Interview with a Customer

An Interview with Carole El Rahi,  The Senior Marketing Manager at Temple and Webster.  In 2017 Temple & Webster was ranked in the Top 30 Best Online Retailers in Australia.

Visit Temple & Webster: https://www.templeandwebster.com.au

When did Temple & Webster become a MobileDigital customer?

Temple & Webster became a MobileDigital customer in November 2016.

What other marketing solutions do you use? (If it changed solutions over time, please outline roughly how long and why)

Temple & Webster has a varied marketing mix. Our marketing solutions include Google Adwords, retargeting solutions like Criteo, paid social media and also offline media such as print, catalog and radio.

How did you first hear about our service? What made our solution stand out over others that you researched?

We first heard of Mobile Digital at a marketing conference and we were impressed by the functionalities available on the platform. We wanted to diversify our marketing mix so we took this relationship further.

Would you describe a few of the reasons you decided to use MobileDigital’s SNIPER CPaaS

In this day and age customers expect a minimum level of customisation and personalisation. The blanket approach doesn’t resonate well with customers anymore and we wanted to leverage the segmentation available through our CRM platform to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. MMS marketing was able to support this approach.

What trends in your industry drove the need to use our product SNIPER?

Personalisation and trigger-based marketing are the 2 trends which drove us to use SNIPER.  Personalisation is a really important part of our marketing strategy. Taking this approach further, we want to trigger personalised MMS as part of our marketing programmes. Using API triggered MMS is ultimately where we’d like to take our MMS / SMS campaigns.

What was your main concern about rolling this product out to your company?

We didn’t have any real concern. We felt very well supported by the MobilDigital team who were able to train us on the platform and have always been really responsive and helpful.

What were the major pain points of your process prior to using our product?

The biggest pain point for us was extracting the right segments from our CRM and setting up our triggers in a way that’s scalable.

Were there any internal risks or additional costs involved with implementing our product? If so, how did you address them?

Our MMS/ SMS campaigns are offer based so when we measure the impact, we always look at incremental revenue minus the cost of media and cost of discount.

What initial challenges did you encounter that could be helped with our product? (Was there a hurdle/issue you needed to be solved?)

Some customer segments don’t engage a lot with emails. Personalised MMS & SMS was a great way to reach customers who don’t normally engage with our brand via other channels.

How has your perception of the product changed since you’ve become a customer?

We were really pleased with the results from the SNIPER platform. The team has put a lot of work into making it self-service and user-friendly.

How did you implement/introduce our solution? What results have you seen? (Any statistics here would be helpful)

We’ve tested SNIPER to promote our Click Frenzy campaign to lapsed customers. We did a split test across MMS / SMS. With lapsed customers, we actually saw a better performance from the SMS which was interesting.

Are there any metrics or KPIs you track with our product? What are they?

We mainly track order, revenue, cost of sale and unsubscribe. We treat MMS as a performance channel.

Was there anything about the implementation/results that positively surprised you since using SNIPER?

The setup process was really seamless once I got the hang of the platform. I now feel confident setting up my own campaigns.

What advice would you give another retailer thinking of using MobileDigital?

Make sure you test and measure your campaigns across different segments. We’ve seen very different results based on users’ profile.

How did our team help with implementation?

Mobile Digital team was most helpful in helping me get more familiar with the platform and setting up my first campaigns. The team was really reactive and the campaign went out without a glitch.

What will it take for you and your team to get the most value out of our product?

Our goal is to implement trigger based MMS / SMS campaigns that are fully integrated with our life cycle marketing programmes.

How does SNIPER assist with your overall digital strategy?

SNIPER is a great tool for reactivation,cross-selling and upselling.

What would your team’s workflow or process be like without our product?

We would have to use our email service provider to send SMS, MMS which is not currently supported.

Do you think the investment in our product was worthwhile? Why?

Sending MMS / SMS campaigns through Mobile Digital has been a positive experience. Not all our tests have been successful but that’s part of the optimisation journey and learning what works/doesn’t work.

Have you ever talked about our product to any of your clients or peers? What did you say?

Sure, we’ve been recommending Mobile Digital to peers looking to expand their marketing mix to new channels. MMS / SMS can be a powerful retention/reengagement channels if the targeting and messaging are right.

Tell us a bit about Temple Webster.

Temple & Webster is Australia’s #1 online retailer of furniture and homewares. It was established in Sydney in 2011 by four founders – Mark Coulter (Chief Executive Officer), Adam McWhinney (Group Chief Experience Officer), Conrad Yiu (Non-Executive Director) and Brian Shanahan (former Chief Executive Officer). The business was named after William Temple and John Webster, convict artisans who were commissioned to make furniture for the Governor in colonial Australia in the early 1820s. The site was initially a members-only sales site established as a content-driven platform for limited-time offers.  In mid-2015, Temple & Webster acquired Wayfair Australia, the local arm of the successful US business Wayfair.com, rebranding the business as Zizo.com.au and changing the format of the website to an open platform. In late 2015, the business also acquired Melbourne-based online furniture retailer and importer Milan Direct. These two acquisitions led to the formation of the Temple & Webster Group ahead of their IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).