Putting down roots abroad: how Bloom & Wild use data to grow in international markets

No matter where in the world you live, there are few things better than receiving a fresh bouquet of flowers – it’s an international sign that someone is thinking about you. But in our busy modern lives, and living as many of us do in flats, it can be difficult for the most thoughtful of gifts to actually reach their destination.

Bloom & Wild have made it their aim to restore giving and receiving flowers to the joyful experience it should be. The seven-year-old UK-based company has blossomed (get it?) in recent years, and now delivers flowers to loved ones in Ireland, Germany and France, too, thanks to their easy-to-use website and unique through-the-letterbox delivery.

We recently met with Bloom & Wild’s Head of Business Intelligence, Mairead Masterson, who is tasked with making sure her team are equipped with the tools they need to allow them to make data-driven decisions. We sat down to talk about the consumer insights she unearths on a daily basis, and how Attest is used at a startup like hers, both at home and in international markets.

Marketing at home

In the UK, it’s Mairead’s team who take the charge on consumer analytics. The company is committed to being data-driven which means the requests for insight are understandably high and quick-turn around times are essential. While they use a stack of data tools including HotJar for session recording and Heap for event tracking, there was a gap in understanding prospective customers in the UK. Attest was introduced to complement and streamline the process of gathering insights from the consumers Bloom & Wild hadn’t won yet.

“We’ve used Attest to validate other, more quantitative tools. We have a lot of quantitative data showing our skew mix and what kind of products customers are buying. We knew that certain marketing campaigns work better than others, but where we’ve used Attest is to understand why prospective customers are reacting differently.

“For example, with a Facebook ad, we know that one variant results in more transactions than the other, but it was important to actually have a conversation with customers and prospects. We can use this insight to help us shape and adapt the campaigns moving forward, and make sure the elements that are important to prospects come through. We use Attest for that purpose across lots of different marketing channels: outdoor, TV, Facebook.”

Adding colour to the raw data gathered by other tools is crucial, but it’s only useful if the answer to “Why?” – which Mairead relies on Attest for – can keep up with the rest of the consumer data tools.

“Most of the time we have the insights in a couple of days. And if we have the answers quickly we can make decisions quickly. For us as a startup that’s fast-paced and agile it’s really important for us to have that kind of information as quickly as we get it from other tools in our stack.”

Streamlining the time to action, and implementing timelines and processes for more regular conversations with consumers via Attest allowed Bloom & Wild to begin to build up a picture of the flower market in the UK. This is a feat that isn’t so easily achieved using existing data tools. 

“Previously, we did very sporadic brand surveys. But they weren’t a regular thing and we tended to use lots of different tools. For example, our investors ran a survey with another tool and we used that as a reference point, but we didn’t have a standard way of getting data on brand sentiment.

“Attest has allowed us to streamline this, and now we run a regular brand survey four times a year which helps us understand how we’re performing over time, especially as we’ve invested more money in above the line activity that is less easy to measure in a transactional way.

“If you were going to run a Facebook ad, you could see quite quickly whether or not it is performing by impacting purchase. Whereas things at the top of the funnel are doing a different job; they’re trying to drive customers to become aware of you, to make your brand top of mind when it comes to flower purchasing. The end part of the funnel we can measure, but it was about understanding what impact these new channels are having at that top level.”

In an existing market, where consumers are both familiar with your brand, tracking changes in sentiment over time gives indicators on what tweaks are needed, and what’s working, with brand and campaign efforts. But what about when the consumers are unknown to your brand? When you don’t know if they think or feel the same way about sending and receiving flowers from their homes? 

Marketing abroad

In international markets where consumers differ in subtle but impactful ways, you can’t be complacent about even your best performing local campaigns. You might even need to map consumer sentiment and behaviour in your sector from scratch, uncovering the dynamics of the market and where your brand is best positioned to slot in. Enabling international teams to be as data-driven, and follow suit from the successes in the UK, is crucial to Mairead and her team. 

“At the moment my team run most of the surveys, but that’s increasingly expanding to other teams as well. Other teams that have started to use Attest directly – rather than requesting the data from the Business Intelligence team – include brand, marketing and international teams.

“We are a relatively new player in Germany and France, so we had less knowledge on how the flower landscape looked, and who the main players were in terms of customer and prospect perception. We really wanted to understand how different brands resonated with customers in their markets, and used Attest to build a picture of how our brand tracks against competitors.”

She adds: “A lot of our international research validated our assumptions, but also generated new questions as well. We saw that prospects in Germany and France behaved in very different ways to our UK base and that different elements of our product resonated.

“In the UK, the letterbox packaging is a core part of our proposition as it makes the experience easier for recipients, however in France and Germany people don’t tend to have letterboxes, so we needed to understand which of our other USPs were important to them. Attest is useful in times when we don’t have existing knowledge or precedents of the market or marketing channel.”

Bloom & Wild’s use of Attest has sparked changes to the marketing materials they’ve used in both local and international markets. From tailoring Facebook creatives in Germany, and pinpointing a photography style specific for the French market, to informing overall brand strategy in the UK, Attest allows Bloom & Wild to conduct this research in multiple markets, for multiple teams. Dozens of creative and brand decisions can be made, all in one place.

“It has been great for us to be able to use the same tool for all three markets. That was a key deciding factor for us in using Attest.”

If your own brand is operating in multiple markets, and keen to tailor your approach to each, get in touch with Attest to find out how our platform can give you on-demand access to consumers in your segment.