Sustainable Loyalty: Reaping the Rewards of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

 “It’s not easy being green,” a fact that Kermit has bemoaned. But for brands that do it well, it can foster greater customer loyalty.

Brands jump on the circularity bandwagon

Circularity is the name of the game of keeping products in use rather than throwing them out. For the clothing market that means avoiding the wastefulness of  fast fashion in favor of clothing that endures for many uses and that applies sustainable practices in production and recycling. 

The online consignment shop, thredUP,  shifted the paradigm of thrift shopping from trawling through racks in-store to scrolling through options on your phone or PC. In addition to making buying pre-owned clothing that much more convenient, it branded it as not just economical but socially responsible, as it explained on a blog post:

Here’s the facts:

-Fashion will drain a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.

-26 billion pounds of textiles are dumped into global landfills each year.

-A single T-shirt takes 700 gallons of water to produce.

Here’s what we can do:

-Consume less.

-Reuse more.

-Choose used.

Over the years, thredUp has partnered with popular brands that gain a halo effect from participating in the resale market due to its green cred. Brands like Adidas are even using their partnership with it to launch their own Give Back initiative xclusively on their own branded app. 

Clothing for a better future

One of the brands to embrace sustainable standards for clothing is Primark. In the Primark Cares section of its website, it details its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint in production and increase the longevity of its clothing. 

As Primark explained in  Love Your Clothes, Love Your World:

“When it comes to fashion, durability — how long a product lasts — really matters. It’s not just about getting better value for money by keeping your clothes longer, it’s about improving our impact on the planet so there’s less waste.”

For proof of progress, Primark said it would be working with WRAP and will follow a "’Target, Measure, Act’ approach, where businesses set targets, measure their impact and track progress, both on an individual basis and towards national targets” for the UK.

,Primark already uses recycled or sustainably sourced materials in 25% of its clothing lines. It has pledged to increase that to all its product lines by 2030. 

The brand’s CEO, Paul Marchant was quoted i the ncorporate pledge,, saying. “ Our ambition is to offer customers the affordable prices they know and love us for, but with products that are made in a way that is better for the planet and the people who make them. We know that’s what our customers, and our colleagues, want and expect from us.”

Gaining by losing a million pounds

It’s not just the clothing industry that is concerned with going green. The beauty industry has also woken up to the imperative to reduce waste..

 One way to make it happen is by cutting out unnecessary packaging. That’s what e.l.f. recently announced in sending out an email with the subject line, “e.l.f is committed to sustainability.”

It promised that it was shedding unnecessary waste in its packaging. “Say Goodbye to 1,000,000 Pounds of Packaging” was the way it phrased it, and it illustrated that point with an image and a gif.

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There’s a double advantage to reducing excess waste from packaging. Of course, it generates less waste of paper and plastic. But also the lighter weight means greater efficiency in transportation and fuel consumption. 

Finding new approaches to make clothing and beauty products more sustainable is a win-win. One win for the planet and another win for brand loyalty. That's why it’s a good bet that  we will see many more brands communicating their pledges to improve their environmental impact.  

Related:
Don't just aim for different
Visualizing the customer journey
What makes content marketing effective
What the Little Prince teaches us about marketing





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How to win customers in cybersecurity marketing

Those who work in the cybersecurity business know that they have to keep up to date on points of vulnerability in technology to maintain their edge. What the ones who successfully market their products also know is that they have to adapt to evolving customer expectations in the highly competitive B2B market.

What goes into successful cybersecurity marketing? The answer to that was offered by Ken Rutsky, author of Launching to Leading: How B2B Market Leaders Create Flashmobs, Marshal Parades, and Ignite Movements in a recent interview about the paradigm shift that has occurred in B2B messaging and positioning.....

It’s all about “how to make value conversations relate to the buyer -- not the seller,” he says. 

Read more in How to put the customer at the center of cybersecurity marketing

Casting the hero of your story

Recently I spoke with Ken Rutsky, author of Launching to Leading: How B2B Market Leaders Create Flashmobs, Marshal Parades, and Ignite Movements, about what what goes into successful B2B marketing. One of the biggest misconceptions people have, he said, is that all they need is the right tech. 

While tech does indeed play a role in data-driven marketing, Rutsky considers it only one third of the story. And getting the story right is actually the key thing in effectively connecting with B2B customers, just as it is for B2C customers. 

Who’s the hero in your marketing story? 

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/
The_golden_fleece_and_the_heroes_who_lived_before_Achilles_%281921%29_%2814763705761%29.jpg

From the tales of Homer to comic books and films like Star Wars,  and even Disney’s Moana, stories of a hero’s journey remain persistently popular. Rutsky credits Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for breaking down the steps involved in such stories. 

Rutsky quotes Campbell's summary of the journey story on p. 95 of his own book: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” 

In his own words, Rutsky described it as the hero’s perilous journey far from home to bring “a magical gift” to improve his own world. Such stories are a great way for marketers to present a product or service that will solve a persistent problem for the business customer. And they often do so, but what they tend to get wrong is the casting of the hero. 

Read more in B2B Marketing: Who’s Your Hero?

Retailers get into predictive analytics

Here on All Analytics, we’re generally sold on the value of predictive analytics. The question is: Are retailers, particularly those managed by people who believe in their gut intuition, sold on it? Even they are starting to appreciate what analytics can do for their business.

Dean Abbott

According to Dean Abbott, co-founder and chief data scientist at SmarterHQ and author ofApplied Predictive Analytics: Principles and Techniques for the Professional Data Analyst, it is ushering a cultural change for retail.

I recently chatted with Abbott about what the application of predictive analytics means to the retail space. Read more in 

Predictive Analytics: Data and Retail Expertise

Good data should not come at the cost of Goodwill

 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/2008-08-04_CVS_Pharmacy_in_Durham.jpg

CVS recently ran an experiment that's generating a lot of buzz online. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of customer reaction retailer likes to get.

The drugstore giant chose the week of July 12 to deviate from its usual offer of special coupons or promotions in printed circulars. They were betting that what they gained in data insight for the week would be worth the price of alienating some customers.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/blogs/dont-sacrifice-goodwill-for-good-data.html#sthash.V3PGO2I9.dpuf

Getting to really know your customer requires managing a lot of data

Socrates considered "know thyself" the objective of wisdom, but in business, the key to success is knowing your customer.

A customer's relationship with a brand is much more complex than some people assume. As shoppers, we don't just come on to a site and buy what it sells out of the blue. We may get there by clicking on an ad, clicking on a promotion in an email, or by remembering a positive experience we had with the business when we called and chatted about an order. There are many different channels involved, and each one only shows one aspect of the total customer experience. So how do you really get to know what your customer is responding to?

This past June, Israel-based, NICE Systems introduced the NICE Customer Journey Optimization solution to just that problem.  Read more here: