Driving conversion through customer personas – how MORI did it

In this session Emma Hall, CRM Manager at organic baby clothing brand MORI, described how taking a simplified approach to personas resulted in more sales and better data collection.

MORI had problems understanding why its customer persona segmentation was not obtaining the results it wanted. It presented a lengthy list of “life stages” for consumers to choose from, ranging from expectant mother to grandfather and gifter.

These fields were optional at sign-up via a pop-up, and consumers largely ignored them so Mori was unable to obtain the life stages data it needed to personalize the customer journey and experiment with automated email flows. For example, it was hard to identify when an expectant mother had her baby.

When website traffic started to climb in April during the pandemic-related lockdown, MORI worried whether it would be sending new contacts the right messages. In response, and with the help of Ometria, the team redefined the way they developed and used customer personas.  They analysed their life stage personas and narrowed the options to simply “Parent” or “Gifter” and made it a required field as part of sign-up. Streamlining the process made it much easier to gather actionable data quickly.

MORI’s teams found the new segmentation approach generated data that was much easier to use. Welcome and post-purchase campaigns currently have Parent and Gifter automated flows, which have successfully driven leads to convert and make additional purchases. The segmentation is also being used as a variant in broadcast campaigns.

MORI enjoyed a tremendous 117% increase in its new welcome journey conversion rate for Q3 on Q2 (3.72% conversion compared to 1.69%). It also significantly improved its Parent and Gifter data, which has doubled since modifying the sign-up options.

Key lessons:

• Understand your contact base, how to communicate with them, and keep your segmentation simple
• Prioritize the personas that are most important to your marketing strategy
• Use data to personalize by identifying where to start the customer journey and to create tailored content