Over the course of its 80-year history, Fender has acquired “legendary” status. The guitar maker has become a household name and built a loyal, passionate fan base along the way. But with such an expansive reach — one that extends across its branded channels as well as a robust network of national, regional and local retailers — Fender has sought better ways to understand the behaviors of these consumers and engage with them in more intentional and relevant ways.
To embark on this new marketing chapter, Fender is tapping Bluecore to help its team:
- Effectively dissect its customer file to gauge how many contacts are newly acquired versus long-term, highly engaged consumers;
- Understand the state of consumers’ relationships with the brand and determine the types of marketing messages and triggers that are most effective;
- Send timely emails and SMS messages that align to inventory levels, timely deals and other triggers that will drive action; and
- Develop a foundation for more personalized marketing strategies that successfully drive demand and foster long-term loyalty.
Achieving this level of personalization and marketing effectiveness is difficult given the range of Fender’s channels and customer touch points. “What Fender does really well is they think about their brand management and marketing through the lens of [its vendor partners],” said Jason Grunberg, CMO of Bluecore in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “When you think about their distribution network, it’s not just the Guitar Centers, it’s the local music shops. And so Fender can’t just be a steward of the direct-to-consumer business; [it also needs to invest] in that entire network it’s working with, because those organizations can’t always afford to do brand marketing and advertising at the level that Fender can.”
Fender has a registration process that allows the brand to “bridge the retail-direct-to-consumer-divide,” Grunberg explained. Even if consumers buy their new guitars at a retail partner, they can go online and register their instruments on the Fender site. “That is an important part of the journey because your wholesale partners aren’t going to give you that data,” he noted.
And in Grunberg’s experience, consumers are far more likely to register a high consideration purchase with the brand itself “because there’s so much more you can get access to from a digital experience standpoint,” he explained. For example, customers can get details on the latest gear and accessories and even learn how other Fender customers are using the product.
“Fender has been particularly successful with this strategy and has created a very harmonic relationship with its retail partners because those local resellers know the value of Fender brand marketing and pushing the customer to take that action,” said Grunberg.
Evolving from Channel-Specific to Customer-First Marketing
Fender has the advantage of being a well-known, respected and trusted brand; that itself is a powerful marketing lever. “Fender is one of those heritage brands that is a bit of a beacon,” noted Grunberg. “They are what I call brand-performance focused, which is where brand and performance marketing marry each other.”
Although Fender has seen a significant boost in sales since 2021, largely driven by its customer acquisition investments, the company wanted to take a more balanced approach, investing more in retention and reactivation. Additionally, because Fender had previously taken a very channel-driven approach to marketing, its messaging was on brand but it also was siloed. Messaging and campaigns didn’t flow seamlessly throughout the customer journey and weren’t highly tailored to where consumers were in their overall relationship with the brand.
Advertisement
In order to marry brand and performance marketing in a way that balances acquisition and retention, marketing teams must really understand their consumers, Grunberg explained. “I mean that at the individual level,” he said. “You have the enthusiast that picked up a guitar during COVID and has been on that learning journey, and then you have your true musicians who perform, whether it’s a side hobby or a side hustle, so what they use as an instrument is really important. Fender has always known that they need to recognize who they’re speaking with, whether that be through that network of retailers or direct to consumer.”
Using Bluecore’s identification-based technology, Fender is now implementing more customer-centric triggered email and broadcast SMS campaigns. Consumers can now self-identify through white boxes on the site. Additionally, Bluecore’s transparent ID network allows Fender to identify customers who come to the site from a new device or different browser.
“We’re focused on not just how we get bottom-of-funnel for triggered use cases; we’re getting into product affinities, inventory alerts and all things that have to deal with how consumers engage with their products, and using inventory dynamics to communicate urgency,” Grunberg said. He explained that this is a case where someone may start the journey with a local retailer, go to Fender.com to get more information and then receive timely alerts and triggers if the brand is low on inventory. “That’s an example of real-time personalization that’s effective for both parties.”
In the longer term, Fender is thinking about messages promoting new product arrivals that could also build brand affinity. “We are pleased to partner with the Bluecore team, aligning closely around our growth objectives,” said Jonni Murphy, Director of CRM at Fender in a statement. “In our evaluation process, Bluecore’s strategic analysis and its suggestions for increasing customer engagement demonstrated their deep understanding of our business and their focus on identifying opportunities for sustainable growth.”
Turning Inactive Customers into Opportunity
In the early days of their partnership, Bluecore dug into Fender’s customer file to better understand “customer movement”: What percentage of the Fender customer base was new, how many customers it was projecting to acquire over the next year and what percentage were active customers that made a purchase over the last year. The companies were even able to gauge what percentage of the customer file was inactive for 12, 24 or more months, and how many customers they were able to successfully reactivate.
“Fender is a very successful organization, and they continue to grow revenue year over year, and, for them, it was about how to maximize their reach,” Grunberg said. At the end of the customer movement assessment, the companies were able to “make hypotheses of what was going to help us move the segments and cohorts of those customers. Fender recognized an opportunity to improve on identification of those they do have a direct relationship with.”
Now, with Bluecore, Fender can recognize and effectively engage its customers, even if they don’t buy directly from the brand on-site. “Then you can use our data anywhere to determine how you’re going to impact the site, email and other channels,” according to Grunberg.
