Caroline Swarbrick on making marketing more human (Vistaprint)
Caroline Swarbrick, Senior Director of Marketing, Sales & Customer Experience at Vistaprint sits down with Mark Jones to discuss the impact of good customer experience.
A 2018 PwC survey revealed that even as technology improves and automation becomes more prevalent, more than 80% of Australian consumers said that they will want more human interaction with brands in the future, not less.
With this dynamic in mind, how are you making your marketing more human?
Vistaprint’s Senior Director of Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience, Caroline Swarbrick encourages marketers to think about how they can build on their customer experience - from physical interactions to digital engagements.
“We had the technology that allowed us to be one of the first online print providers that was able to produce small volumes quickly,” Caroline says. “But our research found that small businesses’ needs were much greater than just the final product that they were asking to be delivered.”
This understanding of the customer experience was the driving force behind Vistaprint’s transition from being a printing provider to becoming a “complete marketing partner to small businesses.”
Vistaprint implemented this by joining forces with 99designs, a global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love.
The success of this platform is not a result of AI alone, according to Caroline, as she believes that automation is less impactful without the human touch.
“I think that the space that we play in really well is the mix of technology tools, but also human interaction. We know that a lot of small businesses don't have the design tools, but also want that reassurance and that support,” says Caroline.
“It's really about how do we make sure that those contacts are really high quality and that they are achieving the purpose of the visit, the purpose of that conversation? So, with that, I think human interaction is actually really important to us.”
Caroline says this shift from being perceived as a printing provider to a printing partner has provided a creative storytelling opportunity for the brand to empower small businesses to seize opportunities in the present with their marketing.
“We’ve moved into a space that allows small businesses to see us as a true marketing partner, a one-stop shop, and also a source of inspiration and content and alignment to their brand, values and mission.”
Check out this episode of The CMO Show to hear from Caroline, and find out how marketers can strike a balance between AI and human empathy to make an impact through their marketing.
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Transcript
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Caroline Swarbrick
Mark Jones:
If there’s one thing we have learned from the past two years it's that in a digital world, we must engage with our customers on a much deeper level. Understanding how they think and what they believe is critical. After all, people want to do business with people. We humans are hard-wired to want relationships and meaningful interactions. So in a world where everything is digital, how can we make our marketing more human?
Mark Jones:
Hello friends! Mark Jones here. How are ya? Great to have you with us again on The CMO Show for conversation with yet another marketing leader at a brand who cares about purpose beyond profit. My guest today is Caroline Swarbrick, she’s Senior Director, Marketing, Sales & Customer Experience at global printing and design company, Vistaprint.
Mark Jones: Caroline has a really diverse marketing background - having worked for organisations including Oxfam, Esprit and Seafolly. Importantly for me, she’s got a really genuine, palpable passion for the cross section between creativity, data and storytelling - you can feel it when you talk to her. We had this great conversation about how marketers can adapt to the immense change brought about by digital transformation. And in particular, why it’s important to tell the stories of a businesses’ multifaceted impact on customers. I really hope you enjoy the interview. Let’s hear what Caroline has to say.
Mark Jones:
Caroline Swarbrick. She's Senior Director of Marketing, Sales and Customer experience at Vistaprint. Thanks for joining us.
Caroline Swarbrick:
Thanks for having me, Mark.
Mark Jones:
Now, tell me a little bit about your background. Tell me about your heart for working with people, causes and how that's informed your career.
Caroline Swarbrick:
Absolutely. Yeah. So, I think I've got quite a strange potted history across my LinkedIn, but I think in a way it does tell a story as to where I've ended up today. So, I actually did a Fashion Design and Management degree, and it was during that degree that I started to specialise my dissertation in, “What would it take for fair trade to become a really mainstream trading mechanic?” So I was really interested to understand, “How is big business operating and particularly the fashion industry, knowing the reputation that it had, particularly at the time, for being both a big pollutant, but also for labour laws and crises?” And I wanted to understand what were the alternatives and what would it take to change that perception and that view. And as I started to go deeper into that, it really started to make me wonder, “What would it then take, for me as an individual, to specialise in that area?”
Caroline Swarbrick:
So I actually then sought out an internship, went to Nepal for six months and worked as a fair trade designer, buyer and importer for a small British brand who were looking for a way to actually increase how fashionable their products were, to increase their target market opportunity in the UK. So an amazing experience working with amazing groups that were part of the fair trade group Nepal.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So that experience led me to seek out other ways that I could become involved in really cause-related and purpose-driven marketing, which led me to the role within Oxfam that was perfectly aligned to my experience. So it was buying, it was fair trade and it was a big company within Oxford. At the same time though, I started a small fair trade consultancy to see whether or not my experience in Nepal could help other businesses to also start to change their practises. So I was fortunate to actually do both of those things for the next four years before I made the move to Australia. And it was at that point that I was trying to work out, what did I do next?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Was this my career path? Had I decided it? Was it set? Or actually, how was I going to have a bigger impact? Because I could see that the impact I was having was still limited within Oxfam to a really small target audience of people who were thinking cause first and product second, and were really purchasing for the cause rather than purchasing because they really wanted the product. And that to me was also not sustainable, because that to me was then potentially not allowing them to buy the product that they wanted to purchase.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So I was then looking for, how do I find larger commercial brands that have a purpose and values aligned to my own, but that would potentially allow me to make bigger impact? So, with that, I started working for Esprit s. Then led me to Seafolly, which was really about female empowerment at a time when they were moving from being the Victoria's Secret of swimwear to really being, “How do we empower women within their own bodies to make decisions that make themselves comfortable rather than thinking about how they look for other people?”
Mark Jones:
It's interesting how we go from an experience like Oxfam, and I've seen this in some people's careers, where it's like, "Well, how else can I have that broader impact? Where can I get involved in change at a corporate level?" But interestingly enough, it's the reverse of what we more commonly see, which is people rising up through the marketing ranks, so to speak, in corporate land and then the dive off into the not-for-profit land, right? You've done it in reverse.
Caroline Swarbrick:
I have, which is strange. I'd always said to myself as well, when I left NGOs, that I would go back. This was about me cutting my commercial teeth and making sure that when I went back, this would be my moment to say, "I could do the best of both. I could make an NGO as successful and big as a commercial infrastructure."
Mark Jones:
Building on this idea about how you find a connection to work, and - here we are in who knows how many weeks to go of lockdown the rest of Australia is stuck in, right? And one of the enduring themes when we think about how we connect to work and our purpose and what the brand is doing, it really has brought a lot of that into sharp relief, right?
Mark Jones:
So we start thinking about, "Well, what's sustainable? What's sustainable for me as a person? What's sustainable for us as a brand?" It actually gets really quite meaningful very quickly when we start thinking about, "Well, how am I going to take my teams forward?" In that context, as you think about your team and the organisation that you're working with, how have you been processing all of that? How are you making the work that you do connect? Are you having to really focus more on the team? Are you working at really amplifying your values? What are you finding is the most meaningful way forward at the moment?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Yeah, I think if I shuffle that into two parts. There's the team part of it - so I've been with Vistaprint for 10 months. So I joined while we were working remotely. As an organisation, we've made huge leaps in how we provide the right tooling and the right support for the mental health and wellbeing of our teams while in remote environments. So I think it was one of the reasons why I chose Vistaprint as a brand to work for. We've grown the team enormously during that time because of some technological changes and also a strategic change to move more to a decentralised model where our central teams are really there for providing strategy and support tooling, but our local teams are driving the agenda and the outcomes. So for me, that's been really exciting, but it has meant that 50% of my team have been hired during remote working periods.
Caroline Swarbrick:
We've been intermittently back into a collaboration space. So as an organisation, we no longer have offices. And I think particularly for those of us who are creative and in marketing, where we really bounce off each other and need that growth of ideas that come from multiple heads rather than one, it has been a challenge. I've become really familiar with mirror boards and mural boards and all the different tools that we can use to collaborate, and asynchronous working. But I do miss the face-to-face, and those collaboration moments have been really key for me trying to build the team.
Mark Jones:
I think we can all empathise to it to a degree and particularly the creative side of things. You talk about being able to meet in open spaces. Hey, let's talk about Vistaprint and I'd love to get a quick overview of the brand from you. But I guess maybe the starting place of course, is that by definition, I think you do what you say on the tin, right? It's printing. But I think a lot of us probably have a particular thing in mind when we start talking about printing services. Do you want to just give us that big picture for us?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Of course. So I think printing and really great customised marketing is what we've always been known for. And that's because right from the inception, the plan was to be able to provide small businesses with the same access to great design tools, but also to great value printing services that meant that they were able to compete on the same level, playing field as much larger companies, which was really facilitated by the technology. That's gone a lot further in recent days, months, years towards a really design-centric approach, which is a combination of the ways that we know our customers like to design. So that's designing themselves with great templates, designing through our design teams, and then most recently our latest acquisition of the 99design opportunity as well.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So connecting small businesses with a network of great graphic design opportunity. So I think that even though our name awareness and our general population awareness sits in the print space, it's really about print design and digital, and moving that into a space that allows small businesses to see us as a true marketing partner, a one-stop shop, and also a source of inspiration and content and alignment to their brand, values and mission. So, it's definitely evolved a lot over the last couple of years.
Mark Jones:
Wow. Okay. I feel like we need to unpack a bit of that, because there is a lot going on there. But what I wanted to just start with from a marketing and a brand perspective is that we're all aware of the idea of a commodity service or a product like printing that effectively needs to climb up the value chain and start. One of the reasons can be for commercial - start looking for higher margin opportunities - but also it can be that we need to differentiate ourselves or change the positioning.
Mark Jones:
So, there seems to have been quite a lot of strategic thought into what's going on. And if you think about your traditional competitors in the print space, can you just give us a sense about how you've approached that? I mean, you are relatively new, but how has the brand itself and you and your journey, how have you come to understand that from a strategic perspective?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Absolutely. We had the great technology that allowed us to be one of the first online print providers that was able to produce small volumes quickly and deliver that to our customers successfully. That journey and that competence has allowed us to look more at the purpose and the reason for being, which is really about, “How do we support small businesses?” And what we found in our research was actually that small businesses’ needs were much greater than just the final product that they were asking to be delivered. It was actually, “How do we take that step back and say, why are they choosing that product? What is the design of that product? What's its purpose? What's driving that?” So it's really, “How do we move towards supporting small businesses so that they don't need to go off and find multiple different people to support them?”
Caroline Swarbrick:
We know that lots of our consumers tell us that they are relying on the favours of friends. We've all got that one friend who's a graphic designer, that you start a new business and you call up and go, "Hey mate, can you give me a logo?" So, we're saying, "Actually, that's not always feasible for all small businesses, but it might also not give them the best results." So, by having a partner that can really understand the context of brand strategy and then help them to deliver that through all of the different assets and creative that will need to be delivered, as well as give inspiration on, "This is what other people in your industry are doing at the same time. These are the tools that they're using to get their brand out there, the marketing materials." So, it's really for us now become a platform to deliver really great content that, at the end of the day, is still often manifested as a physical product. But that's really now just one part of a multi-point journey.
Mark Jones:
What I like about what you're doing there is really getting inside the minds of the SME. I imagine business owners, but also some of the key decision-makers or the people who've been tasked with achieving some kind of outcome, whether it's collateral or websites or who knows what, right? So, how has that been a journey for you to really make sure that you understand the mindset of the SME customer? What process have you gone through?
Caroline Swarbrick:
A lot of research. I think that's been one of the most amazing things about joining Vistaprint is seeing the maturity of our commercial insights team. I think our customer insights is an incredible process for understanding what our brand ladder looks like, how we rank against each of the attributes that feels important to us, but also what else is important to our end consumer? And when I talk about an end consumer, it's predominantly small businesses. So it could be the owner or it could be the marketing manager who's purchasing, but it can also be a consumer. We also produce a lot of amazing photo books and poster prints and T-shirts and mugs, which are for personalised gifting opportunity. So, that's also where our personalisation journey fits into our strategy. Because identifying what mindset a customer is in at the time is super important.
Caroline Swarbrick:
But I think for us, there's a combination of different pieces of research that have led us to understand more about our customers. And as we delve more into our brand and our purpose, we're also looking at brandless studies run through the key channels we've been testing, our new creative in understanding more and more about how different messages are resonating with both existing customers, but also with potential customers and with the general population. So, it's super fascinating the amount of research. And across countries as well. Because we're a global organisation, being able to see the nuances and the localisation required in those messages between our key countries and between our key demographics has been really eye-opening in starting to craft that strategy.
Mark Jones:
I see the customer experience aspect of your title in all of that, that you're just explaining. As I hear you talk about really understanding that at a global scale, my mind went straight to stakeholders and how you segment that many people, right? On a global basis. So, how do you get your heads around so many different experiences? And you touched on the emotions there, so how people are responding to and how they're actually feeling about the process they're engaged in. That just sounds enormously complex.
Caroline Swarbrick:
Yes. Yes, it is. I think particularly when it comes to customer experience, one of the biggest transitions we've been on in the last 12 months is the re-platform of our previous site experience onto our new platform, which is a suite of commerce, tools, microservices. The plan for that transition, of which we are a number of countries in and number of countries still to go, is that we will be able to have a common technology stack that allows that localisation of content and product, and also of that key message to be able to be delivered to our customers. So, we do see a huge number of the same baseline values, purpose, and mission that comes through from all of our countries that we currently serve. But then we do see those nuances in what's important to our customer, whether or not they prefer to self-serve or they want to have help and support delivered by a human, whether or not they prefer that to be delivered by video tutorials and engagement.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So it will then allow us as individual country managers to be able to say, "This is what I'm going to change on my site." And then across that we have our suite of consistent measurement and reporting tools that allow us to then identify what's working in certain markets. If we have other markets that have similarities in terms of their consumer, we then pass those test and learn opportunities onto those additional markets. So it's a hub and spoke model with the spokes of all of the different, what we call line of businesses, so mostly driven by countries but some are driven by product, with a really clear way of engaging across so that we continue to test and learn in each market but optimise across multiple markets.
Mark Jones:
What works best for your customers? Is it a workflow that's quite prescribed? And so, in the broadest terms, you develop a brand strategy or you've got a sense of your brand identity. You follow a couple of processes to really nail let down. And then obviously you end up with some various executions, whether it's brochures or designs or other forms of content. That sort of thing at a high level is pretty straightforward. But do customers prefer to be led like that, or is there increasingly a shift towards almost like a choose your own adventure approach where they'll want to have a stronger say in the way that they use your platform?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Yeah. That's a really interesting question. And it's one that we're battling with internally and continuing to test and evolve our own thought process on whether or not there is a preferred one size fits all. I think what we found so far is that we've often grouped our customers by industry and made an assumption that that's going to be the primary driver to the products that they choose and the services that they want to select. And what we're now identifying is that there are a number of other underlying identification tools and pieces of data that we can use to help to guide which experience is going to be their preferred route. And actually a lot of that comes down to aspiration. So, the biggest part of this is identifying, if I use a coffee shop in a food and beverage industry as an example, "When I start my coffee shop, is it so that I can provide for my family and run it for the next 30 years until I retire, or is it so that I can be the next Starbucks?"
Caroline Swarbrick:
And the difference between those two drives a choice between, "I would like support to deliver a prescribed experience," which is the very linear route, or whether or not you want your choose your own journey. And I love that language that you just used. So I think that that's one of the key differentiators for us. And the key opportunities is helping people to identify which journey they would like to go on and personalising that journey so that they have, not an overwhelming number of options, but the number that is overwhelming varies depending on where they sit on that aspiration curve.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. I think the choose your own adventure model is another way of talking about data-driven personalisation. And personalisation, of course, is a long running story in marketing, in digital marketing, and how we can develop tools and integrated solutions that make that possible, right? And I wonder, as you think about where you're going, how are you planning to use artificial intelligence or other tools? It sounds to me like you'll be forever developing software to make all of that happen. So, yeah, how are you thinking about that from the brand side of things?
Caroline Swarbrick:
Yeah, it's a really interesting conversation around how we use AI through our MarTech tools, those that we have sourced externally and brought into our ecosystem, and also those that we're building locally as well. We have really great examples of really developed proficiency, and particularly in some areas of performance marketing, where as an organisation we have very developed responses. So, if we look at our paid search, for example, the level of partnership that we have with Google and the level of automation and testing that we do there is really quite phenomenal in terms of identifying the customer, their previous relationship with us, which message is going to work for them and how we serve that to them through the right medium. When it then comes down to brand and content, I think that's still an area that we are exploring as we move further into our brand journey.
Caroline Swarbrick:
We've had multiple different executions. And again, through the relative AI of allowing the machine to determine which one is then shown to customers, I think that connecting the dots through all of the channels so that journey becomes consistent when you have different parts of your tech stack that are not always natively integrated, is an ongoing challenge actually. Because really great personalisation can lead to a channel engagement, which then doesn't convert if that same personalisation isn't consistent across the site experiences and then across their post-purchase channels. So, it's definitely something that is really close to my heart, something we're working on and something the team are really passionate about as well, is how do we find that single thread and run that personalization through our whole customer experience.
Mark Jones:
And so suddenly now I'm seeing where you've got marketing, sales and customer experience all bolted together, right? Because you're thinking about the whole experience. You're thinking about where we gain customers, where we lose them, the sorts of things that they want, what do they want in the future? There's a whole lot happening there. This must be a huge creative appeal for yourself, right? What's the sense that you have about the best way to make all of that happen? What's your approach to leadership or where are you getting your inspiration from? How are you trying to connect all those threads?
Caroline Swarbrick:
So, I think for me it's really exciting because it is the juncture of creativity and also analytics, which is also why I'm so passionate about marketing. But that total customer experience proposition is really where I think we have to be leading in the future if we're to get away from looking at the key metrics of, does the customer shop with us as a single transaction, and moving people to consider real relationships with customers as part of an engagement and loyalty model. So, we talk a lot about lifetime value within Vistaprint and how we actually drive a long-term relationship with our customers, as opposed to trying to drive a quick win, which for us would be a quick purchase. But moving towards that means we really have to be looking across the full marketing funnel, because it's everything from the acquisition strategy and targeting and how our brand purpose aligns to that vision, all the way through every single touch point, but then also how we engage with them after the purchase and how we make sure that we're personalising that journey ongoing.
Caroline Swarbrick:
In terms of my leadership in that space, I think I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by an incredible team who form all of the different cogs in that particular wheel so that we're able to run together. The big things we're working on this year are really, how do we make sure that we have individual channel owners, but also those cross-channel working streams for how we support and identify our customers at each of the life stages? So, life stage and aspiration, the value of a customer and those identifying actions for how we seek new high value customers, but also retain those customers, runs across each of the channels. So, it's very much a matrix organisation that I lead. But a lot of really great people, and making sure that the working environment is fun and challenging, and that we stay passionate and curious about how we can best serve our customer. And constant testing and experimentation is really my style.
Mark Jones:
Going back to this big picture business model thing that we're talking about, let me ask you. What business do you think you're really in?
Caroline Swarbrick:
I guess if I was to answer as Vistaprint, then I would say the business of allowing small businesses to live their dreams. I think it's one of the interesting pieces around value and purpose-driven marketing is, what are we actually selling? I believe it is allowing small businesses to bring their dreams to life so it's going from dream into actual reality.
Mark Jones:
I think this is part of the intrigue for me is that - it can actually be a little bit misleading when you think about the emotional experience that customers are looking for and you're touching on, right? There's a whole psychology to leading small business. So, it actually puts you more in the customer satisfaction space that it does in any of the outputs and the tools that you offer.
Caroline Swarbrick:
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the reasons why our satisfaction scores, whether or not that's our customer satisfaction score from our care teams or our online satisfaction score, has really become our north star in recent months. So, we've identified that being able to support our customer through whichever channels, whether it's increasing the value of online chats and the number of touch points that we can put in. We're trying to alleviate any pain problems in our studio at the moment by launching Studio Live. So, at any moment, somebody can pop in and take over your design if you're really experiencing that frustration. So, how do we find a way to make sure that all of our tools are really accessible to people that we know are, in the majority, not designers? They are doing this as a means to an end, to be able to support their dream of launching their small business or running their small business or growing their small business. So, we're looking for ways to make that as easy as possible and to provide the guidance and help and support at every moment.
Mark Jones:
I quite like that idea, the whole dream thing, right? So, design is often where dreams become manifest. Does this look and feel how I'd imagined it would? And speaking from a creative perspective myself, there's a lot of work that goes into that, right? And I'm interested, maybe as a way of rounding this out and thinking about sustainability in its broader sense, automation is obviously a big part of design now, as well as all the components of your business. And then more existentially on the SME side, your customers, they're seeing many, many parts of their own businesses become automated. So, how do you see the business growing into the future as we start seeing more layers of complexity soaked up by automation and tools and insights? Where will you make sure that you've got that value? And I know that you've spoken about customer satisfaction. But from your point of view, what will be the thing that keeps people coming back or that creates that relationship that hooks people in to a set of experiences with yourselves versus anyone else?
Caroline Swarbrick:
I think that the space that we play in really well is the mix of technology tools, but also the human interaction, which is really important to our small businesses. So, we know that a lot of small businesses don't have the design tools, but also want that reassurance and that support.It's really about, how do we make sure that those contacts are really high quality and that they are achieving the purpose of the visit, the purpose of that conversation? So, with that, I think human interaction is actually really important to us. Our 99designs is built on the fact that it's an individual who is designing for you. With full automation and design, you are never going to have the full creativity that you would have from an individual bespoke design.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So, I think for us, it's about the combination of the two. Allowing customers to have a quick win design if they know what they're looking for, or to have somebody who gives them the help, guidance and support. And then helping people to align that to their total marketing strategy and brand strategy.
Mark Jones:
So it seems to me, there's a humanity that's essential. So, we're automating, but yet we're still human. There is a simplicity component, and then there's a customer experience component. How would you summarise your lessons and maybe the encouragement you would have for other people that are thinking about their brand proposition with the scope that you've been discussing today?
Caroline Swarbrick:
I think the key thing is really starting with the audience. So, that key piece of research in terms of understanding who you're talking to and who your brand strategy is trying to connect to. Because brands are really just a collection of the emotional perception that customers have about the product and the service that you're putting out there. So understanding who that audience really is, and then understanding how to craft the right values and the right messages that will resonate with that customer. That's really key. And how you do that fits before you move into any of the automation and personalisation, because they're the bits that won't change.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So, your message itself, if we take environmental sustainability as the example, if you know your customer and your brand, therefore, cares about environmental sustainability, what your message is today versus what it might be in six months time might be driven by global agendas and summits, but the underlying value is still going to be your environmental sustainability. So, understanding the difference between what is completely fixed and the messages that will need to evolve over time and continually reviewing those to make sure that everything that you're putting into that AI machine, because it's only as smart as the human that's loading it, is all a collection of things that you want your customer to see. And then starting to put really smart people who understand the data.
Caroline Swarbrick:
So, there are certain things that just need the human touch as well. Mark Jones: It sounds like there's going to be no shortage of things for you to talk about in the future with your customers, as it relates to building that engagement and how we’re helping you and the latest developments on the platform. Caroline Swarbrick, thank you so much for being our guest today on The CMO Show.
Caroline Swarbrick:
Thank you, Mark. Lovely to meet you.
Mark Jones:
So that was my conversation with Caroline Swarbrick. It was really great to talk with her about how Vistaprint is empowering small businesses to seize opportunities in the present with their marketing. And I think Vistaprint is a great example of a brand that has listened to their customer’s pain points, and made changes to the customer experience for the better. And as things continue to change in the world around us of course, it’s a great reminder that we must always keep focus on developing our customer experience. Now just before I go, if you have a topic or guest suggestion - do drop us a line at cmoshow@impactinstitute.com.au. We welcome your feedback. Also like, comment on and share our episodes across the socials. Share the love with the marketing community, and make sure that our stories and all these amazing insights from our guests get out there! So that's it for this episode of The CMO Show. As always, it's been great to have you with us. Until next time.