Lulu & Georgia See Increase With Bluecore, Leverage Tech for Growth

May 25, 2023  by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry   

With Bluecore, Lulu and Georgia surpassed pandemic-era order volumes by first increasing opted-in customers by 5% and then putting Bluecore’s email and site personalization technology to work to improve shoppers’ movement throughout the purchase funnel. Bluecore increased Lulu and Georgia’s first-time buyers by 133% and repeat purchases by 229%.

Like many brands, the fast-growing retailer, whose broad product catalog spans rugs, furniture and accessories, saw disproportionately high order volumes and growth during the pandemic. As the world rebounded and consumers began leaving their homes, however, the focus on furniture and home goods declined.

Now, with rising inflation and interest rates, fewer people are buying homes and therefore, furniture and home goods. All of this inspired Lulu and Georgia to find a way to create new buying moments that go beyond home purchases and other market-dependent trends.

Lulu and Georgia partnered with Bluecore to put its growing customer and product engagement data to work with a goal of significantly increasing its known customer base and growing customer lifetime value. Lulu and Georgia and Bluecore focused their efforts on three priorities:

1. Get casual visitors to become subscribers. Lulu and Georgia wanted to maximize the ROI of its customer acquisition efforts by increasing identification of site browsers and converting them into opted-in subscribers.
2. Inspire these new subscribers to make their first purchase. Lulu and Georgia know that shoppers research home goods products 6+ times before making a purchase.
3. Reduce the time it takes for customers who have bought once to buy again. The time between purchases is typically longer in home goods than it is in other retail verticals and getting one-time buyers to purchase again, and sooner, is a priority for Lulu and Georgia.

“We chose to partner with Bluecore because we knew they could rise to the challenge of replicating the pandemic ‘tail wind’ we previously experienced. Now, rather than being at the whim of the market, we’re in control of our growth, no matter what’s happening in the world,” said Julia Metaxas, vice president of growth at Lulu and Georgia.

“Bluecore has let us automate and scale a very personalized approach to marketing, which enables us to move faster, be hyper efficient, and do more with less in a competitive environment. We’re now seeing a far more immediate return on our marketing spend while also making long-term impact, such as increasing customer lifetime value.

In addition to leveraging its technology to automate Lulu and Georgia’s digital marketing efforts, Bluecore brings extensive retail experience to its work with the retailer. Many of the company’s practitioners and leaders previously worked for leading brands and retail industry innovators.

Bluecore has unique insight into nuanced challenges faced by the industries it serves and has built its technology specifically to address them through approaches including activating and monetizing customer data, turning shopper signals into more relevant experiences, and increasing testing efficiency so that it can discover which tactics work and implement them, at scale, faster.

“The home goods space is unique in that consumers do not purchase furniture as frequently as they do in other retail segments,” said Fayez Mohamood, CEO of Bluecore. “This means that Lulu and Georgia not only needed to be in front of shoppers at the exact moment of consideration, but also even when there are years between purchases.”

“Doing this at scale is an incredibly tall order for a marketing team that has to prioritize both retention and loyalty at all times and is only possible through technology and data. We are proud of the partnership we’ve developed with Lulu and Georgia, and the growth we’ve created in an increasingly challenging environment.”

Lulu and Georgia is now scaling what it achieved in year one with Bluecore with even more ambitious plans for building and automating new programs that will continue its growth and predictably achieve year-over-year comps.