Welcome to our latest “Meet the Client” feature, designed to shine a light on our clients, meet the people behind the brands and highlight our partnerships.
This edition features the wonderful Maddy Turley, who's International & Growth Director at Mint Velvet. It’s a fascinating and insightful read!
Hello Maddy! We know you through Mint Velvet, but how did you come into this business?
I had an unconventional start, kicking off with a role in chemical sales after a Chemistry degree at the University of Oxford, although I soon realised this wasn’t for me! Whilst still not sure what I really wanted to do, I joined Tesco. I experienced different roles across various parts of the business including a strategy role for the telecoms business start-up, a buying role (flowers and plants) and a role setting up Tesco.com (the non-food marketplace). In this last role, I was visiting various retailers across the UK to promote the Tesco platform so met loads of different retailers, built my network, and got a flavour of the companies I’d like to work for if it wasn’t Tesco.
My husband and I decided to take a career break and do a ski season. Whilst driven by his love of the sport, I had a personal goal to improve my skiing since he’d said I needed to be a good skier if I was serious about our relationship! Whilst he was off training for his ski qualifications, I was selling ski lessons for a small ski school and joining all the lessons for free. It’s one of the best things I did, as skiing with family and friends is now a big part of our lifestyle.
I decided not to go back to Tesco and reached out to the CEO of Wiggle who I’d met in my role at Tesco and found super inspirational. At the time, Wiggle was a fast-growing cycling/running/outdoor ecommerce specialist, building out its management team to help scale the business. I was offered the role of Head of International and the next 4 years were an amazing whirlwind. We built a high-performing team, launched 13 international sites in 3 years, experienced phenomenal growth and achieved many UK firsts in this space.
Personal circumstances (my first child and house move) then took me into the world of consultancy. A university friend approached me about doing some work for Rianta Capital – helping with some of their retail investments including Forever New, JoJo Maman Bébé and Chinti & Parker.
Thankfully, consultancy worked out well. New business came from my network, word of mouth, and speaking at retail conferences. It provided interesting work, typically focusing on international marketing and growth for diverse businesses including Tails.com, Huel, London Heathrow and Trainline.com. And it gave me the flexibility I needed at the time, thanks to the “on/off” treadmill of having three children.
My relationship with Mint Velvet started in 2021 when the business wanted some help with the commercial marketing side; focusing on customer acquisition and growth marketing. I’ve been working with Mint Velvet ever since. As well as being Mint Velvet’s Digital Director for a period, I’ve looked after digital trading and digital product/website development. I’m now supporting the international expansion, including turbo-charging growth in the US market.
How would you describe Mint Velvet in three words?
Commercial, collaborative and fun.
Mint Velvet, the home of Relaxed Glamour.
What did your role as Digital Director involve?
I was responsible for all acquisition channels including search, social, affiliate, SEO, and all our CRM. Customer data is key to understanding our customers’ journey and behaviour; what she buys into and how best to manage acquisition and retention from the first purchase and beyond.
There is a big analytics and commercial element to this role. For example, looking at the customer economics behind customer acquisition and trading channel insights to decide how best to acquire the right customers and drive profitability. Customer acquisition costs, lifetime value and customer behaviour all need to be considered, as well as what generates customer value, to develop the right digital strategies.
How has Mint Velvet transformed digitally?
Oh wow, it’s totally changed! Mint Velvet’s digital transformation had started before I arrived, led by the natural growth of digital due to customers shopping online. That said, lockdowns and continued top-line growth accelerated our digital transformation.
We’ve effectively changed our entire tech stack in the last few years to support the next level of growth. From re-platforming our website and CDP/marketing automation platform to changing, and introducing, various back-end systems including our store POS system and DAM (digital asset management).
One technology that hasn’t changed is Datitude’s platform. Datitude’s platform, functionality and team have grown with our business and evolved with our needs since the beginning, and it remains fit for purpose. Since its inception in 2010, Mint Velvet has always recognised data is key to driving business success, and data runs through every part of the business.
The digital marketing function has also transformed significantly. It didn’t really exist before but we’ve built a team, and the capabilities needed, to deliver our objectives, and we understand our customers and economics way better than ever before.
What technologies are a must-have for marketers in a data-driven world?
Marketing tech stacks can be massive. Whilst we use lots of tools, I’d say these are the most important:
A modern data platform like Datitude’s for understanding customer data. One that’s built on a data lakehouse, integrates data from all sources (on and offline) and provides “the” single source of truth across the entire business. Data must be robust, reliable, trusted accessible, and easy to slice and dice to get what you need.
Digital analytics tools like Google Analytics, a digital experience platform and a marketing automation platform are also must-haves for understanding customer acquisition and digital behaviour (including lost opportunities) and activating digital marketing and more personalised content.
A modern POS system is critical for omnichannel retailers to understand behaviour across stores and online.
And lastly, robust attribution software to optimise marketing through the funnel and balance spend from the top to bottom line.
How does Datitude’s platform enable your team to get what it needs from its data? What are the main use cases?
Starting with the basics, Reports: Datitude’s data platform is the single source of truth for our business. Data from all sources flow into it so it’s used for all our daily, weekly and monthly KPI reporting (commercial, customer and marketing).
Segmentation and Cohort Builder Tools: enable us to understand customer behaviour and help inform future marketing actions to maximise customer value.
Advanced Analytics: we use the platform a lot when we’re working on projects and strategic initiatives and need to dive deeper into customer behaviour and test complex hypotheses to understand why something is happening. Returns is one example where we’ve been able to really explore the dynamics of customer returns.
Direct Mail Optimisation & Analytics Solution: the capability to select and target the right people for customer acquisition and have real-time visibility of results through Datitude’s solution is phenomenal. Plus, the process for executing campaigns is fully automated. I’m not aware of another solution like it.
It’s the same with the Subscriber Centre. We have extensive options for our customers to subscribe to communications (and to unsubscribe from them). This gives us a master record of all subscription events across all channels in one place; one version of the truth. It’s vital for retail marketers in a privacy-first environment.
What’s your view of Datitude’s platform and team?
I was so impressed when I joined Mint Velvet and found we had all our data in place! Everything we need is in the platform; a single source of truth and manageable at scale. Data can be a real headache for a lot of retailers, and many aspire to what we have.
Datitude’s platform is impressive. The add-on solutions for direct mail and the Subscriber Centre are particularly powerful, and a real point of differentiation.
Of course, the product and solutions are important, but service delivery is too, and this is what really sets Datitude apart. The team totally gets retail, understands our business, and always does the best to give us a great product. We have a brilliant, collaborative relationship. Datitude’s team are very much seen as part of our extended team and are treated, and behave, as such.
Retail continues to face complex market conditions. How can retailers best position themselves for success?
Retailers are used to turbulence and it’s normal to be constantly pivoting as consumer demands change. It’s the nature of retail given we’re so close to consumers’ wallets. Even when trading is fantastic, you don’t rest on your laurels as you never know what’s around the corner.
You need to stay close to the customer to understand what’s affecting them and influencing their behaviour, and make sure you’re servicing their needs and moving with them. It’s also important to keep it simple, keep your cost base as low as possible and optimise value, option count and availability.
What’s your view on the future of the high street?
Mint Velvet belongs on it!
The high street is back, it just depends on which high street. We’re certainly seeing customers enjoying shopping in-store and have just had a fantastic Black Friday. They love to see, touch and try products and our boutiques play a huge part in the overall customer experience. The challenge for multichannel retailers is how to unify the online and in-store customer experience and differentiate the proposition.
For Mint Velvet, that’s about amazing customer service, displaying our brand and products in the best way and differentiating our boutiques with localised experiences that customers want. It shouldn’t be a cookie-cutter approach – you need to understand what works for your customer and the area. For example, our boutiques tailor in-store experiences including pre-loved swap events, personal styling sessions and influencer events based on their customers and target market. The same applies to product range which is different in some boutiques to reflect different customer needs in different areas.
What innovative technologies or marketing approaches excite you the most and why?
I mentioned robust attribution software. Now that I can measure attribution through the funnel and be confident of moving spend to the top of the funnel, trialling and measuring top-of-funnel marketing on TikTok, YouTube and Meta has been interesting. I think TikTok is exciting. It’s growing so fast, and the advertising model is evolving.
Quick fire round: These are a few of my favourite things…
Sport? I Iove all sports but let’s go netball.
Animal? Dog.
Favourite city? San Francisco.
Holiday location? Lake District.
Piece of clothing or accessory? It has to be from Mint Velvet, right now my MV light blue flares are my go-to for that Relaxed Glamour feel.
Our sincerest thanks go to Maddy for this feature. Maddy was interviewed while she was travelling to an event. Despite a few “sorry, I lost you there” moments, this feature captures Maddy’s naturally engaging style, sense of humour and retail expertise.
For more on Mint Velvet, head over to the home of relaxed glamour.
To discover more about Datitude's work with Mint Velvet head over to our client page. Alternatively, if you need help getting your data to work for you or want more information on Datitude’s data solutions mentioned here, call us on +44 (0)20 3003 5000 or email hello@datitude.co.uk.
About Datitude
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