Fresh Fest 2021: A recap of the action
By Camilla Bass, Content Marketing Manager
On 17th June, eCommerce leaders from around the world joined us online for Fresh Fest, Fresh Relevance's digital summit. Despite not being in the same room, we all gathered round the virtual stage together for an afternoon of insights, awards, networking and game show fun.
If you couldn't make it for the live event, you can access all the presentations on-demand and catch up at a time that suits you. In the meantime, here's a recap of the insights and activities.
Building brand equity with BrewDog
Fresh Fest started on an inspirational high with David McDowall, President & COO of BrewDog sharing the beer company's incredible success story.
David talked about BrewDog's knack for turning irreverent social responses into commercial opportunities, such as the brand's response to Aldi's look-alike IPA and Dominic Cumming's infamous trip to Barnard Castle, both of which resulted in new beers being created.
The audience also heard about BrewDog's focus on sustainability, with projects such as the BrewDog Forest. According to David, he's a firm believer that "in most categories in the years ahead, the most sustainable businesses will be the most well known, respected and valuable ones."
All of this, in addition to the brand's positive impact throughout the pandemic and their Equity for Punks investor initiative, has helped BrewDog build brand equity and foster a community of ardent followers.
David ended his headlining act on a fun note, telling the audience about BrewDog's Pawternity leave scheme, whereby any new dog parent is granted a week off to get acquainted with their new addition (with the stipulation that they share puppy pics with the team of course!).
Discover more in our pre-summit interview with David.
3 key success factors in 2021 and beyond
You don't need us to tell you how challenging 2020 was for retailers. But the surge in demand for eCommerce as consumers moved online at unprecedented speed has also brought new opportunities.
Our CEO & Co-founder, Mike Austin shared his three key success factors in 2021 and beyond, discussing the importance of customer retention, cross-team collaboration and future-proofing your martech solutions amidst the changing cookie landscape.
Mike left the audience with practical advice in the form of the three Cs of customer loyalty, two opportunities for cross-team collaboration, and three questions to ask your personalization provider to ensure your personalization efforts are future-proof.
Fresh Relevance in action and the latest platform updates
Daisy Gray, Customer Success Consultant, helped the audience take their marketing to the next level with best-in-class client examples of personalization tactics, backed up with some incredible stats. For example, did you know that product recommendations can give an 11% sales uplift?
Daisy also outlined Fresh Relevance's personalization framework, designed to help eCommerce leaders form and hone their personalization strategies.
Discover more customer success stories.
Our Head of Product Management, Lucy Russell, also took to the virtual stage to share this year’s exciting product developments. Lucy highlighted Fresh Relevance's revamped site info bar, help videos, UI/UX updates, the Optimize Center, segment updates, download panel, and auto A/B test ending, as well as new integrations with Actito and Iterable.
Retention is the new acquisition
Customer retention can be a goldmine for business growth in eCommerce, and with a 5% increase in retention resulting in a 25% increase in profit, it's no wonder that retention is a huge area of focus for many merchants.
But 2020 completely shook up loyalty and retention as we know it. More consumers headed online and many were more willing to switch to different brands, making retention a hotter topic than ever for eCommerce businesses.
We invited three eCommerce experts to the virtual stage - Janis Thomas, Ecommerce & Marketing Direct at Look Fabulous Forever, Lauren Dougherty, Ecommerce CRM Manager at Animed Direct, and Jonathan Broadhurst, Ecommerce Executive at Cooksongold - to discuss their approach to customer retention. We covered how their retention strategies have changed over the pandemic, which channels they've found success with and how personalization factors into retention.
Four big-top sessions
We were treated to four exciting breakout room sessions from our event sponsors: dotdigital, JH, Trustpilot and Leadfamly.
Dotdigital shared their 3 stages to omnichannel success, JH helped the audience get two steps ahead of the eCommerce game, Trustpilot showcased their trust checklist, and Leadfamly discussed gathering deeper customer insights through game mechanics.
And the winners are...
We love celebrating our clients' successes, which is why we brought back the Personalization Pro Awards, helping us showcase the most innovative, original and effective campaigns using the Fresh Relevance platform.
Here's a rundown of the award winners.
Best use of personalization in email - Buyagift
Best use of personalization in web - FFX
Personalization campaign of the year - DirtBikeXpress
Fresh Pro of the year - Jonathan Broadhurst at Cooksongold
Best use of personalization with a partner - Getting Personal with dotdigital
Fresh Fest ended on a high with networking and Gameshow Mania, where our champion snagged a staycation with Canopy and Stars.
Thanks to our fantastic audience for keeping the energy levels high and the conversation flowing.
Missed out on attending the live event or want to soak up the day’s learnings again? View the presentations on-demand.
