The digital word

The most important promotions we roll out are supported by digital marketing initiatives either in form of text messages or emailings. We have database of 500,000 loyal clients in our seven markets and digital communication has been the most efficient way for communication. This has been one of the most important marketing tools. Over the last few years we have been actively testing both means with different messages to improve the efficiency of the channels. As in the Eastern and Central European market we primarily have our 500,000 loyal clients, and the internet and mobile penetration is still very different there: levels ranging from around 30 percent in Russia up to more than 70 percent in Estonia. We have to bear this in mind while planning digital marketing actions. In the countries with lower Internet penetration, during the last few years we have received better feedback to text messages, but much lower response to emails. We have been actively analysing the purchases that customers have made in conjunction with the direct digital communication and have a better understanding of customer behaviour and also of ROI.

We were one of the first fashion retailers launching a blog for our Monton brand that – besides other virtues – has become a very good employer branding tool generating a constant flow of job applications. We have also tried to pre-test some product designs by asking for feedback to them.

The efficiency of the means of communication depends mostly of the markets: email and mobile penetrations. Also the competitiveness of our digital marketing tools depends on the competition in the area. For instance it is more difficult to get good results in the Polish market, where both emailing and text messages seem to be a regular marketing tool for many companies. This sometimes means that a customer receives several promotional text messages or emails per day: that kind of environment makes it very difficult to stand out from the clutter. Sometimes it seems that it might be reasonable to consider turning back to traditional direct mailings.

As a fashion retailer we design our collections 12 times per year, and the most important factor is to focus the collections right for the targeted customers. We regularly analyse the customer buying patterns in markets, by ages and put it in correlation to the fashion, functionality, end-use, fitting, size scales of the products. Our digital marketing tools have given us an experience to follow the demographic of the buyers and see what garments different customer groups prefer.

Of course, the advertising is also more effective if we can target the specific customer groups. I stress that via advertising and communication we bring the right customers to the store, but we need to offer the right collections to convert the visitors to buyers.

Here at Baltika we have creative homepages (http://www.montonfashion.com) and also regular email and text message communication with our customers. Monton blog (http://blog.monton.ee/) in both the Estonian and Lithuanian language.

Digital marketing solutions have helped a lot to remove the guesswork in marketing. I am very happy that we have much better understanding of the customer behaviour, but I also know there is much more to improve.

Background

The Baltika Group is a rapidly growing fashion retailer in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe: Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Group operates four retail concepts: Monton, Mosaic, Baltman and Ivo Nikkolo. Baltika employs a vertically integrated business model that means that the Group controls all stages of the fashion process: design, manufacturing, supply chain management, distribution/logistics and retail sales. Such a model enables Baltika to offer new fashion goods every week and assures high availability of basics. We have four brands and more than 120 shops in seven countries in Eastern Europe.

For further information visit www.baltikagroup.com.