The Problem: M&S needed to increase online revenue per visitor due to the shortfall caused by lockdown restrictions to retail outlets
Marks & Spencer is a leading British retailer bringing high-quality food, clothing, and homeware to millions of customers around the world. They are a proud British heritage brand and have a highly loyal customer base.
M&S is focused on undertaking a colossal digital transformation. This transformation process was accelerated by pandemic-related store closures, as online channels face pressure to make up for lost revenue in the brick and mortar stores. Now, their investment in enhancing the digital customer experience is paying off.
“Due to the pandemic, we had to close our non-food stores for several months and again just before Christmas. This meant there was a lot of pressure on online channels to make up for a shortfall in sales and retain customers.”
Part of any digital transformation means paying very close attention to creating smooth and distraction-free customer journeys to be able to maintain both existing customer loyalty and to attract the attention of new online customers.
Unfortunately, many online retailers remain unaware that their carefully curated customer journeys are being interrupted by unauthorized ads injected into consumer devices and browsers. These ad injectors get installed via free extensions, apps, or services that customers have installed on their devices.
M&S first heard about Namogoo through their Ignite program. As part of the digital transformation, M&S formed Ignite to find the very best start-ups across the globe, connect them to M&S, and unlock incremental value by solving known and unknown opportunities.
After they were introduced to Namogoo, Stuart and his team were skeptical about the scale of the problem, as they couldn’t see the evidence of the competitor ads on their customer journeys.
The journey interruptions on M&S’s website were luring online shoppers to competitor websites, negatively impacting both revenue and conversion rates. Apart from diverting revenue to competitors, they were also concerned about the impact of intrusive ads on their customers’ online experience.
The Solution: Preventing Customer Journey Interruptions & solidifying seamless customer journeys
After the injected ads were blocked, the M&S team was surprised at how many customers were now converting on their site. Despite initial skepticism, the team was able to track customer journey data and measure KPI performance with Namogoo’s solution and verify all results with their own analytics platform.
“Namogoo brought us the customer hijacking problem and solution in one, delivering a significant benefit to our business.”
The Business Impact: M&S increase RPV by 23% in their first year with Namogoo
By blocking these competitor ads, M&S was able to recover lost revenue in their first year using the Customer Hijacking Prevention solution. While using Namogoo, the team at M&S saw a 1.7% conversion rate increase and a 23% increase in their main KPI, revenue per visitor.
“The interrupted audience, created by Namogoo, is highly valuable to us, as we clearly see that these visitors tend to spend more than visitors whose journeys were not being interrupted. This has had a positive long-term impact on RPV and has further benefited our top line growth.”
Along with recovering lost revenue, M&S was able to successfully monitor their customer journeys and continue to transform their digital offering.
Conclusion
M&S saw first-hand the negative impact of unauthorized ads interrupting their online customers’ journeys. By implementing Namogoo’s Customer Hijacking prevention solution, M&S has blocked over 98 million journey interruptions, resulting in an increase in conversion rate and revenue per visitor, as well as restoring lost revenue.
