ASOS Builds Customer Loyalty with Brand Advocacy Programme

Since its launch in 2000, ASOS has become one of the UK’s largest and most successful online retailers to come out of the dotcom bubble. And it’s still growing. The ecommerce-based fashion and beauty store posted a 14% rise in pre-tax profits to £27.3 million over the six months to February 28^th this year, according to The Telegraph, with sales hiking by 37% to £911.5 million. What’s more, overseas sales are soaring, jumping 54% to £548.4 million.

The numbers are impressive, but nonetheless come as no surprise. During ASOS’s first 15 years in existence, the retailer was an ecommerce pioneer, changing the way customers shop online under the control of co-founder and then CEO Nick Robertson, who stepped down from the role in 2015.

Upon the announcement of Robertson’s withdrawal from the role, Rebecca Marks, retail consultant at Conlumino, said: “Robertson built a multibillion pound global company, cleverly building onto the WAG culture from 10-15 years ago, and then turned this into the ultimate destination for high street, catwalk and vintage trends for men and women.

“Whilst retaining its winning edge, with outperforming online fulfilment capabilities and utilisation of social media interactions to drive consumer sales, Robertson not only drove growth at ASOS, but drove change in the way consumers shop for fast-fashion trend led products.”

It most certainly did. But what really makes ASOS such a strong and lasting success has been its commitment to the most important thing of all – its customers.

Organic Influence Across Social Media

ASOS has always had a millennial focus with its marketing campaigns. Since the beginning, the brand has been the number one source from where young people could purchase fashion and accessories as sported by leading celebrities – ASOS is in fact an acronym of the company’s original name “As Seen On Screen”.

However, it’s rarely enough for a brand to rely solely on celebrity exposure to achieve lasting growth and success. For that to happen, endorsements must come from existing customers and everyday users as much as official brand spokespeople – if not even more so. And so, ASOS has taken to one of the most powerful tools of the 21^st Century to push for brand advocacy from its largely millennial fan base – social media.

The retailer now places huge emphasis on creating and sharing compelling content through its social channels, amassing more than 17 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr. Chief executive Nick Beighton – who replaced Robertson – explains: “We’re now creating content at a greater scale than ever before, in a more localized way than ever before. We publish tens of thousands of new content pieces each and every month across every social channel. The combination of our great products and great prices and great content drives an amazing customer experience.”

Rewarding Engagement

But this isn’t just content for content’s sake. As with everything that ASOS does, there is a meaningful and measurable growth strategy behind the initiative. As part of a loyalty programme, ASOS customers not only earn points for purchases, but for social engagement as well.

For each pound a shopper spends with ASOS, they’re awarded a point worth 5p, which can eventually be cashed in for an ASOS voucher. But points can also be earned when customers engage with the brand’s social media campaigns, such as the #AsSeenOnMe platform. Here, when users post an image of themselves on social channels using the hashtag, the content is pulled into a feed on the ASOS website. The scheme offers rewards such as birthday discounts, free next-day deliveries and exclusive content.

“It rewards total loyalty,” says Beighton. “We're saying, ‘see this beautiful proposition we have, come and get involved and we will reward you accordingly.’”

(Image source: asos.com)

ASOS Insiders

Influencer marketing, of course, is another strategy at the heart of ASOS’s success. ASOS knows that the best way to communicate its most important messages is to enlist people who identify with its target audience (i.e. stylish 20-somethings) to do it. And so we have the ASOS Insiders Community. The community features a host of these “Insiders” who use their own social media accounts – mainly Instagram and Pinterest – to promote clothes, accessories and beauty products available to buy on asos.com.

What’s more, fans and followers of these accounts can then shop the items straight from social. On Instagram, users can see the code for the product in the image caption. They can also visit the influencers’ curated pages on the ASOS website through a tracked link. Meanwhile, on Pinterest, images are directly linked to the product’s page.

Driving Growth Whilst Reducing Costs

These influencer and brand advocacy schemes have helped ASOS keep marketing costs down – a reduction, in fact, of 16%, according to a 2015 report. Meanwhile, as social media continues to play an increasingly key role in keeping its loyal customers engaged, mobile traffic and sales have gone through the roof – earlier this year, it was reported that 58% of ASOS’s revenues came from mobile, with 3.2 million new downloads of the ASOS mobile app.

Much of this has come down to the continuously improving personalised recommendations features on the retailer’s digital assets. But, in-keeping with the inclusive marketing style that ASOS has become renowned for, it’s not only improved algorithms that are delivering greater personalisation (though these do play a significant role), but the whole community ethos that ASOS both enables and promotes across all of its channels as well.

Indeed, when it comes to product recommendations on ASOS, it’s a combination of human endorsements and new tech innovations that together form the driving force. The last word goes to Nick Beighton.

“The improved algorithms have given [digital customers] a much better experience based on what you browse, what you’ve liked, what you’ve added to your bag and may not have purchased, based on your behaviour on other parts of the channel.

“In terms of personalization, it’s a never-ending approach; there’s no start, middle and end to it. So personalization can go from here’s an edited choice of 900 brands that we’ve chosen for you, for customers like you, endorsed by customers through social media. Our content is personalized through many channels. Customers upload pictures of themselves so they’re part of the conversation, they’re part of shaping the offer. So it’s a continual journey that we’ll never stop on.”