PrettyLittleThing + RetailMeNot

Sam: Hey, Rob.

Rob: Sam, good to see you after such a long time.

Sam: Such a long time. I think it's been about 25 whole minutes since we last caught up.

Rob: You know what I mean? The podcast is back. How are you?

Sam: I'm good. I'm good though. I've heard a rumor that we might be cursed.

Rob: How do you mean?

Sam: Well, I don't know if you've noticed this, but with all of these episodes we've done across most of them, we record an episode and before we launch, someone we've interviewed has moved on from the company that they were at into a different role.

Rob: Yeah, I have noticed this. This is a, an official curse now for the podcast. Is it?

Sam: Well, we all know I'm in yoga teacher training, but I think this is it for me. I've peaked as the co-host of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast. Is there something else you would do? This is peak career.

Rob: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Peak career.

Yeah. Um, I don’t know, like, you know, I still want to be a footballer. I mean, I'm 41 now. I'm probably past it. I'm definitely past it. I was never at it actually. If, uh, if we're being truthful, if there are any Fulham football scouts listening in, you know, I'm still available. Zero transfer fee.

Sam: Give him a ring.

Rob: Sign me up Fulham.

Sam: Hi, I'm Sam and this is Rob and we are back. Hi, and we are back for season two of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast. Finally, we're so excited to be speaking with you again and diving into another season.

Rob: That's right. We've got the same great format, new episodes, and some incredible guests lined up this season.

Sam: So to kick things off, we're diving into the world of geotargeting campaigns. I had the pleasure of sitting down with fashion retailer PrettyLittleThing and rewards platform RetailMeNot during Affiliate Summit East last July.

Rob: And while that chat happened a few months. Back. The insights are still just as fresh.

PrettlyLittleThing shares how with RetailMeNot they rolled out highly targeted campaigns to boost customer engagement in a specific US region.

Sam: It was a fascinating look at how a publisher like RetailMeNot, traditionally known for digital coupons and deals, can play a much larger role in a brand's strategic marketing efforts.

So, without further ado, let's jump into the conversation.

Melanie: So RetailMeNot, originally is based in Austin. I have been in Austin for about 10 years now and have been at RetailMeNot for seven of them.

Sam: That's Melanie Lovejoy, Senior Account Director at RetailMeNot.

Melanie: RetailMeNot is an affiliate publisher. And we are part of the Ziff Davis Media Group as well.

So we also have a presence in New York.

Sam: And you two have worked together for quite some time now. Right,

Sophie: So I started at PrettyLittleThing, two and a half years ago, and that's kind of when I was introduce to Mel and she's brought me up to speed with how things were done at that time.

Sam: Also, joining us is Sophie Barriere, Affiliate Marketing Manager at PrettyLittleThing.

Sophie: PrettyLittleThing is 12 years old. It's an e-com business aimed at young women, so 16 to 25 year olds. We have headquarters in Manchester, so that's where we're based from, where it was grew out of. But yeah, we've like grown from strength to strength when the business started. It's sold jewelry and it's expanded and now we sell everything from fashion.

Um, whether that's casual lounge wear to going out party outfits at the weekend. We have a huge brand awareness in the UK. Got huge loyalty customer base. We called my royalty customers. I've got over a million of those who shop with us regularly. In the US we're like an emerging brand, so default team was really small when I started and hadn't had a manager in place for.

Several months. So it was kind of resetting the relationship mm-hmm. And going forward and working much closer together than had previously been done.

Melanie: Yeah. It was really nice when Sophie came on because like she said, it was a very lean team on their side, and so there was only so much we could do. Yeah.

When you join the team and we were able to really dig in and look at all the opportunities and start testing some new stuff.

Sam: How did you go about this? Like reset? What did that, what did that look like?

Sophie: Well, from my side, I've got a whole new team that I've, I've hired, so I've got some great team members, Phoebe and Amy.

Each member had their focus on the US as a market. So yeah, can’t sit here without calling out Phoebe. 'cause she's definitely helped. So, with the US strategy. Yeah. And we've gone through like a lot of evolution as well, so. We have a distribution center opened in Pennsylvania last year, and we were able to offer really quick delivery to customers on the east coast of the us but once we have like a dedicated person to really hone in on what we were doing in the us, which partner we're working with, we worked all together as a team to look at the opportunities and say like, where's the brand going?

What do we need to do?

Sam: Melanie, I'd love to hear from your perspective. Sophie's come in and she said, we have great brand awareness in the UK. We want to grow in the us. It's a massive geographic market. How does RetailMeNot factor into this?

Melanie: One of the things, even backtracking from that was previously it was all email communication. So when Sophie came in, we were able to do monthly calls, which has been really nice because I think a key part of it is having that close communication of. What are pretty little things, goals, and then how can I solve those problems? And so then when she came in and was like, here's our goals, clearly laid out, I was like, perfect.

Here's what we can do. So with the distribution centers and wanting to target those East Coast customers, obviously like she said, the US is a massive market. We were able to look at what products retail me not has to offer that could. Really focus in on those geographic locations. And so for these campaigns, we looked at solo emails, exclusive targeting for people who are shopping at pretty little thing as well as some of your competitors.

And then we were able to zip code and DMA target the area that we wanted to hit. So we did exclusive emails and mobile pushes, so we're really hitting people where they're shopping.

Sam: Were there any different nuances within the messaging? Did you see any initial signs of the PrettyLittleThing customer maybe responds better to email versus mobile?

Melanie: We actually saw super level results across both of them. So I think what I would look at next is adding in what other levers can we pull? Like we know that people respond really well to both of these, so let's do these together. 'cause we're also hitting different audiences. Yeah. Across both of 'em. And then what levers can we pull?

We have brand plus 10 plus rights with PLT. So can we pull a lever there to go after new customers? Can we do some social targeting? We have a lot of retargeting opportunities so we can look at somebody who has I. Open an email and maybe not converted, and how do we retarget them to actually bring them, bring 'em home.

Both of the options were great. They performed super well. Like I mentioned, 50% open rate is insane. I think. Unheard of. Yeah. When they, when I saw the results, I was like, wait, what is this a typo? Um, so we were super excited about that. And then with the actual messaging, like I mentioned before, we saw that those offers that we ran in those placements were the top clicked at that time.

So we know that it resonated really well.

Sam: I know sometimes when we work with different brands, they really like to own a lot of the customer experience. Sophie, what was it about retail me notch geotargeting approach that made you comfortable with giving up a bit of control and what ultimately made it feel like the right fit for this campaign?

Sophie: And Mel touched on a really good about the month for calls and. Communication, I think is a key thing that we've had in the relationship that's helped us develop. So although, yeah, they were sent out on our behalf, we had really close working relationship where we still did have that element of control.

Like we get sign off of previews of what the emails and the pushes look like, what the messaging should be in those. And it is actually quite rare to find a pattern that is so transparent. I think communication is key, transparency is really key as well. And yeah, we work together. So although I guess we were handing some element of control into the, like trusting their first-party data.

We were working together and analyzing the results and the data after to see if it's worked. But it was definitely kind of a partnership more than kind of just saying, this won't do, Hey, go and do it.

Sam: Yeah. I think that's really key. And something that's come out with a lot of these conversations we've had is that the ones that are most successful, it's a collaboration.

And it is a partnership.

Melanie: Yeah. And you have to trust on both sides. Like if they're not happy with the results, like I'm not gonna be happy with the results. Yeah. And so that has to be built into how we're doing everything together.

Sophie: Yeah, and I think as well we like share like what does good look like? So we were quite transparent with sharing our internal data back with retail.

Mean obviously it was a two-way street. Yeah. Like retail, not we're tagging your first party data, but then we would see what the results look like on the network. But then we would share with mail what the results look like internally to see if the business across the board was happy with that return on investment.

So yeah, definitely a two way street and like a test and learn approach. PLT is such a fast moving brand. Yeah. Keeping up with lots of latest trends. We kind of want to be testing things and learning from those and we're not too scared to like try a new approach and see if it works. And if it doesn't work, we're absolutely fine.

Let's say, well, you know what? We tried it didn't work, but let's try something else. So again, to repeat myself, sorry. Putting that trust in what capabilities? RetailMeNot had to say they can do something, let's, let's try it and see if it works. And, and it did. Can you give us a bit more insight in what that good was?

Kind of what the success metrics you were working towards. Yes, on the monthly psychiatric calls that we have, Mel and the team come really prepared. Shout out to them 'cause it's one of the few partners that do this. And they will prepare a deck for us that has like top line performance. So impressions, click sales, AOV orders, you know, drill down into which promotion has performed the best.

So we are a very promo focused business and we utilize that by offering PLT partners. An exclusive offer perhaps so that the customer shopping free retail and not are getting, you know, the best offer out there. So it's great that Mel can share this with us as a brand of saying this is a promotion that performed best.

Another key thing that I think has shown in our deck, we do ask for a purpose to share this, which we find really insightful, but retail may not really far coming with it is market share insight. So, you know, we'll see trended graphs of how web farm versus competitors are obvious. Not naming them, but we can see that we've been wanting X offer, whereas competitor A to BC and D.

Have promoted other offers or haven't been investing with retail or not, and they've seen declines. Um, so they'll understand kind. Our market share has touched on wanting to drive our brand awareness and kinda where to measure that is as our market share grown with this publisher out of the other retails that we would deem competitors.

But again, then like new opportunities. So on the call, it's very much about what's worked well that last month, has the exposure that we booked in for that month worked well. Do you think in the affiliate industry, people like to book more long term, but as PLT has such a reactive brand. And we are so close to the data, we like to understand that if what we're doing right now is working and if not, let's change our tactic.

Let's caveat and maybe do something else. We kind of review that and then Mel will bring that new opportunities for that, the following coming months. Any campaigns coming up that we need, like we should take part in, that'll be a good opportunity.

Sam: And it sounds like because of this close collaboration that you two have, Sophie, you've mentioned maybe PLT is a more of a reactive or a very fast moving brand.

Mm-hmm. And Melanie, it sounds like RetailMeNot is able to. Like mimic that pace almost. Yeah,

Melanie: We're very much able to align with obviously what the brands need that we work with in Q4. Obviously media is hot, it sells out early, so usually we'll do Q4 as like a quarterly plan, but we still leave some room for adjustments.

I. But the rest of the year, we're doing month to month and it works really well because we're able to review all of the data from the previous month and then start planning. And so we are looking at year over year trends, month over month trends. We can dig down and say, this is the offer that our shoppers are loving right now.

Let's continue that for the next week. Let's continue that for the next month. With the competitive insights, like she said, it's blinded, so we don't know who's right. Of course the other ones are, but we have insights, you know, so and so is running a 10% cash back and you guys lost market share because yours was at eight or vice versa.

And then looking at the days when we have these strong exclusives that they offer us, what placements we're running at that time, so how are we seeing traffic change? And then just organic trends as well.

Sam: I've had conversations sometimes where like coupon and cashback is a dirty word, but it sounds here like pretty little thing has fully embraced those offers because you've seen their value.

Sophie: Yeah, and I do think with RetailMeNot were one of the few partners where we're able to have a bit more of a four funnel approach to, yes. I think in. The affiliate landscape is understanding different leverages you can pull and how each part of that journey plays a role in having the customer convert with your brand.

So we're having different, lots of different campaigns with written or not, whether that's content, like you say on the homepage. Banner exposure. Yeah. Paid media, branded content. Yeah. Um, definitely all elements of kind of activity we do internally, but just having that large reach through. A really big affiliate partner in the US who can tap into an audience that we're not already tapping into.

Melanie: One of the things that's been so nice about working with them too is the ability to like pitch ideas. And so every time we not, yes, we like started out as a coupon platform and then we added cash back and then we expanded into branded content and we have paid social and we have TM plus campaigns. We really have it all.

And so with them we have been able to look at the program holistically and so. Where can we touch the customers at different points in their shopping journey so that then by the end of it, they've converted. But then not only are they just, they're not done, they're gonna come back again. And so that's where we've pulled in the branded content to help educate them on different campaigns that are happening on the pretty little things side of things.

So it's, yeah, it's been really cool to look at the PLT brand holistically and then see where our product offerings can mesh with that.

Rob: Just interrupting Sam for a minute to tell you that Awin-Win Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Awin. Now, you might be listening because you're an ecommerce retailer struggling to grow your brand awareness, get more customers, generate additional sales, or maintain your bottom line with marketing and advertising. Using the Awin platform these challenges go away as you unlock unlimited pay on performance, partnership opportunities, and promotional spaces that reach consumers everywhere. Choose which affiliate partners best match your marketing objectives, control your costs by defining how you pay these partners and customize your affiliate marketing program using Awin tech to mirror your unique goals, whatever they may be.

Visit awin.com today and start growing your own weight with the Awin platform.

Sam: Sophie, it's really interesting to hear you talk about using RetailMeNot, and affiliate as a means of growing PLT’s brand awareness. I think people within the industry know that affiliate marketing does drive brand awareness. But it's not a primary metric or it's not a primary success metric.

Sophie: The affiliate industry is ever evolving as the digital marketing industry is.

So keeping up to those trends, that influences the massive part of affiliate marketing too now. So it's taking away their emphasis on last click, knowing that that's not the be all at end all. And actually as a business focus is changing with reporting metrics and capabilities. So. Let's look at how we're driving the initiator, like which publicist driving that person to, to site that wasn't already on site shopping and isn't, you know, just jumping off to get a discount code.

So I think that's why like traffic as a, as a metric has become a bit more important in our affiliate environment at PLT.

And then is that a metric that retail may not also finds valuable?

Melanie: Yeah, it is. And we. Can provide some pretty good reporting about the customer journey. One thing about PLT that was really intriguing to me early on and has remained is how high the new customer rate is.

And so when we were talking about like brand awareness, that has been something that we've been able to measure. As well is looking at, it's a lot of new people that are interested and so we don't just drive those people that are going to convert and then going to look for a coupon. We are actually educating a ton of new shoppers about the brand.

So that's been something that's been really interesting as well.

Sophie: Yeah. Just reminded me of a key metric, um, that we have. So we actually pay CPA on new customers and existing at PLT because our focus is new customer acquisition. So again, it's having that conversation with publishers. It's great we retail not can actually support it and that's, so we will pay higher CPA for the new customers that we retail, not drivers versus existing.

And then again, it's working with me to. Understand how we can target those new customers through retail or not. So it might be offering a new customer exclusive code. It might be showing new collection. It's got like we've touched on like a lot of brand awareness at the time. A big like overall marketing campaign mm-hmm.

That people have actually heard about and like see it on the retail. We not homepage, they might see a paid social post. It's pushing the, the content guide of like, have you seen these top 10 items that PLT are selling? See that's how we're trying to engage and with all publishers and send us the new customers are meeting that KPI.

Sam: Yeah. I think it really speaks to the pretty little things strategy too, that the focus really is to grow the brand and so you have to, not that you're ignoring your existing customers or don't value them, but you have to maybe do something a little bit different for that new customer acquisition and then also support your partners to support your goals.

Melanie: It's so important because there's a lot of times where you'll have somebody who wants to focus only on new customers, and it's like, but you can't forget about that existing customer base because they are driving huge amounts of revenue for your company. We have those new customer exclusives, we're drawing in those customers, but we also have return customer exclusives.

And so we're maintaining a solid base while then reaching a whole new target audience.

Sam: So I think that's a nice segue and I'd like to dig a little bit more into the Geotargeting campaign. Obviously we've established that PrettyLittleThing already has massive targets to grow in the US. But with this campaign, the focus shifted specifically to the East Coast.

Can you walk us through how you approached narrowing in on that region and what the test and learn process looked like as you tried out new strategies? Was there a specific timeframe that you were running this campaign? Was this an always on campaign?

Melanie: We've kind of tested different pairs in time. Yeah. It was in two different, we did one in February of 2025. Yeah. And then one in September of 2023. Okay. Yeah. I

Sophie: was looking back at a few results though, before the podcast and the week that we did the push notification was like one of our best performing weeks for retail, not since the September, which coincidentally was the last time we also did, yeah, we did something.

So again, just trying to tie the activity with like the wider marketing activities that are going on. So we've had, if we've got big campaign launch that we want to push and has a really strong message to deliver to our audience saying we can utilize that in the push notifications of the solar messaging.

Yeah.

Melanie: We saw incredible results, like the open rate of the email and the push notification were both. Around 50%.

Sam: Wow.

Melanie: Um, so it was super strong. And then we were able to look at data as well with like, how did the actual offer perform? And during those time periods, it was the top clicked offer. And thinking about it from a larger perspective, that's the top clicked offer.

But we also have all of their other offers that are running on the store page and going out in other emails. And so just to know that the people in those DMAs or zip codes or whatever are that intrigued that we're getting that many clicks on it to make it the largest clicked offer in the US market at that time.

Sam: It sounds like it's not an either or. You would run like a campaign across a set time period to align with pretty little things, wider business goals, and then RetailMeNot, would almost come in and add an added value layer to the campaign of like, we're gonna do broad stroke across our website and then focus in on this DMA or zip code and add an additional email or mobile targeting or both it sounds like.

Are you able to give a bit of insight in what was going on in the business maybe in September and February that aligned itself nicely to try this geotargeting strategy?

Sophie: We've touched on before, but we had the US distribution center opened, and that happened in the August. Okay. September was the time we wanted to be quick target with our comms to.

Audiences in the US 'cause yeah, it's such a large country, we can't kind of, you know, relay the same messaging to everyone at different locations in the states. So we were doing a lot of above the line marketing issue with huge fashion icon who we're doing like a New York Fashion Week show and we also was doing a US bus have on college campuses.

So we had a lot of above the line and kind of out of home activity taking place. Mm-hmm. So just relaying that, making sure that audience is seeing that message, but then having those activations. Online digitalize, then actually like help them convert and shop and find incentives to them. Go ahead with and purchase with pretty little thing.

Sam: Yeah. I think for maybe our listeners that are less familiar with affiliate, when you say above the line, you mean kind of like top of funnel brand awareness and brand building in that capacity?

Sophie: Yeah, definitely. So. The bus tower in question was a popup store for PLT. So bringing the actual product to customers.

We've got a very young audience that we know our students, so campuses were great for us 'cause it was where they're based. I think billboards in Times Square. I know we had one of those last September for the fashion show that we did. Yeah. Kind of making sure that when you're walking down the street, you see Yeah. A billboard that. That shows a brand.

Sam: And then Melanie, so the, the RetailMeNot audience, did you find that maybe the conversion rates were higher and the open rates were higher? 'cause the, the audience had already been kind of primed to the pretty little thing brand at that point?

Melanie: Yeah, I think so. And same with what they were doing with the college campus tours and all of that.

We, at the same time, were also running some branded content campaigns. We had a big article on our blog and we also had some kind of middle and lower funnel stuff that we're doing with social and other emails and stuff. You guys partnered with a very large fashion icon. Icon and we created an article that ran on the RetailMeNot blog, and then was amplified further through social and performance hit above all of our benchmarks.

People were super, super engaged, as we have tended to find with any. Branded content that we've run with them And social campaigns with PrettyLittleThing, yes, with PrettyLittleThing’s specifically, I would say across the board, our blog audience is so engaged. They are there to truly rely on us as a voice.

And so a lot of people come to retail, me not. To do their research on where to shop, what to shop, how to shop, and then work through the funnel to convert at the end.

Sam: But it sounds like too, based off of the, the preexisting relationship that you two have established, tell me not in maybe a lot of ways has become like a trusted source specifically for pretty little thing.

Melanie: Definitely,

yeah.

Sophie: Yeah, no, definitely. If we need to be reactive and if we do have a sale going live the next week and you want to push it, we can email Mel and ask her to pop us into the inventory, which she always managed to do. I dunno how she's just that relationship you guys, but never for seven years.

I just know who the right people to ping behind the scenes to ask for what I need. Exactly. So we always know that we're getting added value. I think that's quite key as well actually, like establishing that like top partner relationship is that. We know that you can, yeah. Always give us added value for what we are giving you guys in return.

Mm-hmm. And I think that works really well. So what is

Sam: next for the PrettyLittleThing RetailMeNot relationship? What's the next campaign? What's the next big thing you two are gonna work on together?

Sophie: So the next key campaign coming up for as suppose, back to school. Okay. So, you know, hitting those. Students that go into college for the first time.

I think trial module targeting. And yeah, just any exciting new opportunities that come up. Like we always want to be like the test brand that partners want to try something with us. So yeah, exploring how more we could be targeted with our audiences and our messaging. And do you think you'll

Sam: have plans to expand the geotargeting out or are you sticking to where the distribution center is for the foreseeable future?

Sophie: No, it definitely has changed even since we started doing the geos in last year. So we do ship from the UK and the US so at the minute we are tagging all the US with, you know, the product offering across both warehouses in the UK and the us. So, um, so

Sam: just continuing to test and learn and try new things.

Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I think that's the case, like kind of developing the relationship broiler.

Sam: Yeah, for sure. And then Melanie, obviously a lot of the, what's next strategy is brand driven if, is there anything you really wanna try next with PrettyLittleThing? Anything you want to see as like the next thing for the partnership?

Melanie: I think that there is a lot that we can do around branded content. RetailMeNot has a very turnkey influencer program as well, and so I think it would be super cool, especially, you know, looking forward, obviously the lead up time for some of those bigger campaigns is a little bit longer, but we're having more and more conversations about what opportunities are there for the immediate future.

Back to school, back to college, RetailMeNot is focusing in really heavily on back to college for August, just because that's when obviously everybody's going back to college. Whereas some of the back to school shopping happens a little bit earlier with those younger K through 12 grades

Sophie: and any new launches, you know, celebrity faces on AMS might get.

I think looking again, how we did that last year and. Tweak, optimizing from there.

Sam: Is there a single piece of advice you would give someone who like wants to try affiliate marketing or is afraid to get started?

Melanie: I think it is really being open to new opportunities and leaning into like using other people's expertise as you are exploring the different types of campaigns that are available.

Looking at, even though affiliate marketing, a lot of the time is labeled more bottom of the funnel, starting to look at how. Affiliate has been moving up in the funnel as well is really important. And so just leaning into what different publishers have to offer.

Sophie: Transparency is key. Like building those communication lines with publishers, understanding the data, so kind of being familiar with the data and trying to establish what looks good for the brand and not being afraid to test and learn your opportunities.

You know, it's quite a risk free marketing activity, I feel. It's 'cause you're not, not typically paying on a CPA percent of sales. So, you know, don't be afraid to kind of leverage those commercials and, you know, maybe amplify 'em to try something new and test new methods.

Sam: Yeah, exactly. And I think you, you hit a really good point there is that with affiliate it, it almost gives you that safety net to try new things.

Melanie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, definitely. Yeah. Like for your publisher to succeed, your brand has to succeed and everybody wants the best at the end of the day.

Sam: Thank you for joining us on season two, episode one of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

Rob: Next time I chat with OPM agency Gen3 about how they're working with Moonpull's tracking solution to audit their client setups and ensure they capture affiliate sales effectively.

Sam: Really can't wait to listen to that one.

As ever, don't forget to subscribe to a win-win marketing podcast on Spotify, Apple, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcast to catch every new episode of this season as they're released. You can also keep up by visiting awin.com/podcast.

Rob: Thanks again for tuning into Awin-Win Marketing Podcast where we show you how affiliate partnerships always offer a win-win.