2 Ways to Cultivate A Stand Out Luxury eCommerce Brand

Ever wondered how you can make your luxury brand stand out even more…online?

Unlike a typical brand, as a luxury brand owner. You have a unique challenge in creating an environment where your customers can go through a high-end experience.

One of the core elements of any luxury brand is the experience. Many brands face a challenge in replicating online versus in-person where you can truly get personalized attention.

How can you create that level of exclusivity and grow your brand?

Let’s talk about it in today’s episode.

When it comes to luxury brands besides selling well-crafted and quality products. Your customers value a more refined experience. So much so that they will pay a higher price for a better experience.

We’ve all been there where you don’t want the cheapest, but you want the best. For the best, you have higher expectations such as.

• A quality product & service
• An easy-to-shop store
• Prompt responses

The list could go on and on. For that type of experience, you will pay for the upgrade in service & expectation.

So how can you convey that online? When you don’t have an in-person experience, that you can personally walk customers through? Or when your customers can not instantly experience your products?

Out of most retail brands, the luxury brand market has been actually one of the slower markets to expand online. Because of some fears such as remaining exclusive and providing customers with a more personal experience in-store.

With the increase in changes in how we now shop. No longer operating online is not an option it’s a must-have. Customers are prioritizing brands that can meet their needs.

Luxury brands aren’t at loss in fact they can still own their brand authority and still serve their customers. One way is through personalization.

Personalization is a key element to navigating online for luxury brand owners. When brands personalize their experience for customers, they can better serve their needs. While also increasing their cross-sells, up-sells, and increasing their average order value.

What does a personalized experience look like online?

It begins with understanding the types of customers that shop for your brand. Knowing all the various journeys they could take to get familiar with your products.

When you truly understand the various needs of your audience, you can create an exceptional experience that adapts to their needs.

For example, you’ll have a first-time customer who may need to become more familiar with your brand. So they are wondering about your website to get to know your brand story and the ideas behind your products. So they can decide which products are going to be great for them to try first. They will also look for past & current customer experiences, through product reviews and another commentary. All of this can inspire them to make a purchase.

Then you’ll have customers that have had some sort of experience with your brand. Maybe it was in-store or through social media. They have an awareness of your business and now are ready to try out some products. Or maybe they heard from a trusted friend who has raved about your products and now wants to check out your business.

Whichever the case in those scenarios your customers are going to have varying needs. When it comes to personalization, you can adapt to their needs by showing recommended products based on their habits or customer profile.

One way you can do this is through email marketing. For eCommerce brands, I highly recommend Klaviyo it’s designed to help online merchants, especially DTC (or direct to consumers) brands connect more with their customers.

For example, let’s say one of those customers described earlier came to your online store but didn’t make a purchase. But maybe they filled up a cart and for some reason didn’t complete a transaction. Instead of potentially losing that sale and leaving it as an abandoned cart.

You can have an email marketing sequence set up through Klaviyo where that customer gets sent a follow-up email to complete their purchase.

But in this email, it wouldn’t just be the items that they left in the cart. It would also include a personalized email that showed other recommended products they may like.

You may wonder how can you know what products to recommend. This is where data science comes in and also where Klaviyo excels.

Based on the types of products that specific customers selected. Klaviyo can pull in other products to recommend based on what other customers who purchased similar items liked.

It will help your customer feel taken care of and not just part of a transaction. It will also help inspire trust in your brand because you are taking the time to get to know them and their wants.

Finally, it positions your business as the go-to for repeat purchases because you’ve given them a unique experience online.

For a luxury customer, it’s about the details and the little digital nudges that can really amplify their impression to a more positive one for your brand.

Just some data insight for you… the average abandoned cart rate in eCommerce is over 70%. Yes, over 70% is a lot of potential missing revenue from your business.

Think about if you just recoup a portion of that number how much in additional revenue you would bring back into your business?

This is why I’m constantly saying investing in your eCommerce website is an investment NOT a cost. Unlike other marketing websites for other industries. You really have to delve deep into your customer data and understand the psychology of how they navigate your store.

That’s why I help my clients with ensuring they have their analytics set up, have website heat maps, and have a core foundation of understanding their customers. If you are ready to create a premium eCommerce experience for your luxury brand. You can head over to themaycreative.com and learn more about my signature service which takes you through 4 elemental business phases that leaves you with a sought-after brand and plan to continue to thrive online.

Now I have the second way you can help your luxury brand stand out online. You may have guessed it, and that is through customer service.

Even though there are plenty of brands to shop from online. There are tons that don’t understand customer service at all. Which still poses an enormous opportunity in business.

Regardless of the situation, there is always a professional way of handling customers. I can tell you some interesting stories of my own customer service experiences as a retail expert of over 10 years. From customers who have thrown things at me to the ones that helped me see, that there are still amazing and wonderful people in the world.

Definitely let me know if you’d like me to share some of those stories in future episodes.

When I started my retail career many many moons ago. I remembered asking one of the leaders I was working with what is some of the best advice they could give me.

They told me to take care of my team and customers because if I nailed that they would support me more than I ever needed.

As I progressed through the years, I took that advice as gold. Because it proved to be true, taking care of your customers and team will take you very far.

Because there will be times in business where you face challenges like not feeling like you can show up or your day is so hectic you don’t know how you’ll get through. But your customers and team will step up for you because you’ve always taken care of them.

It’s called reciprocity and when it’s done from a genuine place, it comes back to you when needed.

Think of ways you can improve your customer service. Is it by having faster response times? Or send a small gift when an order gets screwed up?

Sometimes I see merchants complaining that an order was lost in the mail and the customer is requesting a refund or would like a replacement sent out soon. It can really frustrate the merchant because they feel like they are being taken advantage of.

Here is where I want you to pause, think about your customer, and decide if potentially losing out a small percentage of a sale is worth to losing an entire customer?

This is especially true if your customer’s lifetime value is high. You going and replacing that one customer who you could’ve supported may actually cost you more money to lose them.

Of course, each experience is unique but really think about how you can not say no to your customer.

I know I may get slack for this one, so hear me out. My challenge going through my retail career was to always tell my customers what I could do instead. I even trained my staff to do the same, we were no people. We were “here is what we can do or offer” and it worked great our customers felt heard and we felt that deal was fair. It’s also what contributed to our high customer satisfaction scores, which consistently stayed in the 90s.

I also saw an important correlation between high customer satisfaction and increased sales.

Great customer service is vital to any luxury brand and needs to be a priority to help your brand and business stand out.

Ok, so let’s recap we discussed the importance of personalization and really curating an experience for your customers that make them feel taken care of. One way is through email marketing and providing recommended products based on their wants. I also mentioned using a powerful email marketing tool called Klaviyo. I’ll link it in the show notes and by the way, my studio is a Klaviyo partner, so I get all the juicy insights to help you set up an amazing marketing funnel.

Then we discussed the importance of having great customer service and the value of taking care of your customers. Your customers are going to be your raving fans if treated right. Who will also follow you and organically promote for you when you create new launches, etc?

After hearing today’s episode I want to you really think about how you can create more personalization in your own business. Plus, think of one area of customer service where you can improve and actually implement a plan.

Thank you so much for listening!