Paul Rowlett, Founder and CEO of Everything Branded is no stranger to adversity: he even started the company while homeless using a free laptop.
The company was not going to take the decimation of sales as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic lying down. Fortunately the company had Rob Mobsby in position as Head of Digital.
Rob is an expert in all things digital, with over 17 years experience working in digital transformation and creation from startups all the way to multinational organisation level. He was primed to execute a brand new data strategy for the promotional goods firm, which had formerly relied on repeat business for corporate events that had overnight collapsed when the pandemic first erupted.
A remarkable turnaround followed. Everything Branded successfully began to understand its customers on a scale never before seen at the company. Suddenly, its employees had access to the how, why and who regarding clients.
Rob said: “The right data builds a strong foundation for enterprise and long-term engagement. Data is quite simply power. This is why businesses more often describe themselves as working in the tech industry, rather than in retail or as a car manufacturer, for example.
“Does Tesla primarily ship electric vehicles or is it in the business of data? Many billions of miles of real-world driving data collected would suggest the latter.”
This change in direction saw Everything Branded pivot to a products and services approach; by gathering information both online and offline, the company was able to provide outcomes where a customer either made a purchase or opened up further communications to help the firm achieve an end sale. This became a massively saleable service to help keep the lights on during lockdown.
Depth of data has been crucial to the strategy. At a basic level, a promotional goods firm like Everything Branded can utilise email to contact potential customers. With more complicated combinations of data, they could for example time an email to hit the inbox the perfect point in a customer’s buying journey by understanding their behavioural data and purchasing history.
Rob Mobsby has been instrumental in marking out how to attain the highest lifetime value per customer; he points to experiences where factors such as speed and account creation become so good, that even negative experiences will not deter a customer from returning.
Implementing an easy checkout process, storing data, offering rewards and incentives have been marked cultural changes brought in by Rob.
It’s not just been a cultural shift. Rob has also been hard at work transitioning Everything Branded into using an API feed.
Rob elaborated: “An API is an essential component now. It’s definitely part of the future of our industry, particularly concerning data.
“This offers a real time solution to counter changes by the manufacturer, for example. But it’s a vast technical undertaking which is incredibly resource heavy.”
Rob has been hard at work preparing Everything Branded with the tools to enter into a new era of promotional goods. Next is reconciling the many ways to collate data: from web forms, chat facilities, by phone and much more. “Adding additional data fields can impact conversion rates so it’s a minefield,” says Rob. But with his wealth of experience, he has brought Everything Branded into the digital age.
