During the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, PUMA did some amazing things to connect with customers and remain engaged.
Even though many gyms were, and still are closed, loyal customers continued purchasing athletic leisure from the brand.
Alex Timlin (SVP Verticals, Emarsys) spoke with Rick Almeida (VP of Ecommerce, PUMA) to share with you:
- The channels PUMA leveraged to shift its engagement strategy.
- The importance of remaining agile and nimble in uncertain times.
- Why it’s important to understand the continually changing consumer sentiment
- How to market and continue to communicate even in times of uncertainty.
Read on to discover how PUMA was able to quickly adjust to bring value to their fans and customers.
How to Remain Agile and Nimble When Everything Is Changing
“I think that the changes we’ve had to undergo, never mind working from home, but as a business to pivot, to change the way in which we want to engage with our consumers, has just really made us be very, very quick, much more agile, I’d say than we had been in the past.”
How to Pivot Customer Communications and Engagement
“Being sensitive to what’s going on. We had to be very mindful to our tone, to our choice of words, and really talk more about the value that we can bring, not only our product but more our brand, to be very relevant and instinctually within a consumer’s lifestyle.”
Why Loyal Customers and Influencers Can Help You
“We were able to leverage our ambassadors and our influencers, from a social perspective, to create new and unique experiences. We continue to evaluate our customer experience to remove points of friction. Ultimately, yes, to move the conversion needle, but also improve our basket size, or to improve the worth of the consumers that are coming to our site, to enable them to discover our product in great ways. But, while they’re on their journey, we wanted to make sure that we looked at the consumer feedback, looked at their sentiment, and remove unnecessary steps, clicks along their journey to make sure that they are getting the most out of their experience with us.”
Why Customer-Centric Marketing Efforts Work
“We take much more of an audience-led approach than just … the old school batch and blast. So we’ve been more mindful about the full-funnel journey of our consumers and how they engage with us. So the product that we put forth based on who they are, their lifestyles, their interests … For us, one of the key investments this year was seeing through the implementation with you guys from Emarsys, to enable a lot more scale and efficiency with the tools that we also used to reach our consumers, but to deliver great experiences as well.”
Final Thoughts
Staying relevant in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty is paramount.
For example, there were numerous times during this pandemic that store hours would vary for the various retail locations I would visit. Many times I arrived as the doors were closing. This made for negative customer experience as the company could have simply sent out a message regarding the revised store hours.
There are numerous adjustments your company can make, like PUMA, to stay relevant to customers. Keeping customers informed is a great place to start.
