Deckers Brands, Ugg’s parent company, is a global retailer that sells shoes, apparel and accessories. Up until recently, its marketing “strategy” was not much of a strategy at all. All the departments were independent and lacked communication on whether their initiatives were meaningful. The departments knew they were inadequate because they often found themselves asking each other if the marketing is working. Once Deckers took a deep dive, the team realized there were gaps and fragments within the customer journey. This realization led Deckers to reorient its marketing team to be more customer-centric, which meant prioritizing understanding customers’ situations, perceptions and expectations. This approach also meant investing in a first-party data strategy to connect customer data across multiple touchpoints. First-party data is data you own and collect with direct consent from consumers through interactions on apps and websites and in response to marketing initiatives, like email and loyalty programs. Utilizing first-party data helps brands build direct relationships with their customers, create value, and boost their advertising performance.

Going forward, when the Deckers Brands marketing team noticed a customer trend in the data, they communicated insight throughout the company, influencing everything from media investments to supply chain management. Deckers used Google Analytics 360 to understand how people engaged with its websites. The team then used Google BigQuery to understand and predict customer buying behavior. Finally, the team brought those data-driven insights back into Google Analytics 360 for review and audience creation. The data-driven audience creation enables Deckers to generate mostly qualified leads; this result leads to cheaper customer acquisition, longer customer lifetime value, and more revenue.

In the end, Deckers has shown us how creating a first-party data strategy, using that data to lead marketing initiatives, taking the marketing data and using that feedback to identify patterns of the most valuable customers, then targeting those more valuable customers based on that new data will yield significant results and alignment within departments.