The Urban Outfitters app

LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ – An Urban Outfitters’ executive at the Mobile Shopping Summit 2014 said that the brand is focused on measuring key mobile moments to drive lifetime value.

In the panel discussion, “Looking Beyond Base Level Key Performance Indicators to Maximize Long Term Mobile Investment,” the executive looked at longevity and developing an engaged relationship between the brand and consumer. Sure to drive conversion, leveraging mobile in the right ways can cause more dedicated fans.

“We care deeply about the goals of our customers,” said Mike Pitone, senior manager of product management and user experience at Urban Outfitters, Philadelphia. “It’s important for our brand to communicate up to our high management staff that key moments, such as signing up for email, should be at the top of our minds to measure.”

The Mobile Shopping Summit was organized by Worldwide Business Research.

Providing a tool
Being a traditional revenue brand, Urban Outfitters has approached the capabilities of mobile to provide a service for consumers. Targeting millennials, the brand knows its core consumers want to collect, curate and share content, which is reflective on its app.

While there is no strict formula for one, perfect KPI, the brand believes in endless measuring and examining data from all perspectives.

The goals and needs of Urban Outfitters’ customers seem to shift more quickly than technology itself, according to Mr. Pitone, which has led the brand to constant testing, allowing the brand to pivot with the consumer.

The panel discussion

Data gives the brand the ability to quantify the features it offers.

While mobile technology is a leader in today’s marketing efforts, it is not solely about integrating mobile. Urban Outfitters relies heavily on mobile for engagement, but believes that without an offering of a tool and sharable content on its app, engagement would not be the same.

Mr. Pitone assured the audience that if a brand is not engaging with its customers, they will go elsewhere.

Socially inclined
When it comes to which social media platforms to bet on, Urban Outfitters thinks outside the box with an application update earlier this year that heavily played up the retailer’s growing fan base on Wanelo.

According to Wanelo, Urban Outfitters has built up a following on the social site that amasses some of the bigger social sites. At the time, the brand had a following of 2,435,965 on Wanelo, 134,632 on Pinterest and 1,300,245 on Instagram. Urban Outfitters had updated its iPhone app with two new features that reflected this shift towards favoring engagement versus sales in mobile (see story).

Urban Outfitters’ has been experiencing social success by catering content to millennials who are overwhelmed by technology, according to a marketing executive at the Social Commerce Summit at eTail East 2014.

By maintaining social presences that mirror the activity of its followers and sustaining a laid-back approach on its app, Urban Outfitters reels in foot traffic to its stores and loads of user-generated content that directly converts to transactions. Through social campaigns, such as #UOOnYou using Instagram and #NormCore that follows lifestyle trends, the brand inadvertently drives sales while still maintaining a close but casual relationship with its customer (see story).

Urban Outfitters plans to continue to leverage the analytics of mobile to become more acquainted with its consumers.

“Our wish list is being able to track the customer lifetime value,” Mr. Pitone said. “If we can measure that and pivot with our types of customers based on their behaviors, revenue will come.”

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon is an editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York