Nearly a month ago, the pureplay fashion retailer announced the rollout of its new loyalty scheme Asos World. Retail Week sat down exclusively with the retailer’s head of loyalty and customer engagement Macy Hong to get a temperature check on how the launch has gone and what’s next.
The retailer launched its new Asos World loyalty scheme on July 2, having initially piloted the scheme with a small group of shoppers in March.
Asos World offers customers a four-tiered system which is based around how much each customer spends with the brand annually.
The first ‘stylist’ tier is free to join, followed by ‘curator’ which requires an annual spend of £100, then ‘icon’ which is unlocked at £350 and then ‘A-List’ at £750 of spend annually.
As the loyalty scheme enters its second month of being operational, Asos head of loyalty and customer engagement Macy Hong sits down with Retail Week to discuss how the launch has resonated with customers, what success for the loyalty scheme will look like, how it differs from the retailer’s abortive 2018 loyalty scheme launch and how it differs from competitors’ loyalty schemes in the fashion space.
Asos World launched about a month ago, how have customers reacted to the launch so far?
“Positively, I think. I mean, with the pilot phase, we’ve been collecting quite a bit of customer feedback and data from how they’ve been engaging with it. So far, we’re really happy with the results and we’ve been able to talk to a few customers in real life when we host events and so on, and the reaction has been positive, and they’ve been excited.”
Can you tell us how many customers have signed up to the scheme so far and what success for World looks like in the long term?
“I can’t give you any fixed numbers right now, but we’re happy with the way we’re progressing to our sign-up targets.
“We’re measuring success in a few different buckets of performance metrics. We’re looking at customer engagement and customer behaviour. So, is the programme making members visit our website and app more? Are they shopping with us more frequently and, ultimately, are they purchasing more?
“But we’re also tracking how it impacts the customer experience, tracking their overall satisfaction and how it affects their perception of Asos as a brand. We want this to be an extension of it.
“We want World customers to feel more satisfied and increase their love for the brand and us, especially those that are already super loyal customers. We’re really keen to retain them and thus reward them for their loyalty.”
How have you settled on the multi-tiered loyalty scheme model?
“We took a multi-pronged approach to developing it. We looked across the market at what some of the retailers are doing, both outside of and within the fashion space, and some of the general trends that are happening with fashion and our target demographics.
“We conducted an extensive customer survey to make sure that what we were delivering is something that customers wanted to see, while making sure that we’re delivering value to them in a creative way that also builds up to the fact that we want to be a fashion-first business in the market.”
“We’re now inviting members to events that historically would only have been reserved for influencers or content creators”
What are some of the higher-tier perks that customers will get?
“One example is priority back in stock notifications. Our ‘A-Lister’ customers will get a 60-minute head start notification on products coming back in stock.
“One customer we surveyed told us she sleeps with her phone by her and, if she gets a back in stock notification in the middle of the night, she wakes up and buys it.
“That’s obviously just one customer, but that notification tested highly with the bulk of our customers. It’s about making sure we deliver value to our members in different ways from the competition.
“Another element which differentiates us from the market with World is that we’re now inviting members to events that historically would only have been reserved for influencers or content creators.
“We feel that this is a great opportunity to have these customers who are our biggest brand ambassadors be a part of some of these really special brand moments and build a relationship not just with us at Asos, but also some of our third-party brands that we host.
“We recently did an event for our new seasonal collection and invited customers. Given that we don’t have a permanent physical location, it allows customers to come in, touch and feel the new products, and talk to the designers who make them and ask about the inspiration behind some of the designs.”
This isn’t the first time Asos has dabbled with a loyalty scheme after 2018’s A-List. How is World different, and what did you learn from the previous one?
“We definitely took some learnings from that programme, and we’ve really focused on evolving it. Customer expectations in the market has evolved so much since then, and our focus has really been on expanding the different ways we can deliver value for our customers that really ladder up to our fashion USP.”
Asos has been in a period of transition. What does success for World look like longer-term both for the loyalty scheme and the brand more generally?
“Loyalty is designed to support the overall Asos brand ecosystem by showcasing the best fashion that we have at Asos, and the amazing curations of our own-brand and third party brands.
“It’s also about engagement. How do we get customers to come back, engage more with the brand, not just for shopping reasons, but also for discovery and inspiration and for all the moments in between?”
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