Leader Spotlight: Omnichannel strategy in a membership-based company, with Melanie Cummings

Melanie Cummings is VP of Product and UX at Fabletics. She started her career in retail at hhgregg, where she worked in web content. Melanie then worked as an account manager at Compendium, which was acquired by Oracle. After the acquisition, she served in marketing advisor and customer success management roles before transitioning to product management at Fabletics.

In our conversation, Melanie talks about the nuances of omnichannel strategy in a membership-based company, where loyal customers come back month after month to see new products. She shares methods to drive sticky behavior, such as custom homepage modules and optimized upsell experiences to cater to individual preferences. Melanie also discusses Fabletics’ current initiatives to integrate retail technology with ecommerce technology and bridge those experiences for the customer.

Incorporate change more impactfully

Earlier in your tenure at Fabletics, you worked on re-architecting the company website using new technologies. What was that experience like?

We’ve gone through a couple of iterations or phases of evolution, and it’s been super fun. We use an entirely in-house proprietary technology stack called Bento that powers all of our customer transactions and ecommerce tooling. Our website was written with older technology, so we had a really interesting opportunity on the product side to set clear engineering technology goals. We also viewed this as a chance to impact the customer experience and our overall product strategy.

We started the first phase of that migration by moving to React Native on the frontend and moving to APIs on the backend. That was super unique. We did a lot of collaboration in-house with some of our sister brands to see which aspects of the user experience were working for them. We used that data to gain wins across those different brands.

Looking back, we learned a lot through that exercise. We went component by component — product description pages (PDPs), grids, navigation, etc. There were real benefits to doing that because we could focus our energy and work iteratively to deploy updates.

The challenge was that we lived in a split technology world for much longer than we expected. We got to a place where we needed our product team, UX team, and engineers to understand a swath of different technologies and experiences that a customer could see.

As we finished that first phase, we then wanted to move into technology tools for our internal partners. About a year and a half ago, we implemented Builder.io as a frontend CMS. That was a hugely successful integration. We used a lot of our learnings from the first piece of the migration to be more focused and targeted. We tried to get fully completed pieces migrated into that tool, so there wasn’t that feeling of living in two worlds. That definitely helped with mind-sharing. It was a super effective change.

What challenges did you face during that project?

One thing we didn’t expect when undergoing a migration or re-architecture like this was how much the business was going to evolve. We wanted to live in a bit of blissful ignorance. We thought we would be able to lock a feature or an experience while we were either working on it or planning for it. That was a little naive because there’s often a need to impact an experience that may be in active development or pending release.

It forced us to figure out how to be more agile in how we approach problem-solving. We had to challenge ourselves to make updates that were minimal and solved the problem, but incorporate that change more impactfully going forward. It was good for the team to go through that process.

Picking apart and testing PDPs

What was your approach for testing the changes and new features that you implemented?

Testing the new elements we were rolling out was so fun. In particular, our PDP testing was really interesting. It went on far longer than we expected because, typically with our traffic volume, we’re able to call tests and get insights pretty quickly. However, we found that when we were rolling out our new PDP, there were pieces of the PDP that were working well for certain customers and not for others. We had to pick that apart and work to understand where the challenges were.

We probably did 20 iterations of the original PDP to get it to a place where we were confident in the performance. It ended up being a win.

During the testing phase, did you find anything that surprised you?

Color had a huge impact. That was interesting because I feel like we know this implicitly, but until we validate it again and again, we can never really be sure. We originally had a pop color for the add-to-bag button. The market was trending toward more neutral colors, so we tried to modernize the experience to fit that. Immediately, there was a decline in add-to-bag clicks. Once we updated the button back to a similar pop color, we saw an improvement.

Optimizing the digital experience during Cyber Week

Could you elaborate on your experience revamping critical Cyber Week execution and its impact on revenue growth?

We approach each cyber execution so uniquely. Each year, we know what we’re going to expect in terms of demand because it’s a huge shopping period. But from a business perspective, we always deal with a unique internal business environment.

When I started, we had a lot of aged inventory, so we thought our Cyber Week initiative — which we refer to as “cyber” — was a great opportunity to move through that and get it in front of customers. We made some significant experience updates to the website for that period to drive customers to those deals, educate them on the offers, and put that front and center. It was incredibly impactful for that year.

Last year was especially interesting because we launched new brands and had a ton of great new products. We focused more on driving customers to the right product. Right before cyber, we introduced a partnership with Taggstar. It’s a software company that focuses on product urgency, so it informs the customer if other people have a product in their bag or have recently bought the item. That partnership was really impactful during that period.

We also introduced some styling modules on the PDP to help customers find adjacent products that might make sense for them. The goal was to improve the average order value (AOV) and units per transaction (UPT). Those two together made a huge difference for the last cyber. It was all about meeting that unique business challenge. What’s our assortment? What are we trying to get out of cyber? And how do we maximize that experience?

What are some strategies you use to add stickiness and entice the customer to continue shopping, rather than go through the checkout process quickly?

We offer a membership model that’s fun and great for stickiness. We have customers who really know the products. They know the fabrics and they have certain silhouettes that they prefer.

We do a lot to try to encourage this level of engagement. From a marketing perspective, we educate those customers by telling them, “Hey, this product’s back! Go ahead and get it.” On our site, we optimize our upsell experiences to cater to those preferences. We use custom modules on our homepage that are targeted to the individual user and the products that they have bought before. On the PDP, we have a ton of different educational modules also driving that.

What other programs do you offer to help promote customer loyalty and retention?

Being a membership-based company is really interesting because my role is different from a typical ecommerce product manager. We have customers who are built in — they come back month after month to see the new products that we offer.

Recently, we’ve tried to enhance our membership program by providing customers with more benefits the longer they stay with the program. We went through and launched a robust upgrade to our loyalty program. We kept some of the core aspects of the program that customers really liked, such as the point accrual system that you can use on discounts or free products.

Beyond that, we said the longer you stay with us, the more perks that you can get as a member. We have exclusive products that we launch for our Platinum Plus customers, and these are some of our best products. We used surveys, customer calls, and member events to gather this data. We took the time to understand what the customer thought were invaluable benefits and additional perks, and rolled those out into live changes.

Integrating retail and ecommerce technology

In addition to selling online, you also have brick-and-mortar stores. How do you ensure a cohesive experience for members, whether they’re visiting you in-store or online?

I actually started at Fabletics on our retail side. We do as much as we can to provide the same core experience regardless of the platform or place but adapt it to the unique need. For example, a lot of our loyalty perks are available to redeem in-store as well as online. Sales associates are trained so that if a customer wants to activate some of the rewards or discounts, they can use them in person. It’s not exclusive to the platform or channel.

Beyond that, from a retail integration perspective, we do our best to ensure that a customer can get a very similar experience across platforms. We’ve done a lot to integrate the retail technology with our ecommerce technology, which has helped to build that bridge for the customer.

What’s your approach for uncovering customer pain points for both the in-person and web experience?

We have a robust data analytics suite internally, and this has been hugely impactful for our team. We use Tableau for customer reporting, as well as funnel analysis tools. When reviewing some of our quiz performance analytics, we found that if customers chose a certain question on the quiz, they had a higher drop-off rate. It was because there was a slightly variant path that we were providing to get more data. We made a simple change to eliminate that question and saw an immediate improvement in quiz completion rates.

On the in-person side, we do as much as we can to speak with the customer. We have a fantastic partnership with our member services team, which does a great job of servicing customer feedback from our different channels. They help us synthesize those themes and get in front of potential challenges.

Further, we try to meet customers in person. We host “meet the member” events a couple of times a year that are technology-focused. All of our employees also go to brick-and-mortar Fabletics sites once or twice a year, work the store, and talk to customers. We found some great feedback from that. We’ve seen some engineers chat with a customer in the store and pull up their laptop to make a change at that exact moment. That real, in-person connection is super meaningful.

Education as a method to reduce churn

You mentioned being a membership-based company. Regarding your subscription model, do you have any strategies or tips to share that help reduce churn on subscriptions?

It’s all about providing membership benefits that the customer really enjoys. It’s easy to get lost in the spiral of knowing your brand and what you offer, and thinking it’s meaningful. But it’s crucial to validate things with customers and ask them if a particular perk makes sense to them or not. We’ve been focusing on that over the last couple of years, and it’s had a positive impact. I mentioned our loyalty program revamp. That was a focused effort in this area.

We’ve also done smaller things like improving our shipping times, which was a big area of feedback. Our supply chain team did a great job of shopping deals, and we found that reducing shipping time actually did help with retention because if someone gets their package quicker, they’re more excited about the product. It made for a better experience overall.

Beyond that, when we think about the cancellation flow or what happens if a customer wants to opt out of our membership program. We want to provide an easy experience, but at the same time, we also want to use that as an opportunity to educate them on the program or benefits. We found that if you start from that place of education, that’s an effective way to reduce churn. Usually, identifying and closing a gap in understanding can reduce cancellation altogether.

How do you collaborate with your marketing teams to ensure your product messaging aligns with customer expectations and brand identity?

We kind of live by this maxim internally called “just one team.” Even though there are different departments and teams internally, we try to blur the lines as much as we can to meet the customer’s needs. I have great relationships with our leaders in marketing — the folks on the ground who are actually doing the work. I try to keep a fluid, open dialogue back and forth in terms of priority, strategy changes, and what our goals are. That’s proved super effective.

Your role is pretty multifaceted. How do you work on improving your own efficiency and productivity?

Internally, I’m a bit of a productivity nerd. A friend and I created a Productivity 101 course a couple of years ago. I am a huge fan of trial and error and figuring out what works for you. Too often, people will read one book with one perspective and try to live life that way. I’m a fan of picking pieces that already work for your personal workflow, trying them out, and keeping them if they continue to work well.

For example, I’m a big fan of the two-minute rule, which says that if you can do it in two minutes, don’t add it to your to-do list — just do it. That one’s so productive. I’ve taught that to our engineering team, and sometimes they say, “I need a two-minute rule ticket” because they just want to get things done.

Finally, what are your thoughts on the future of retail experiences, especially in terms of technology and customer engagement?

I love the blending of cross-channel shopping. There’s so much potential. For me, I’m particularly excited about geolocation, beacon technology, RFID technology, and enabling our digital capabilities into a retail environment, particularly around predicting what customers are interested in. That way, when a customer comes into the store, we might know who they are, which products they’ve bought recently, etc. The associate will be primed to help them shop and get through the store quicker. There’s a lot of opportunity in this space to tap into current technology.

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