Watch the webinar recording here.
It’s not easy being a new brand in an industry with a lot of established players. However, if you can use your incumbent status to take a fresh look at the marketplace, you can end up turning the entire category on its head.
LOLA has done just that. The forward-thinking feminine care brand has overturned the status quo with their totally new approach. By highlighting what actually goes into their products, providing a convenient subscription experience, and openly talking about women’s health issues that were previously taboo, they’ve created the first lifelong brand for a woman’s body.
While they started with tampons, the brand has quickly expanded their range, now offering pads, wipes, condoms, and other reproductive wellness products. Despite their rapid growth, they’ve kept their focus firmly on delivering great, personal experiences to every customer.
On our latest webinar (hosted by Glossy), LOLA’s Senior Manager of Customer Strategy and Operations Caroline Dell spoke with Kustomer’s Senior Manager of Marketing Programmes Stacey Dolchin about their strategy and approach to delivering a highly personal DTC experience. For more information on delivering a great DTC experience, check out our whitepaper.
Webinar: How LOLA disrupts personal care with personalised, direct-to-consumer experiences
Pursuing Purpose
Jordana Kier and Alex Friedman founded LOLA in 2015 with a simple idea—women shouldn’t have to compromise when it comes to their reproductive health. It all started when the two women realised that the tampon brands they had been loyal to for over a decade weren’t don’t disclose what they’re made out of. What was actually in those tampons? This desire for straightforward transparency and frank discussion about a topic that we’ve traditionally shied away from has animated the brand ever since.
This unique perspective, coupled with high-quality products and a smart business model, has helped them shaped the broader conversation around women’s health since launch. By empowering women with information, they’re helping their customers have more control over what they put in their bodies. By focusing on questions asked by real women, they’re dismantling the stigma that surrounds female reproductive wellness by creating a two-way dialogue with an engaged community. Every communication channels is an opportunity for a conversation—-website, social media, email newsletters, and their blog, The Broadcast.
By answering questions that their competitors aren’t with a relatable and no-nonsense brand voice, LOLA has both become a resource for their customers and started a national conversation about reproductive health.
Rewarding Relationships
LOLA’s goal is to create relationships that last a lifetime. They receive 1000+ emails per week from customers about personal topics, often asking questions to LOLA’s agents before consulting with a doctor. To return the trust their customers have in them, LOLA’s team goes above and beyond to make sure their products are rushed to women wherever they need them. From sending tampons to a customer’s hotel via Uber, to overnighting condoms so that they arrive in time for a honeymoon, LOLA works overtime to create a memorable experience.
For many younger customers and their parents, their ongoing relationship with the brand starts with LOLA’s First Period Kit. After posting a video where LOLA founders told their first period stories, they were inundated with moms reaching out to ask if they offered products for teen—a great example of their ongoing dialogue with customers driving product development.
For their most recent launch of Sex by LOLA, they sent 100 loyal customers mailers of their new products. It was an easy way to get feedback while rewarding loyalty, and one customer even emailed to say that she loved the products and, as a single mom, they inspired her to start dating again.
A Single View in a Single Platform
All of this wouldn’t be possible without a platform to manage their relationships and provide incredible experiences. Their previous platform wasn’t linked to their back-end system, so they had little context on the customer’s order history or subscription details. The same was true for incoming messages on social. With Kustomer, it’s now easy for their agents to switch between social and support channels, helping their customers on their preferred channel at a moment’s notice.
Context Cards with buttons enable the team to take direct action such as modifying, cancelling, or scheduling a subscription, and checking on shipping status for an order. Clicking on the “Modify” button, for example, takes them directly to the customer’s subscription, where they can edit the frequency, products, etc. This makes it easier for the team to spot orders that have been placed but may need modifications. LOLA has a search for customers who have emailed AND placed an order in the past day, so that agents can make modifications to the order before it actually ships.
Features like Workflows and Bulk Messaging have helped LOLA handle larger issues proactively. When their subscription management page experienced a brief outage, LOLA created a workflow based on keywords that automatically identified and then proactively bulk messaged thousands of impacted customers to notify them of the issue. As a result, LOLA was able to handle over 5x their normal volume at a highly-sensitive time.
Since combining all their order, subscription, and customer data into the Kustomer platform, LOLA’s reply time has decreased by 15%, while their agent efficiency has increased by 15%. Watch the webinar recording.
A Brand for Life
LOLA’s mission is one-of-a-kind, and with Kustomer, they’re able to scale while living up to the values that inspired them in the first place. For a brand that empowers and informs women, LOLA’s team needs to be just as empowered and informed to deliver great service. Building meaningful, ongoing relationships is a major part of what LOLA stands for. With Kustomer, their agents are able to get a holistic view of every subscriber and see their entire history with the brand. With more streamlined support, they can focus on what matters—a groundbreaking, personal experience. Delivering service with a purpose requires a robust and flexible platform, and with Kustomer, LOLA is building relationships that will last a lifetime.
For more information about building a great DTC experience, check out our whitepaper.
Webinar: How LOLA disrupts personal care with personalised, direct-to-consumer experiences
