Kate MacCabe
Appearances
Insights Unlocked
How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I think this is the difference. I think user testing and paying attention to user feedback, both from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, this is the difference between companies who right now are seeing growth and building their community versus versus companies who are investing in omnichannel and they're not seeing the gains.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So it's really about thinking less about are we multichannel, meaning, okay, we are available in different marketplaces and in different touchpoints, but they are all living in their own universe. versus being omni-channel saying, what are the bridges we're creating across each of these channels we show up in? So it's cohesive.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And users will tell you directly whether it's through reviews, whether it's through customer emails, whether it's through more guided, moderated and unmoderated before you even go to market. And then there's the qualitative takeaways. So that example with anthropology, you know, they observed this penthouse experience is not, you know, our vision of anthropology customers' homes.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And, you know, this isn't where our products live on a daily basis. So that was a qualitative insight that they pulled just observing sort of how is this landing once you're really in the moment omni-channel.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yes, I'll give a little peek into where I started in the industry, which was in the marketing space. And then I pretty quickly stumbled into product management. So my background and most official expertise is in product management. And the reason I stumbled into product management is I was seeing this really constant struggle between our marketing teams and our development teams.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yeah. I think, you know, give yourself space to start multichannel. If multichannel is this concept of we have a presence in different places and then see it as a gradual progression line into omnichannel. If multichannel is being called omnichannel and that's your end-all be-all, what I'm seeing in a lot of companies today, now that we're a few years into omnichannel,
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
every company trying to be omnichannel is you have a team who manages your Amazon marketplace. You have a team who manages retail. You have a team who manages your digital and technology for your owned site. And what happens is that to me is multichannel. Yes, you have a presence in many places, But those teams are not roadmapping together.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
They don't have strategic initiatives to say, how do we bind this experience? So for the customer who is bopping around to us through all of these different touch points, they're going to feel that we are the same brand with the same values everywhere that they interact with us. So it's okay to be multi-channel first. That's the first step to this more mature omnichannel mindset.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I think the danger is in thinking we're, you know, saying that you're omnichannel when you haven't yet built your technology, your infrastructure, or structured your teams to really collaborate in an omnichannel way.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
It's a great question. I think the temptation can often be, let's find the snazziest new emerging technology and find a way to implement it into our business. My recommendation for businesses is to do the inverse. What are your business initiatives? How do you want to competitively show up differently in the marketplace?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And then go look to emerging technologies to say, can they accomplish or help me get there faster? So a great example of that is, you know, Disney, Disney World. I don't know. I have a brother who recently started working there. He helps build all of their great experiences.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And when you go over the past 10 years, they've really invested in like a 5D experience where it's, you know, you're in a car and it's moving and scents are coming out and there's wind and sound and this virtual AR reality concept. They didn't go into that saying virtual reality is here. How do we sprinkle it into every, you know, Disney experience we have in the amusement park?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
They said, okay, our rides are a place where we can immerse users. How do we create that immersion? Let me go find the emerging technology and find the right touch points to do that. So that's a great example of setting your business goals and then going to the marketplace to find where emerging technology can help you stand out. Certainly.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
where marketing wanted to go chase and build something different every three weeks. And the technical team was always flabbergasted that what the asks were being changed. And also just speaking like pretty technically about why it was going to take so long.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So the approach that I like to take and work with teams on is user testing and user feedback is not a one and done moment in your development lifecycle, your feature development, your strategic initiatives. So I really like to sprinkle user feedback throughout the entire journey. And what that looks like is initial concepting. So this might be your white space analysis, your competitor analysis.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Oftentimes when companies do that, they on their own are saying, what's in the marketplace? What are my competitors doing? And then they sort of bridge a story together about here's where we can show it differently. I really encourage businesses, talk to users at that point. Show those competitor landscape, the competitor experiences you're seeing to users and say, tell me what you think.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
What do you love? What do you not love? You don't only have to be user testing for the experiences you're building. You can be user testing for the industry that you're in. That's at the very beginning. Then I really like to have my design teams focus on it in early design prototyping. So let's go wide.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
We have five big ideas about how this amusement park ride, this omni-channel experience with anthropology could come to market. Let's put that before users and get feedback hypothetically to help narrow it in. Then there's a third user testing touchpoint, which is the late stage design.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
wireframes and prototypes once you've narrowed in and you think you've landed the experience so for an anthropology example once they've mapped out you know we're thinking about requiring a loyalty sign up to you know what do you think of that as a user we're thinking about a gift with purchase or maybe looking at your quantitative data where you've offered gift with purchases to loyalty members and seeing
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
How did that accelerate and bump the initiatives that you were driving? That's a key part once you've refined it. And then lastly is once you're in market. Once you're in market and the experience is happening, talk to users. Get feedback. Don't just rely on what you're seeing on social and in customer requests and in reviews. Truly get some people on the phone saying, you know, pull up.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So as I moved into what I call the translation space between those organizations, that's where I really found the unlock that can happen in organizations as they figure out Who are the right people? What are the right practices internally as a team?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
You're either ideal, you're best case or worst case. I like to live in the extremes, your happy path or your sad path and hear from users on what's standing out from them. And every single point in that four step user testing touch point, you'll be able to save resources and save rework and also build confidence in the strategic plan.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So it's not just what do all of us around the table think is going to work, but what are the users who are trying to reach think is going to work?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yes, it's been so fun to talk. I could talk about this all day long, as you can tell. For anybody who has additional questions or wants to brainstorm, you can reach me at kate.flywellstrategy.co. We don't do the .com, we do the .co. We also are on LinkedIn and we have a website, but we get really excited about helping teens because this is, like you said, an ever-changing landscape.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
In the meantime, there are business goals that need to be met. And so we work as an extension with leadership teams to map out how to get to that future state so that you can really stand out in the marketplace.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And what levers and metrics of performance really drive that user experience that customers are going to love and are also going to help the business be successful in their goals?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yes. And when I, I sort of just volunteered for the space because I thought we're all brilliant people. Why are we angry at each other? It's time.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yeah. Why is this so hard? And then I started, I actually didn't even know it was product management. I just said, let me, let me step into referee and try to see if I can create a story that everyone feels heard and seen and it feels comprehensive. Then I started going to conferences and I learned, oh, this is product management.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And this is where I feel like, well, User Insights often officially lives with design teams and user research teams. I feel like product teams and product leaders have a really invested interest because we're responsible for shaping product. the full picture across all of the different departments? Like, what are we all trying to accomplish?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And what's going to be the totality of that that comes to market in a way that's really cohesive?
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I think there's a few reasons why in the past two years Omnichannel has become table stakes. And it's different depending on how each company grew up or entered the marketplace. So for any of those companies that are D2C native, they started online selling direct to consumers. There was sort of this glory days from the 2010s to right before 2020. where it was growth at all costs.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Profitability was not something that investors or companies really managed to. And on top of that, there was an element of data privacy was not as regulated as it is now. And so around 2019, 2020, 2021, a bunch of regulations came in
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
as well as the pandemic that made a bunch of companies who have only relied on e-commerce as their only source of revenue, all of a sudden it became a whole different world to be successful in that game. And so Omnichannel, when you think about retail, wholesale, those are other avenues where revenue is available.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
On the flip side, you have enterprise legacy businesses that maybe they've always only been wholesale and retail. And while there is so much scale and growth possible in that way, what you're missing is the direct-to-consumer purchasing habits that exist in the marketplace.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
When consumers and buyers love you, they are now sort of tuned into, let me go look on the website, see if I can find a deal that's exclusive, a loyalty program that'll give me additional perks. So for any enterprise companies who have started wholesale and retail, they're now trying to catch up to where the D2C companies are.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So you see all companies trying to play omni-channel for very different reasons. At the root of it is, you know, trying to stabilize and diversify growth for the business.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Yeah, so this fall, and the reason this experience stood out to me, I just want to give like sort of a virtual hug to any companies out there trying to go omnichannel. It is tough to do well. And so there are lots of examples right now of it not happening super cohesively. And so it's very rare that I see companies executing in a true omnichannel versus just a multichannel fashion.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So I'll talk a little bit about this example, but I just want to set the context that the ecosystem we're working in is we're sort of in the crawl phase of companies knowing how to be omnichannel successfully, and I think that this is a great leader in the space. So in the fall, I live in New York City.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I had a friend text me, so word of mouth right there for all of the marketing folks out there, word of mouth referral. Say, you know, anthropology has an experience happening for a full week. An entire brownstone is going to be decked out with all of their holiday gear. And because of what I do, I was really curious.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I was also really excited to go, you know, in the middle of September, kind of get a pre-holiday look. As we went in and as I looked, I sort of was observing how this all came together. So word of mouth was how I learned about it. To attend the event, you had to sign up for the loyalty program. So now anthropology has first party data, which is sort of the gold of anthropology.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
our ecosystem today, and then you could reserve a spot for free. So completely free for people to participate, but there was an exchange of data to make that happen. Then we go into this beautiful, you know, mansion in New York, six stories, that every single room had been completely decorated with Anthropologie and one of their sister company's product lines.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
What was missing, there were no barcodes. There weren't stacks of inventory saying, buy me, here's a special. And the other thing I noticed is we weren't shoulder to shoulder, you know, a migration of humans being moved through this. It really, they wanted you to feel like, what was their brand ethos, which is imagine this is your home for the holidays.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And they had different rooms with their different design treatments, really friendly team members in each room, just saying hello and talking about, happy to answer any questions. At the very end, throughout the experience, There was a landing page.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
They were like, if I asked, oh, I love those twinkle lights on the tree, there was a landing page that had all of the products available that you were seeing. And then as a little incentive, anyone who purchased while at the experience received a small candle gift on their way out. And I was so impressed.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
You can see how it was really woven between their operations team, their retail team, their marketing team, their retention team. For all of us who are in-house, all of these teams live very siloed, and we often have our own initiatives. But for Anthropologie, they were able to bring an omnichannel experience to life where I didn't feel the boundaries between each of their departments.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I felt a cohesive experience that really worked for me, the user. Every single person I went to, all three of us ended up buying a product. We got our holiday shopping done early. So it seemed like a win-win all around. It was a really great experience that I hope we can see more of. It gave me hope and optimism for where Omnichannel can go in the future.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
That's a great question. I have a few ideas and thoughts on this. The first one, as I was leaving that anthropology event, I had to tell one of the team members, I said, this is incredible. I've never seen something executed so well and so seamlessly. How did you make this happen? And I'm telling this bit because it falls into my first recommendation, which she said,
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
This is the third or fourth year we've done it. In the first few years, it did not feel like this. One year we had a penthouse. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder. It felt like a cocktail party, which is not who we are as a brand. But she was like, each year we tinkered with it. And now we have this manifestation of the experience.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And so my biggest takeaway for Omnichannel to really have Omnichannel become... so integrated into your business. it's this long-term commitment to learning, iterating, and adapting the experience. If you have a mindset of, okay, in Q4, we're going to try a holiday, you know, implementation once, or a back-to-school implementation if school is your big selling season.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
If it doesn't take, you know, flushing it down the toilet and saying, you know, being integrated in our mindset doesn't work for us, I think is walking away from a huge opportunity. So
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So suggestion number one is really give your company the time and space, which is a multi-year commitment to we're going to do Omnichannel, we're going to do it well, and we know it's going to take time and we're going to learn as we go. But those learnings are actually getting us closer to our end goal. So that's suggestion number one. The second suggestion is the cross-functional planning.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And really early, you know, when you think about when e-commerce businesses specifically are thinking about the holidays, they usually are coming to market in October, which can be even too early for some people, you know, November, October, November.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
The fact that Anthropologie did this six weeks before the holiday chatter and it was executed so well to me speaks to how many meetings, conversations, project plans must have been happening across all of these teams to execute it so well. And then the last piece is priority alignment.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
So if they had a bunch of different teams, their retention team, their marketing team, their digital team who owns their website, the operations team to bring and set up their visual merchandisers, if any one of those groups had said, this is my 18th priority. I'm going to get everything else done before this. The whole thing could have crumbled.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
And so I think that internal alignment, not only planning early, but just making sure everyone's aligned from a, and has the space to execute well, it really will help your business stand apart and win in the omni-channel space in a way that very few people are doing it today.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
Thanks, Nathan. I'm excited to be on the podcast today.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
I think in terms of the components that make up your omnichannel experience, the core piece is the user. Think about how does this come through for the user, whether that is running something like a user test, if it's a digital experience. If you're on Amazon and you're on target.com and you have your own website,
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
do user tests across those platforms for your product to see how it's showing up and what's standing out. And you will learn significant gaps and significant competitive advantages in each of those spaces. And then when it's this physical, so with Omnichannel, it means there is in-person tactical. So it's demoing, prototyping, and folding in that qualitative feedback in terms of,
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
What does this look like for the user? And then map your systems and platforms back to where the support needs to be. So for Anthropologie, what that looked like is they had a landing page promoting the event. They had their loyalty program ready to go to sign people up for the event, as well as a scheduling tool. They had a landing page with all of the products that had been put in the home.
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How Anthropologie gets omnichannel right (and what to learn)
They had a person at the house with candles who was, you know, show me your order confirmation. Here you go. Thanks for coming. So I think the platforms and technologies you need will be unique to each company and each omnichannel experience. And this is why getting the involvement from each of your departments is so key is you want it to flow back into your overarching systems for your business.