As part of the series, Salesforce Presents ‘Moments Made By Marketing', Neha Kant, Founder & Director, Clovia tells us how the brand leverages technology to deliver a personalized consumer experience exchange4media Group has curated a series of interviews, Salesforce Presents ‘Moments Made By Marketing’ where we focus on how brands are building connected experiences in a multi-platform environment to reach their consumers. In the fifth part of this series, Neha Kant, Founder and Director, Clovia tells us how the online lingerie and loungewear brand leverages technology to garner insights to deliver a more personal experience to its consumers with targeted solutions such as personalized boutiques, product recommendations, and size/fit assistance. She emphasises on the importance of experience, saying that Brand Clovia is centred on the keyword 'joy' and how the brand remains true to this core tenet. Commenting on challenges, Kant states that the biggest one that the lingerie category faces is education. She explains how the brand took up the challenge head-on by building the brand’s proprietary "CloviaCurve Fit Test" which resulted in 3x conversion when compared to its regular traffic. She adds that at Clovia, every content piece is graded on its engagement, basis which the next set of communication is planned while ensuring that all communications are collectively coherent and not burdening the end receiver.

Edited excerpts: With so many touchpoints today there's a heavy leveraging of tech to ensure that our multiple presences are well-synced and responsive and we get as much insight as possible about our customers so as to serve them better. For the latter, it's fascinating how one can get customer likes/dislikes, satisfaction levels with the brand and treat them accordingly to deliver a more personal experience. Our customers leave different information on different platforms. We compile these learnings and over a period of time, various customer personas develop, which then form the basis of our decisions, from product development to communication. Each of our users gets served their personalized boutiques, product recommendations, and size/fit assistance. What are the challenges in ensuring your brand messaging is consistent across channels and platforms? For a D2C brand, that is interacting with its customers several times a day across different platforms, it is important to maintain excitement along with consistency in brand communication. We have to say something new and varied every time while keeping the brand messaging consistent. Therefore, the old spiel of brand guidelines is redundant now. Brand Clovia is centred on the keyword 'joy'. We speak the language of a new-age girl who is joyful, youthful, has a voice on social issues. With these basics in mind, we say something new and different every day while staying true to our core tenet of 'joy'. We have a central team managing communications across platforms. We also use appropriate tools to maintain continuity and consistency in the distribution of this messaging across online and offline platforms. How do you leverage data-driven analytics while strategizing your media campaigns?  While there are the standard formats we use for customer data segmentation across multiple variables to map our RoI marketing, the key lies in a few main things. First is mapping the funnel or things that bring the traffic (say content) and things that convert (say offer) might not be the same but when they work together, the scale can be achieved efficiently. Then comes understanding the attribution model right. The channel that brings traffic (introduces the brand) and the channel that converts (makes the sale) may not be the same. And finally, being super disciplined about your spends and reviewing your model regularly for aberrations. You operate in a category where every consumer requirements and fit for a product may vary. How do you leverage first-party data and analytics to re-target consumers and up-sell new products to existing customers? Well, that's the core of our existence. The whole idea of Clovia was that every body is different and we've used technology heavily to understand a customer and service her accordingly. The biggest challenge in our category is education. Most people don't know what they want or what their body requires. So we built our proprietary "CloviaCurve Fit Test" which has almost 3x conversion than our regular traffic. Also once we understand the customer's browsing and size patterns, we are able to service her with a lot more targeted solutions. With content being a big piece of marketing, how do target existing and new consumers with data-driven content? What are the key challenges? Content is a big part of our marketing strategy. We work extensively on content from educational to entertaining to topical. Over 30% of our traffic is driven from these content pieces across platforms. They are well integrated with products for users to make an easy connection. For us, engagement is a science and every content piece is graded on its engagement and basis that we are able to plan our next set of communications. What has been the role played by automation and technology when it comes to optimizing ad spends & measuring the effectiveness of outreach programmes? As shared above, Attribution tools, constant monitoring as well as data mining of the audience base has helped us in optimizing our RoI spends. Marketing automation is a big part of upselling and is used extensively clubbed with our in-house data engines to target different profiles differently. All aside, we do some level of brute force marketing as well to not get stuck on our own web of learnings and bring new customers with fresh perspectives, profiles, geographies and behaviours in a fast-changing consumer internet landscape. Though Clovia has its own online presence, you also have a strong presence on other e-commerce platforms.  How have you leveraged Data management platforms (DMPs) to gain insights and activated it to drive outcomes? What are the challenges? So at Clovia, we have enough traffic on our own site and app to drive enough learnings. Marketplaces are close partners of our growth story and we keep getting valuable insights from them to grow our business at their destinations. So far, we do not leverage any 3rd parties for insights and go with what the partner platform guides us on. How does it benefit aligning email and advertising campaigns? Email campaigns are a good medium to communicate with end customers, but it also runs the risk of overexposing the brand. We are now trying to be selective in our communication with our customers. There are multiple ways to reach out to your existing customer base via web/app notifications, emails, and now WhatsApp. What's important is to ensure that communications are collectively coherent and not over-burdening on the end receiver. This is a partner content article in association with exchange4media.