people who maybe had dropped off from shopping or donating, they might’ve lost their jobs or they might be suffering from COVID.” It’s really about trying to think through the humanity behind the data and then customizing our messaging around that to try to be sensitive to it and to try to affect positive change. I would imagine it doesn’t feel good to keep getting a request for a donation if you’ve lost your job or you’re suffering in some way. So it’s sort of an interesting component of looking at data but trying to see the humanity in it.

CASCONE: The way you articulated it, using the humanity behind the data, I think is a great way to talk about how any marketer tries to speak to individuals and be empathetic. It’s so important to recognize that there are so many dimensions and preferences that you can consider when you’re trying to communicate with someone, and being able to understand the data in that way and add that layer of humanity onto it makes for a much better experience. I really love all of the work you and GreaterGood are doing. I can’t wait to see what else the team puts together, but I want to thank you Jessica for your time and joining me for this episode. And thank you everyone for tuning in to Coffee & Commerce with Cascone.

Ready for More?

Ready for more insights and analysis on the latest trends? Click here for the full episode library of Coffee & Commerce with Cascone.

Coffee-Commerce-Blog
Sarah Cascone, VP Marketing

Sarah Cascone

A metrics-driven brand marketer with 10+ years experience, Sarah has a passion for tying the human element of marketing to revenue growth. As VP of Marketing at Bluecore, Sarah’s focus is cultivating and nurturing the strong community of innovative retail leaders behind Bluecore's mission to empower brands to discover their best customers and keep them for life.