How The Honest Company is Optimizing the Customer Experience with Personalized Storytelling

Let’s be honest – any company with a unique product can create a loyal customer base off the back of that product alone. But, in order to truly differentiate, due attention must be paid not only to the quality of the goods on offer, but also to telling the story about the problems that the products solve, and indeed the whole experience that a brand can offer consumers.

In the realms of ecommerce, The Honest Company is one enterprise through which its founders – Jessica Alba and Brian Lee – discovered a route to quick success by focusing on something that they felt was lacking in competitor offerings: personalized customer experiences.

For the past four years, The Honest Company – a consumer goods ecommerce retailer has emphasized safe, effective and affordable cleaning products and childcare items. And it’s done so in no-small part due to its over-and-above focus on what the retailer’s customers value most about the products it sells.

Listening to Customers – and Reacting

This has been the core ethos ever since the early stages of the company. In the post-Amazon arena, ecommerce is of course almost defined by customer feedback and reviews – and ecommerce retailers do well to listen to what customers are saying. The first baby wipe that The Honest Company offered didn’t hold up – and customers were quick to take to the site to complain about its inefficiencies in cleaning up messy children. No sooner had this feedback reached Alba and Lee, the wipes were removed from the store with immediate effect.

Without delay, the product’s materials and manufacturing was put under review, new sources were found in a matter of weeks, and the new improved product was put online. Today, this seemingly humble baby wipe is one of The Honest Company’s top-selling products. “We don’t make products that we want to make,” explains Lee. “We make the ones our customers demand.”

It’s a strategy that puts The Honest Company’s customers center-stage in the ongoing story that the retailer is telling – a story of millennial moms, of the environment, and of digital communities.

Personalized Storytelling Through Social Media

In an interview with eMarketer, former CMO Chris Thorne explains the defining characteristics of millennial mothers that chime with the core values of The Honest Company.

“Millennial moms value safety, charitable causes and the environment. They have very busy lives – their time is at a premium, so they’re comfortable multitasking. They’re very connected, thoughtful consumers, are highly digital and appreciate quality design as well. I think The Honest Company really resonates with these moms because we offer high-performance, design-forward products that they can trust to be safe for both their families and for the environment.”

Focusing on brand values gives The Honest Company a chance to explain how it makes a positive impact on the world that customers become a part of every time they do business with the retailer – and that adds real value to the brand with increased and sustained loyalty resulting as a natural by-product. Communicating these values comes through tapping into the channels where the retailer knows its digitally-savvy target demographic resides – i.e. through content marketing on social media.

“The growth of digital—and social media in particular—has really allowed for dynamic and personalized storytelling. Our social footprint is extremely powerful, with millions of fans and followers, but we focus on developing one-on-one relationships with our customers vs. simply selling them a product,” says Thorne.

“Content marketing is really important for us. We work hard to build new content almost daily, whether it’s through text, an image, a video or user-generated content. Again, this allows for personalized storytelling. Instead of it being simply about the products, it’s a way for us to get our brand voice out there and to inspire the customers.”

Making Lives Easier

Creating compelling content and products, Thorne adds, helps The Honest Company encourage its customers to truly engage with the brand, as opposed to simply forcing messages upon them.

The value of this approach means that the retailer can take in, analyze and react to customers’ wants, needs and buying behavior. Building meaningful one-on-one relationships with shoppers across digital channels – from email to Facebook – creates a wealth of data that can be mined for insights into exactly what customers are demanding, and personalized customer experiences can then be crafted accordingly.

“Leveraging analytics and integrating it into [the customer’s] shopping experience” Alba told TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY 2016 conference, enables the customization of “relevant branded content, so that not every customer is getting the exact same thing, but you're getting something that matters to you."

The promise to deliver safe, and effective products continues to trend positively with young moms, who are putting more and more emphasis on health for themselves and their families. This position, together with a heavy digital emphasis, is setting the company apart. But, crucially, The Honest Company’s storytelling and relationship-building strategy is designed to find the answer to one important question. Chris Thorne again:

“We know that these moms have a lot going on, and that their time is limited. We’re always trying to make our ecommerce platform more convenient, both through our website and our apps. So that means simplifying the ordering and delivery processes, streamlining how customers learn about our products and customizing their orders and deliveries. We’re always asking: How can we make their lives easier?”

At its heart, making customers’ lives easier is what has enabled The Honest Company to grow as quickly as it has. Creating engagement through digital channels, listening to consumers and reacting to their needs sets the retailer apart as much as the high performance products that it sells – a strategy that ensures that the retailer’s story of loyalty and growth will continue to unfold together with its customers.

---