Matchesfashion, Boohoo rank top globally for omnichannel marketing

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 3, 2020

A quartet of key UK fashion names have topped Dotdigital’s latest global ranking for omnichannel marketing excellence. But the company also said British “retailers and brands are still missing out on basic opportunities to optimise their e-commerce operations, resulting in lost revenue”.

Matches Fashion, Boohoo, Gymshark and Holland & Barrett came first-through-fourth on the list with The Iconic in fifth place being the only non-UK name in the top five.

Overall, UK retailers scored 31% against key success metrics compared to the global benchmark of just 18% in the new ranking from the omnichannel marketing automation platform.  

However, despite these figures, Dotdigital said retailers and brands can’t be complacent and still have plenty of work to do.

The company’s new Hitting the Mark report benchmarks the digital marketing tactics adopted by 100 e-commerce brands from 12 countries. And it shows that while UK brands are “making headway tapping into customers’ demands for easily accessible communication, they are missing the mark when it comes to the basics”.

This is of particular concern given that demand for e-tail is surging globally and with the UK alone expecting to see a 40% e-tail rise this year, now is the time to ensure that marketing communications really are hitting home. 

The study said that with cart abandonment rates averaging 70% across the e-commerce industry, only 40% of UK brands surveyed sent an abandoned cart email. That figure is 20% lower than e-commerce businesses in the Asia Pacific region, which send the most cart recovery emails globally.

Top-placed Matchesfashion “set the bar for abandoned cart communication sending a personalised, concise cart recovery email within 30 minutes of the purchase being paused,” Dotdigital said. And Boohoo was “commended for its efforts in utilising abandoned cart emails as a selling opportunity and giving shoppers a reason to return”.

UK retailers topped the chart for communicating with customers via SMS with 40% of them using this channel to communicate with shoppers on the go. That’s hugely important even though the UK lockdown saw a shift back to desktop sales. That’s because it’s predicted that in the long term, mobile traffic and transactions in the UK will continue to grow at a rate of 16% annually and will overtake desktop sales by 2023.  

Younger brands targeting Gen Z and Millennials, who demand brands be available on the channels they want, are leading the SMS charge with both Gymshark and Boohoo excelling here. 

But even with the high uptake, UK retailers generally “are still not utilising the full potential of this channel”. We’re told that 95% of messages are transactional and just one brand sends a promotional SMS message.