Dan Ferguson: There are unlimited ideas but you need to give birth to babies with teeth. I like to say sometimes you need to be able to have multiple sources of measurement and always clash them against each other like a hunger Games of measurement. You know, see, see which one makes the most sense to you and see how they might attenuate each other as well. All the apps are like don't pick me, don't pick me. So you have to have been relevant enough and useful enough to avoid deletion
[Voiceover]: welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy. Welcome to another episode of Add to Cart. I'm Bushie and I'm joining you from the land of the Turrbal people, otherwise known as Brisbane, Australia on Add to Cart. We welcome every everyone to share and listen to e commerce stories. The more diverse the better. I want to especially welcome the traditional owners and the original storytellers of the land that we are on, our indigenous and Torres Strait Islander listeners to join us in our e commerce conversations and our community Falling in love it's tough. You know the deal. You want a person to know you like them, but you don't want to risk coming on too strong.
Dan Ferguson: You.
[Voiceover]: You want to flatter them, but you want to make sure you're not becoming annoying. Such a minefield, right? Well, I'm not here to give you relationship tips. Heaven forbid you get them from me. But it's actually not that different the world of love to getting the balance right between brands and customers. It's a unique mix which when you get it right turns into a beautiful union. You could say my guest today is relationship goals. The Jay Z and Beyonce, the Posh and Beck's, the Rob Godwin and Olivia Carr of brand and customer connection. Dan Ferguson is Chief Marketing Officer at Adore Beauty. He has over 20 years experience in e commerce and digital marketing. Prior to joining adore Beauty in 2018, Dan had roles leading E commerce for brands such as vistaprint, Officeworks and Dell. In this chat, Dan shares everything you need to know about app strategy, including how to avoid deletion, the do's and don'ts of SMS marketing, and what matters most in the game of ideas. Before we get into this chat with Dan, I want to remind you this Thursday we have the Add to Cart social in Brisbane 21st March. I hope to see as many of you there as possible. It's a real treat being able to
Nathan Bush: do this in real Life.
[Voiceover]: We will have an expert panel on winning TikTok strategies for 2024, including experts from Verge, Girl, Farsight and TikTok themselves. But whether you're into TikTok or you just love e commerce, I'd love to see you there to catch up with old friends and to meet some new ones. Tickets are selling fast. You can get yours on our eventbrite page. The link is on the homepage at add to cart.com and a quick heads up, if you aren't on the Add to Cart weekly newsletter, it's free. You might want to jump on this week because next week we are giving away two retailer tickets to the Retail Global Fest on the Gold coast and they are worth over two and a half thousand dollars. Subscribe over on add to cart.comauforward slash. Subscribe all right, let's get into today's episode. Thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Deliver in Person. Here's our conversation with Dan Ferguson, Chief Marketing Officer at Adore Beauty.
Nathan Bush: Dan, welcome to Add to cart.
Dan Ferguson: Thanks Nathan. Incredibly glad to be here. Feel honored to be here.
[Voiceover]: It's great to have you here.
Nathan Bush: We caught up at the Amassis Power to the Marketer event late last year, so we thought we should come on here and actually have some of this chat.
Dan Ferguson: Yeah, I think this is an incredible forum. Over my time in eecom, there's been this is an absolute gift to the industry because it's a place where you can share knowledge aside from at the usual conferences and kind of be open and transparent too, which is really special. So thanks for developing this forum.
Nathan Bush: Oh, thank you mate. I feel it's a gift for me to hear such incredible stories and I'm looking forward to hearing yours today. In our research, we've known each other for a little while and had a few conversations, but what I didn't realize is that before you were in the marketing world you actually got a psychology degree. How did you go from there into marketing?
Dan Ferguson: Well, I started with an arts degree and then I did honors in psychology. And I think there was actually a pivotal moment where out of that I had two interviews. One was to go on and work at a hospital doing some really serious psychology related kind of stuff and the other one was a job at an ad agency and I remember speaking to the CEO of that agency who was incredibly charismatic, but it was very much like a light and dark side of the force moment and I chose the dark side of the force, unfortunately, or fortunately for me.
Nathan Bush: Different sides of crazy worlds.
Dan Ferguson: Yeah, my mum and dad are both medical based. And I think that meant that I naturally had a leaning towards psychology, but I really wanted to make an impact and be able to measure that impact. And so there's strengths and weaknesses for that in psychology. And I felt like I could see a path in advertising that helped me or allowed me to sort of reach many, many people and understand psychology and the levers that I could sort of affect in the process of doing that.
Nathan Bush: What did your folks say when, you know you've got two offers in front of you, one for a career in the medical profession and one in an advertising agency?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, look at the time I told them that it was an account executive role and my mum, who was completely unaware of most business things apart from being a great small business owner herself, said, oh, an executive. Wow, you've come in right in at the top. And the second I started my job, I knew that nothing could be further than the truth. But you know, they were both generally supportive. They kind of didn't understand it. And particularly as I've grown in E commerce, you know, E commerce to them was. So my, my son works in computers and he sort of fixes Windows. I think that's roughly the longest time, it's only really been in my last sort of 5 to 10 that I'd go there and they'd sort of, it'd be more of an entree to, hey, could you help me fix this thing on my computer? And I'd be like, I don't really, that's not really what I do. But I mean, yeah, my folks have been proud of me.
Nathan Bush: Well, now you just put on skincare and makeup all day, don't you?
Dan Ferguson: Well, I do love skincare and if I could, I would put on more makeup. I think when I was growing up I had occasionally bad acne and I would occasionally use foundation to cover it up. The rule being that it had to be completely invisible. And that was almost with the fear of God. You know, I did not want anyone to know that I was covering up my zits. And I think that this world is now is a much more diverse, open and, I don't know, supportive environment. When I see my kids in school as well, and I love the creativity that comes with makeup, they almost envy that particular world where you can recreate or create a look and a purpose and an intent for an evening or a day or whatever, that can be completely different and never changing. So I just dived off into a tangent straight away but.
Nathan Bush: Well, I don't know how you've Done it. But I think you're using your psychology tricks already because you've got me excited about makeup and I never thought that would happen.
Dan Ferguson: Well, it is exciting, Nathan. It really is. And, and skincare, it much more immediate benefits. You know, I've got my own favorite products there. I went through the adore initiation of almost burning my face when I first started with the over application of various types of acids. People often say to me, oh, why beauty? You know, that's an odd choice. Or and I kind of, I've sold so many things in my career from you know, A4 paper to business cards to beauty products and Dior and Burt's bees and general pants and nudie jeans and the list goes on. So it comes back to that psychology thing which is I love the challenge of understanding my customer and my industry and understanding why people are looking to this particular business and how can I affect that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, brilliant.
[Voiceover]: And I'd love to check in on
Nathan Bush: that because we had a chat with Tenille a few years ago now and we heard the adore beauty story. You know, Kate Morris starting it up and the garage to where it is today as a publicly listed company. I'd love to hear from you with the customer lens over the top in terms of today's adore beauty. How do you deliver value for your customers? What do you say your differentiator in market is?
Dan Ferguson: Yeah, look, I think we've talked about this notion of beauty done better. I think it's worth distinguishing that it's beauty done better for you, for you, the customer. It's not really a competitive we do beauty better than the rest of them kind of thing. I think it's about helping customers more. It's coming at beauty from their perspective. It's trying to enhance how the beauty experience in retail in Australia is done. It's about accessibility and value and beauty that is right for you. And that might be incredibly individual. I think practically though I have to sum it up because it's important for you, Nathan. Like I can hedge my bets and say all sorts of things. An unparalleled beauty range and that concept of beauty is expansive. We deliver expert service, industry leading content and I'm really proud of that. It helps our customers buy beauty that is right for them and it's all delivered super fast with extra values and gifts along the way. We tick every box and deliver an incredible kind of total value proposition.
Nathan Bush: I love that term beauty done better for you. We talked straight off the bat around how beauty and skincare has become so diverse we talked about us using beauty and skincare products, but you've obviously got all different skin tones and all different types of people using those products. Now has that made your job harder in trying to deliver something for everyone?
Dan Ferguson: Look, I think that innately a lot of audiences are very diverse and beauty is no different as a industry because everyone's got a range of things that they need, but then also whole bunch of different preferences and things that they love and want. So my job is to I think succinctly communicate the value that adore beauty offers and then also make us really, really salient and really, really accessible. You know, and when they experience us, make that experience so good every time that we can sustain industry leading levels of repeat. The metrics we share around our repeat we're really proud of. But we're winning that visit, we're winning that transaction each time by being great, by trying to be a better experience and by offering a range that goes everywhere from Dior, Armani, La Roche, Posay, Burt's Bees. It has to cater to a lot of different tastes. When people find the beauty that's right for them with us, they'll keep coming back
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Dan Ferguson: How can you tell if this is
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Nathan Bush: what do you mean by salient and accessible? What kind of performance metrics or customer experience do you put on top of that to go we are salient and accessible?
Dan Ferguson: Well, I think brand being top of mind, right? That is probably a larger challenge than accessibility. Accessibility, as you and probably a lot of people that might be listening to this would know is E commerce is just you have a plethora of channels, you have all sorts of tools and tricks and tactics to use, like remarketing and. And how you identify that customer, re identify that customer and segment and tailor and then cajole and advocate and so on. You know, there's lots of ways to be accessible. I think salient is to be present in their mind to win more than your fair share of attention. Beyond salience, a growing affection and relationship to a brand. And I kind of look at it like that. It is a relationship, right? And so we have to win that first purchase, and that's by being relevant and by being meaningful to them in a moment where they're probably lower in the funnel. We have to then secure a repeat purchase. And as that goes along, we want them to sign up for stuff. We want them to install and download apps, we want them to then start perhaps attending masterclasses or spending their time reading content or listening to our podcast. And that is just a sign of a deepening relationship. And so there's just these ongoing proof points and moments where you need to win and secure and show value and exchange value with your customer. I hope that's not too airy sound.
Nathan Bush: No, it makes sense.
[Voiceover]: And I love that you brought the
Nathan Bush: funnel out early because talking about acquiring a customer, retaining a customer is great. But then when you talk about depths of relationships through all the other things that you do, adds a new goal, adds a new level to that customer relationship.
Dan Ferguson: Well, I think so. And there's two kinds of funnels, right? There is the transactional funnel, where, hey, I go, oh, geez, I'm running out of my hyaluronic acid. I really need to buy something. But, you know, probably a month away. So I start vaguely thinking about it. Then my tube is pretty much done and I'm starting to squeeze it like a toothpaste thing. And so I go onto a site or a search in Google, and so I'm going down the funnel. That's one funnel. The other funnel is this deepening relationship. You see, when customers come to us and then when those customers have been with us for five years, it's a completely different relationship. There's just a growing amount of trust and a growing amount of channels and a growing amount of connections they have with our brand. And both funnels are important, I think, to keep an eye on and manage and encourage.
Nathan Bush: I love that. And I think most marketers are like, oh, you've given me another funnel. Now we're going to come back to it. Because I think that world of the deepening relationship, through all the things that you do beyond retail, the podcast, the content is fascinating. So we're going to come back to that, but I want to address before we get into it, is that your half year results came out and we were actually due to talk before the half year results were delivered. We thought, oh actually let's save it till after because we might have more to talk about. But fantastic results for a door. Revenue up 7%, net profits grown, obviously not easy in this market. We've had retailers with mixed results in this season. That six months is obviously covering the peak season, Black Friday, Christmas. So obviously where a lot of our emphasis is, what did you have to do differently to drive sales in those six months to get those results?
Dan Ferguson: Yeah, look, I mean I think without drawing too much on just the half that's just completed, what are we doing? What are we focusing on as we sort of develop and progress? A door, I think post ipo, post asx, post Covid, all those themes come up. What a, I guess emerging and stronger focuses for us. And I think one would be consistency and delivering what we say we're going to deliver. That's important to us. And I think to do that we've done things like develop and I guess adjust our teams and the kind of the forums and the cadence of how we meet and discuss results and even who's at those sort of forums. We've also, you know, I think actively made it clear, added measurement on what goals are and what different types of goals are important and what aren't so important. You know, when you're chasing a lot then I think that sort of spreads focus. Whereas when you tighten those metrics it's really important from a marketing perspective. There was a really clear job to do in becoming more efficient and effective. And there is an element in our environment of a really abrupt change in what's expected from e commerce businesses. And I think that you have to acknowledge that there's stakeholders out there that you now need to address and they have different expectations and just because those expectations have shifted quickly, well, that's life, that's business and how are you going to address them? So I think that's been for us in marketing a really core focus. So we've looked at things like just operationally running channels more tightly evaluating new versus repeat and the trade offs of those two, how fast we want to grow versus how do we develop value in our existing customer. When I talk about how do we win ongoing business and how do we secure that and the right to get that next transaction from each customer, how do we explore new and then scale on that? So new channels. And one that I'm probably not ashamed, but I think we were late to is SMS mms. But I think that we've adopted in and accelerated that over the last year or so. But then also new ways of measurement. And I talk about that. I mean, last click attribution is, it has been for a long time somewhat of a bible for E commerce. But the implicit weakness behind that is that anything that's hard to measure by last click attribution gets increasingly less favor as it becomes increasingly harder to measure. And that means that I think a lot of E commerce businesses are probably underspending on channels like social media. They're probably underspending on things that they can't measure above the line, mass media and so on. And the delightful thing in business that I have learned over time is that when things are hard, there is usually value there. Now it's not always the case. Sometimes it's like fool's gold. You go, oh, that's really hard. There must be a lot of value. And it's like you just keep them throwing yourself at a rock. But I think this one in particular is a good signal for it's hard because there is a lot of value, there's a lot of reach, but it's not easy to do. And so we've developed our approaches on measurement, including adopting MMM lens where we're essentially looking at over a long period of time, changes in channel investment and changes in top line. And I think that that is increasingly important in a world that has less transparency. That last click attribution or any click attribution is not always assured. You need to be able to have multiple sources of measurement and always clash them against each other like a Hunger Games of measurement. See which one makes the most sense to you and see how they might attenuate each other as well.
Nathan Bush: What was the acronym you used there?
Dan Ferguson: Oh geez. Mmm, okay.
Nathan Bush: And what's that stand for?
Dan Ferguson: Mixed marketing modeling. There's a few different ways it's expressed, but like I said before, the innate the concept of it is that you look at your full channel mix, the varying investment in that that you have over time and usually a longer time as possible, and then the correlation of that variance to top line change. And so you know, in any one month that would not mean much, but over a long period of time you apply statistical analysis to that and you'll start to get repeatable, consistent correlations. As in this channel is even though your lastly, attribution might say that it's worth about 1.5 times. This channel is actually 4.5 times.
Nathan Bush: Yes. So similar to marketing efficiency ratio, looking at the whole pie over time, it
Dan Ferguson: sounds like it could be the same thing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, there's lots of acronyms flying out there at the moment. One thing that I was really impressed with and it feels like you, like a lot of other retailers have had to do or achieve more with less or more with the same kind of resources. And it was interesting that you talked to. Let's start with the team. Let's talk about how do we be more efficient as a team, what meetings do we need to go to, what can we cut through to? All the way through to channels. But one thing that is obvious that you've done really well is that returning customer base, which you've already talked to a little bit. But reading the annual report, returning customers now make up over 80% of your revenue. Most retailers would kill for those kind of figures.
[Voiceover]: Is there anything specific that you think
Nathan Bush: you're doing other than a general great customer experience? Anything specific that you're doing to reactivate customers?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, I think one thing you often start with the contrasting view, which is where are you drawing your new customers from and how good are you at predictably acquiring customers that will be good long term customers? How much of a fix do you have a prospective customer's lifetime value and can you automate and scale on that? But setting that aside, the incoming sources are important.
Nathan Bush: That's a really good point though. There's no point trying to make bad first customers into returning customers. You've got to make sure that that first time customer is the right customer.
Dan Ferguson: Well, I think the challenge changes over time. You know, when you have a full market of opportunity, then you should probably acquire the great customers at the lowest cost. And then over time you're going to need to acquire customers that might be tougher and your goal will then be to transform them. Right. But nonetheless, I think you want to be aware of that particular, particular lever and that trade off. Once you get a customer though, like I said, the idea of that relationship that's deepening. I mean if you look at for instance Temu, it's really telling. They have this incredible laser focus on cart. They are doing anything, anything to get you just to add some stuff to the cart and that's all you need to do, just add some stuff. And once you do, then everything is about all these things you're in your cart and all these deals you can get on these things in Your cart and this item might be like about to expire. So they have a very particular focus. But it's about deepening the relationship. Everyone is a breadcrumb almost. Setting Temu aside, I think great customer sort of marketing and development comes from a variety of different touch points across multiple different points in the customer's different moments in their life expressed in ways that are most relevant to them and trying to be helpful. If you keep an eye on your mix of campaign to Lifecycle, right. You might go, why should I expand lifecycle? Well, Lifecycle is innately more relevant. Lifecycle is probably innately more helpful because it's more relevant. And so I guess it burns less capital with your audience. You know, when you send it, they're less likely to get irritated, they're more likely to respond, all these things. So expand life cycle. Look for reasons to contact your customer. Look for ways you can help them. It's one of those delightful moments in marketing and E commerce where it truly is lucrative to find win wins because if you find a win for them, there's less attrition and friction on it. And if it's a win for you, then great, you can scale on it. So I think that that's really important with customer communications. I think that the developing relationship isn't just about the communications, it's about the channels as well. So you want to see a growing number of ways they purchase from you and ultimately where it's right for them. Advocate for deepening the relationship by installing an app for for instance. And you know, in our recent results we talked a lot about how our app and our app customers have higher AOVs, higher frequencies of purchase and that's important. I mean to a certain extent it represents customers who are further down that relationship path with us. They can easily access our world of content and we're really convenient and accessible. Love that word, accessible. So you know, there's that deepening relationship that I think is really important and there's hopefully there's enough of those sort of I guess points that the audience can actually use in that. What I just sort of said then
Nathan Bush: I had about a thousand follow up questions as you were talking.
Dan Ferguson: Okay, great.
Nathan Bush: No, it's all really good stuff and it just triggers so many thoughts. The app is really interesting one because 26% of your sales are now coming through the app, which is incredible amount if we've got retailers who are considering an app. Is there any point creating an app if you don't have a highly engaged audience like adore beauty like You've obviously got customers who are just so far down your life cycle. Do you have to wait till you've got life cycle customers to actually launch and get revenue from an app? Or can an app totally revolutionize the buying experience for a customer that turns them into a lifetime customer?
Dan Ferguson: Look, I think when you're evaluating, if you have an app right now, you do want to closely evaluate whether it's like a magnet for your best customers. And so the metrics of your app are just reflective of that magnetic outcome or whether it's transformational. So when customers go on there, do you see a change? Looking at them before and after, do you see a change? That's an important evaluation criteria. No matter what business I'm in, I would apply that. I think that an app takes focus. It's a replication of a bunch of different functions in your business, and some of it's relatively unique as well. So there's laws of supply and demand, demand and scarcity and so on. That means that it's a definite decision and you need to evaluate how incremental it will be and I think the value it can add. Like we, for the longest time since we started, it has evolved recently, but we led front and center with our content. So when you opened our app, it'd be all about content. And it's, I think for me, that was significantly driven by this concept I have of a limbo bar on apps. You know, when you download an app, there is a limited period of time before even your phone starts suggesting to you that maybe you want to delete it if you don't use it frequently enough. Yep, there's the phone reminding you, Apple reminding you, hey, you haven't used these for a while. You want to delete them. And then there's the call, that compactor room in Star wars where the walls come in, there's the data load on your phone, and sooner or later everybody hits the, oh, I can't download the next system. I'm going to have to get rid of stuff. All the apps are like, don't pick me, don't pick me. So in that moment when they go searching with an iron rod looking for who to delete, you have to have been relevant enough and useful enough to avoid deletion. And I think that that doesn't just. If you are out there thinking, should I make an app that allows people to buy, I already have something that allows people to buy, there's no additional value it can provide, then I think that that's a significant factor to Consider, consider, because if your customer at that 3, 6 month mark will just delete you, then the app isn't going to add much. But usually it's a mix, so and usually adding value can significantly come with convenience. If it's on the app and they love you already, then it can only accelerate the relationship. So there's a few things to balance there, I think.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's fantastic. Do you have teams specifically developing the app experience from an e commerce and marketing perspective? Verse website versus other channels?
Dan Ferguson: Yeah. So internally we've got an incredibly talented tech team and a variety of sort of really well informed and leading voices within our business on the strategy and tactics of app tech development and where we go from here. I think in marketing and the other functions as well, merchandise, content, all that sort of stuff, data. There is emerging specialties in app where it's right, where it's probably commercially sensible to do that. As we get more and more of an audience on app and we probably get more and more towards, hey, all the most obvious opportunities and best ways to serve our customer have been sort of addressed. Now we've got this more complex and increasingly specialist long tail to pursue. Then you'll find in our business there is increasing sort of areas of expertise,
Nathan Bush: makes a lot of sense and these are all things we've got to consider. Right before just going, oh, I've got the tech to build an app, it's like, well, how are you going to support it? How are you going to differentiate it, going to build value into it? You mentioned before that you were late to the party on SMS and mms. While we're talking about mobile, what was it that got you over the line and got you comfortable with diving into this channel?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, look, I mean I think part of me saying that is my ethos of being loud about errors and loud about my own personal missteps because I think that gives permission for just a more experimental test and learn approach generally. And I just like being more open. The thing that got me, well it actually it was more across, I should have known better across my entire career. Customer channels I think are generally approached with trepidation. The biggest question I got in the first 10 years of working in E commerce was how many emails should you send a week? What is okay? I arrive at various businesses with different CEOs who would have very strong opinions on that. They'd be like, I just got my second email. That is unacceptable. That is harassment. You know, then I remember going to the States, I think it was a Macy's I kind of visited way back and they were so many light years ahead. And I arrived in this business, it was near Christmas time and this guy who was leading the customer channel was running a test and he said to me, you know, what do you think the maximum number of emails used to send a week? I said, oh, this is the question I always get asked and said, what do you think? He was like, well, we're testing that at the moment and we're trying to see how many we can send in a week alongside how relevant we can be. So if we can maximize relevancy, maximize interest, almost bespoke, tailor that content one to one, craft it individually, you know, send out 300,000 handwritten letters, can we send 50 emails a week? And I kind of just. That example has stuck with me because it's never absolute, it's always about not how many can you send, it's how irritating or how helpful are those sends. Because if you send 50 helpful, it's great. If you send 50 irritating, well, probably at number seven, you lost them. And the same goes, you know, as each new channel has arrived, as each new access or way to communicate to customers has arrived, there's this same trepidation and I think it was data and also this kind of instinct within our business to saliency, accessibility. It's a whole way of marketing and a whole extra way that our customers can be in touch with us. And that was kind of, I think, overlooked. And so once we started trying and testing it, and I think it was thoroughly encouraged by our CEO Tamlin who started and supported the data was very clear and I think we probably had been a little bit trickier as well. We'd really trialed MMs and sort of more targeted and highly targeted variants and they can be widely pros and cons for that when you look at the kind of roas of it. So once we arrived at basic would I say bread and butter sms, it was very clear that that's something both wanted by customers, but also that could be commercially quite viable.
[Voiceover]: Remember Alex and Danny from Killarney Keenies? We interviewed them back on episode 208.
Nathan Bush: Good news.
[Voiceover]: Kalani Kennies have continued, continued their incredible growth with new international markets, social engagement and, well, let's not beat around the bush, beautiful bodies. So when they looked to expand their business further with their B2B offering, they weren't going to slip into dad bod territory. They needed the experience to be as good, if not better than the D2C experience. That's why they opted for Shopify Plus's B2B offering with customized collections based on size, availability, mass add to cart from collection pages and optimized conversion design.
Nathan Bush: The result?
[Voiceover]: A three times growth in B2B wholesale customers and a 60% revenue growth year on year. Talk about pleasing to the eye and to the accountant. If you want to explore B2B expansion for your brand, check out shopify.com auplus and get in touch with the Aussie Shopify plus team to see how Shopify plus can power your B2B business.
Nathan Bush: What have you learned around the do's and don'ts of SMS marketing?
Dan Ferguson: Well, I'd be remiss in kind of positioning it as the largest thing we've done in the last year. It's probably been a really interesting tactic, but I think we've learned that there are times to send it and there are times to not send it, that it drives results. But that can vary depending on which type of customer you're sending to that some customers won't mind what time you send them and other ones will. And that don't confuse the two that there is probably more room for practical operational SMSs than there is for campaign SMSs and that if you're going to blast, make sure that you're blasting something that's pretty good because otherwise your own self importance will mean that they'll say, well I think you're overestimating what's important for me. And so clearly you don't have the right to sms me at 8pm in an evening.
Nathan Bush: Yes, because it's what, 99.8% of people who are sent SMS see them. We all know you can't avoid them. So it's not like you can hide into a Gmail tab if it's not relevant for you. You've been at Adore Beauty now for six years as cmo. What are you most proud of?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, that's a really good one. Look, it's a pretty diverse list so you'll have to be accommodating for me, I think, look, this is no particular order, but I think one is all the things we've done that have been about authenticity. So having real conversations, talking about real things, approaching issues that I kind of kept me up at 2am in the morning going oh, is this going to be the moment they come and say sorry, you can't work in beauty? That is just too inelegant. I think some examples there would be our Global Shades campaign that we did content in general. Good example would be podcasts, but our content in general, by and large, it's authentic. There's been plenty of moments of bravery and risk taking by the people involved. That is that I can think of many examples, incredibly recent, but also way back from when I started as well. And even the categories and products we sell. Launching our sex category many years ago when it really wasn't a thing at all now seems kind of generic because lots of people do it. But back then it was something that kept us up at night and how we should do it that was true to our values and why we should, why it was important to do it as well. So it was an unavoidable crush. It is something that was important to do, but we were also, geez, how do we do it in a way that's true to our values? So anything that's hard to do, I really I feel proud about and to be honest, each of those, when I mentioned I'm thinking about specific people in my team or across our business that significantly championed it and I feel proud to have been a part of the initiative, but also been proud to work alongside them or give them advice or give them support that enabled them to do that stuff as well. So that's one thing I think I've had big personal growth. There's been quite a few of my own distinct kind of swift like eras. I think there was just this mad incredible growth and change. The initial years where it was just about being really single minded and making and taking decisions and leading with urgency and then moving to sort of courting investment, talking to private equity and selling our value to it countless times to a whole new audience and then sort of directing and driving our response to Covid and the massive tumultuous changes there and then listing on the asx, balancing priorities, being accountable in smaller time frames like a limbo bar and understanding the value of consistency, a revolution aside from top line growth, how to really address margin and profitability.
Nathan Bush: Which Taylor Swift era are you in now?
Dan Ferguson: Well, I think obviously in the ASX era. Yes. And the delight I take in finding new ways to make us more profitable, in finding ways that are standout as well, that allow some great leaders in our business to step up and imprint their own vision on that. You know, I'm really proud of that. I'm proud when you do things. When I do things that aren't in my own self interest, I tend to be proud, you know, because I often we all are self interested. So when I can do things that I feel are truly not about self interest, then I'm Proud of that.
Nathan Bush: You should be proud and you should be proud of yourself and the team for what you're doing. Because I think, especially from a marketer's perspective, many marketers will be looking at you to go, we love what you're doing because there is no playbook. What you've done at a door, you probably couldn't do it another brand because it would be a totally different playbook. But you've done what's right for the Adore brand and the door customer. But some of those were big and brave and risky, like you said. What would be your tips for marketers who might go, I just want to shake this up a bit. I want to inject some new ideas into this business and I've got the ideas, but I just don't know how to sell them in and get others on board. So we can take some risks. Have you got any tips for them?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, geez, let me think. Tips for perspective marketers. I'd say one is value ideas, but also help others how to value their own ideas. And so, you know, in your example, it's like, be aware that if you've got great ideas, innovation pouring out of your ears, and your team's coming at you with all sorts of thoughts, that there are unlimited ideas. But you need to give birth to babies with teeth. I like to say sometimes, pretty rarely. I don't like to say that too often because it's not a really great phrase, but you need to.
Nathan Bush: It's a horrible visual.
Dan Ferguson: Yeah. Just terrifying. Right. Like that Evian ad with, like, teeth. The thing is, right, is that you come up with a great idea, but it's not actually justified and clear on how it will deliver value, and clear on how it can rationally use resource and be executed in a way that's viable, then you're kind of just throwing it out to be cut down.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Dan Ferguson: And you also are kind of just valuing the novelty of the idea rather than the combination or the clash of an idea and the execution of that, because both are intrinsically important. So I'd say that baby with teeth is important.
Nathan Bush: That's a great tip.
Dan Ferguson: I think. Value attribution of that idea through the line. How are you going to talk about that value when you're talking to team members who are like, oh, another thing to do when you talk to peers. Oh, how you mean I'm going to have to support you when you talk to your board or your CEO? How are you going to explain the value? Because you need to be ready for that? Because it's different lenses on each one for me. How do I explain it to investors and do that in an ASX way so that I'm talking about it when we're ready to, as a business talk about it, and then slowly dialing up as we grow and as it proves itself. So I think value attribution is really important with new ideas. What would I say to people with lots of new ideas and want to shake things up? You need to be okay with making mistakes. You need to be really ruthlessly open with yourself and your team and people around you when you make mistakes, because you're going to be trying new things. You're going to want them to try new things. And if they are all living with the fear of the moment of making a single misstep, then they're going to be super conservative and you're going to spend a lot of time hearing people say, sorry, we can't do that. No, no, no, that new idea of yours, not possible. So you'll think, oh geez, it's my team. But it's actually you maintaining this environment of perfectness. So you need to encourage a fertile environment for new ideas as well.
Nathan Bush: They are just brilliant tips. Thank you for sharing them. Dan. I was fascinated before when you mentioned Temu changing the shopping experience. We've had a lot of brilliant retail minds on this show and when you ask them who's the retailer you look up to? Adore, beauty comes up a lot. And for you, who do you look up to as brands that are changing the retail experience that you strive for to deliver an experience like that?
Dan Ferguson: Oh geez.
Nathan Bush: That is a question without warning. Some of these questions you knew about, but that one you didn't know about.
Dan Ferguson: So who do I look up to? I tend to have this eclectic vintage secondhand shop of brands at different moments in their development. So Glossier is a great example. It came from initially a blog. And so that crossover to me is always interesting because we essentially are retailer that's got blogs and has podcasts and there's lots of mass media or media platforms that are thinking, oh, how do I start selling? So the transformation is super interesting to me. They came from a blog and they were just so standout, different, so soft revolution in the way they position things, in the openness, the authenticity, the camera. You know, I remember watching this one video, the release of a new maybe it was a lifor oil and just I could see the imperfection on the model's face. It was intentional, it was celebrated and loved and it was not polished at all. To me. It's funny how you'd normally frame a revolution as well. A revolution, right. I don't want to belittle the term. It'll be obvious as gunfire. But when you're in an industry where you can see that every change can speak volumes. I watch those videos and go, this is the start of a revolution. And it will be a revolution that it will play out over a long period of time as beauty becomes more real and as it addresses and actually becomes more correlated to the discussions that its market has every day. And our audience is significantly women. But a lot of audience, the people I know in my life talk about the weirdest things about beauty, none of which are reflected in their retail store, their corresponding retail store. So that to me was just a standout gap. And so, yeah, I really raved on. But essentially there's these moments in time for brand. So glossier is a good example. I think the challenge of how do you do mass in a way that is still relevant and unique and interesting to individuals and in beauty. Ulta is a great example in the US there were some fantastic models and beginnings in the uk. Farfetch is a good example. Net a Porter with their incredible delivery and the experience of that. The sheer machine of Amazon. But also some of those related businesses like Amazon that are driven by really careful and calculated analysis. Netflix is no exception. Right. Imagine the data they have and the predictions they can make about, I don't know, my lifespan and which of my children will be the most successful. That to me would just be a wealth of knowledge. But it is so interesting about what shows they develop as well. So there's lots of businesses and brands I admire and respect. I think that there's some in Australia that are doing an amazing job as well. And I've worked for some brands like Vistaprint in the US Elle, that have been really hardcore examples of disruptive growth and the discipline of scale. How you scale incredibly fast and where marketing becomes machinery and that your significant part of your job is how do you constantly expand and add machinery and lay down new tracks and keep safety and control for risk when you're six times the size you were just 18 months ago.
Nathan Bush: When you're talking disruptive growth and discipline scale, what's next for adore beauty?
[Voiceover]: You've got so much going on out there. Got podcasts.
Nathan Bush: I saw 6.7 million downloads of your nine podcasts. You got everything going on. When you are talking the next stage, what's next?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, look, there is practically what's next. And then there's what do I Love? And the two might correlate together. But what's next is almost stick to our knitting. I think it's really important for our business and for the people that invest in us, but for our team and for our customers that we keep on developing and improving how effective we are, adding and expanding customer value where we can clearly see that that is meaningful to them. It sounds like a standard response. It's actually, you know, as we in our most recent results, we got more efficient, but we also grew. Yep. And so it's important that we keep on doing that. I think it's about championing new connections to our customer and indeed new customers. So, you know, some examples. There is the ways that app is a more standard example. How do we make that experience amazing? How do we make our experience on our website amazing? But also I think yesterday in Sydney and two days before that in Melbourne, we had a scavenger hunt where across all our social channels there was this chance to guess the next location and get some selection of some of the amazing brands that we offer. And that's a real life connection to our customers. It's also a bit of a game and a bit of fun because beauty should be fun. There is a real fun element in beauty. So I think that's just one example of a new connection. But there's also new customers, you know, so new customers involve include some of our brands and brand partners and perhaps beyond that as well, who we now work with to provide marketing and advertising, media and packages and ways to sort of speak to our customers that are different from the traditional. Hey, we sell a product via Adore Beauty. So that's been an increasing part of our business and a change over the last couple of years. There's some thoughts in my mind around what's in store next.
Nathan Bush: I don't know how you live with all those thoughts.
Dan Ferguson: What makes me happy is to have a lot of thoughts, but then the challenge is, you know, what is actually important. And I think when I was younger, I was like, I love all the thoughts. But then sadly, as I've got older, I'm like, I'm gonna have to pick some. I'm gonna have to focus. You know, I can't just bathe in thoughts.
Nathan Bush: Pick your favorite babies with teeth.
Dan Ferguson: Yes, babies with teeth.
Nathan Bush: Dan, if people are listening and want to get in touch either with you personally or checkout some of Adore Beauty's best products or even content, what's the best way to go about that?
Dan Ferguson: Oh, look, if they want to get in touch with me personally, absolutely. All contacts welcome via LinkedIn. It's probably the simplest way. It's also personal experience LinkedIn. It can also be quite tricky with InMails, all that sort of stuff. So his response times may vary, but definitely would encourage people to get in. Touch me there. I'm always happy to help and provide suggestions, excluding direct competitors obviously. But I love having an impact and solving problems. So happy for people to reach out. Obviously they want to get in touch with the door and sample our incredible customer value proposition. Then I welcome them. I've encouraged them to visit our site at any time, install our app, experience our industry leading delivery promise and the surprising things they might find in the package that gets delivered to them. But I mean, Tim Tams, not spiders or anything like that. So yeah, hopefully that's enough access points.
Nathan Bush: That's beautiful, Dan. Thank you so much. You are incredibly generous with your knowledge and thank you for joining us here today. But everything that you share with the industry, we're really lucky to have insight into a great Australian brand. Don't even call you a retailer anymore. You feel like you've outgrown just the retailer brand. But thank you for sharing everything that you have today.
Dan Ferguson: Oh, that's very kind of you, Nathan. Like I said, I think this forum is incredibly important for the e commerce community. It's something I know would have been a lot of blood, sweat and tears for you as well, so more tears than anything. I really value it. It's a really important source of information, but it's also a nice place to be open and honest and that means that that will encourage a lot of people to do, I think, great things by sharing some of the wins and losses along the way. So thank you.
Nathan Bush: Thanks, Dan.
Dan Ferguson: Cheer.
[Voiceover]: Dan and I have been talking about recording that episode for a while now, so I'm so glad we had to have this chat. I love Dan's passion and his ability to tell a story and you can see how he's got the team at Adore Beauty to take some of those risks and those big ideas and turn them into reality. I think what we can learn from Dan there is about storytelling and taking people on the journey is so important to get those wins. All right, here I are three lessons that I took away. Number one, you've got to listen for the win wins while deepening your relationship with your customer. You will become well versed in what they want, what they don't want and what aligns with what you want. And what you don't want. You need to find those win wins and capitalize on that where everyone benefits. Number two Babies with teeth. I never thought I'd give this as a recommendation, but you need to give birth to babies with teeth. Ideas need to have some kind of viability before you present them. You can't just throw out brain farts and hope that other people latch onto them. You've got to give them a direction and a way that they can see this come to life. That's babies with teeth. Don't think about it too much. And number three, be okay with making mistakes in the process of trying new things. You will have many failures and you've
Nathan Bush: got to get used to it.
[Voiceover]: You've got to allow for an environment of non perfection. If Deep Dan and the team at Adore Beauty as an ASX listed company have been able to create an environment where they can make mistakes even under the public eye, then you've got to be okay with it as well. Thanks for joining us today on Add to Cart to listen to all our e commerce conversations now in the hundreds. You can head over to addtocart.com au there you can also join up to our free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's add to cart.com and if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep those customers Adding to Cart.
