Ann Summers is an international lingerie, swimwear and adult products brand with a highly-engaged and loyal customer base. Feedback has always been essential to the brand, having been responsible for getting the business off the ground. The renowned Ann Summers party concept, imagined in 1981 by current CEO Jacqueline Gold, allowed the brand to truly understand what women wanted through direct customer interaction. Arranged by organizers employed by Ann Summers, these parties encouraged women to explore the brand’s catalog and get hands-on experience with its products.
Harnessing the power of word-of-mouth
In 2022, Ann Summers decided to expand its referral marketing efforts, partnering with Soreto to capitalize on the brand’s strong customer engagement. Soreto’s data suggests that adults are 4x more likely to purchase when recommended by a friend and that 50% of all purchasing decisions are influenced by referrals – an incredibly powerful way to gain new audiences through Ann Summers’ loyal customer base.
Soreto’s solution fills that gap between social media, messaging platforms and ecommerce. Its model leverages the opportunity for a brand’s customers to share with friends an incentive on their next purchase, thereby also encouraging said customers to share that brand with their social followings. And because Soreto is pre-integrated in the Awin MasterTag, the quick and easy setup made it a no-brainer for Ann Summers.
The user journey works like this:
- After a customer completes a purchase on Ann Summers, a lightbox powered by Soreto appears, asking them to share an endorsement and discount with their social media friends. As an incentive to the customer itself, they also receive a discount as a ‘thank you’ to apply next time.
- Once shared, the customer’s followers see Ann Summers post in their feeds and click to browse.
- The trial discount offer is automatically applied to their Ann Summers’ shopping cart when they begin to check out.
- After the purchase is confirmed, these new buyers also see the Soreto-powered lightbox asking them to share with their circles, keeping the referral chain going.
With Soreto’s solution, any friction at critical stages is eliminated - like automatically applying discounts - making social sharing easy.
Greater conversions through seamless creative
From August to December 2022, Soreto, Ann Summers and Awin collaborated on six different referral campaigns, each with their own imagery and incentives. The campaigns closely followed the brand’s wider marketing strategy, mirroring on-site activity to create a seamless look and feel.
Beyond the aforementioned benefits of Soreto’s model, the technology afforded Ann Summers the opportunity to test multiple creative approaches and reward strategies with audiences, keeping incentives fresh for frequent buyers and honing the methods that proved most effective for the brand’s customer base.
Results
For Ann Summers, Soreto is a powerful way to leverage its customers' massive social connections to support growth. Further, Soreto delivered great strategic ideas to help ensure the program perfectly aligned with brand needs.
- 15:1 ROI
- + 56% uplift in share rate
- +100% clickthrough rate
- + 318% conversion rate
- + 303% revenue generated
“Ann Summers has been working with Soreto as our main referral partner for some time now, and we have always found it very accommodating, really quick to respond, and always providing ideas to help grow the partnership.. We have recently worked together to improve the look and feel of the referral creatives, also the process in which the customers navigate through to convert. This has involved other areas of the business, such as tech, marketing, also development teams. By doing this, we have improved on the customer journey.”
