This episode features an interview with Erika Reed, Manager of Data Strategy at General Mills. After serving companies like Best Buy and Life Time in the marketing space, Erika ventured into analytics in 2020. She now uses data and technology to drive insights into action and helps brands deliver meaningful and engaging consumer experiences. In this episode, Kailey sits down with Erika to discuss providing a value exchange for consumer data, grappling with unknown traffic, and focusing on behavioral data instead of demographics.
This episode features an interview with Erika Reed, Manager of Data Strategy at General Mills. After serving companies like Best Buy and Life Time in the marketing space, Erika ventured into analytics in 2020. She now uses data and technology to drive insights into action and helps brands deliver meaningful and engaging consumer experiences.
In this episode, Kailey sits down with Erika to discuss providing a value exchange for consumer data, grappling with unknown traffic, and focusing on behavioral data instead of demographics.
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Key Takeaways:
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“We have all of this behavioral data, which is the most important type of data in my opinion. We can get to know a lot about you based on what you're buying, and we can use that to go find more of you. [...] Historically, we use demographic data as a proxy to get closer to relevancy, but now we have all of this rich purchase data that can give you signals that demographic data can't.“ – Erika Reed
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:07) - Erika’s career journey
*(08:10) - Industry trends in consumer engagement in CPG
*(11:44) - Changes in consumer behavior in CPG
*(21:40) - Challenges in the consumer engagement journey
*(31:08) - How Erika defines “good data”
*(36:06) - An example of another company doing it right with consumer engagement (hint: it’s DSW)
*(39:30) - Changes in consumer engagement in the next 6-12 months
*(42:58) - Erika’s recommendations for upleveling consumer engagement
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Links:
Connect with Erika on LinkedIn
Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
[music]
Erika Reed: We have all of this behavioral data, which is the most important type of data in my opinion. We can get to know a lot about you based on what you're buying, and we can use that to go find more of you. Historically, we use demographic data as a proxy to get closer to relevancy, but now we have all of this rich purchase data that can give you signals that demographic data can't.
Producer 1: Hello and welcome to Good Data, Better Marketing, the Ultimate Guide to Driving Customer Engagement. Today's episode features an interview with Erika Reed, Manager of Data Strategy at General Mills. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Producer 2: This podcast is brought to you by Twilio Segment. Looking for clean, reliable data that you can trust? Segment collects, cleans, and allows you to activate your data in real time across hundreds of applications and channels. Learn about how Segment can help you personalize customer experiences by visiting segment.com.
Kailey Raymond: Privacy laws are increasing globally, which means that we have to be compliant and creative when it comes to collecting data. In CPG, with grocers sitting between them and the end consumer, this is particularly challenging. Today, CPGs are building value exchange programs based on behavioral analytics. This gets them closer to the end consumers in the form of loyalty programs, personalized rewards, tailored recipes, and more. One brand getting in on this action is General Mills. I spoke to manager of data strategy, Erika Reed, about building this value exchange, battling unknown consumer traffic and what behavioral data tells us that demographics can't.
[music]
Kailey Raymond: Well, I have Erika Reed here today. Erika, I am so excited to learn from you and your journey at General Mills as a manager of data strategy, but wanna learn, in your own words, first about your career journey. So how did you get to where you are today?
Erika Reed: Yeah, I feel like we're gonna need a lot of time, so I'll try to be quick on some of those. I started in Dolphin Research, but again, that is a story for another day. My first job in marketing started at Cambria, which is a Minnesota company, and they make quartz countertops. And at the time there was about five of us in the marketing department. There's probably over a 100 now. And we did everything from sports marketing to mascot management. And of course, because this was about 2009 and I had a Facebook account, then I was also the social media manager because...
Kailey Raymond: Of course.
Erika Reed: There's...
Kailey Raymond: You've been on Facebook before, you know how to do that, right?
Erika Reed: Exactly. So inadvertently I was leading some social strategy there, which I didn't really have the experience to do so, but also managing brand ambassadors like Cheryl Tiegs. So it was a very, very interesting first dipping my toe into marketing. From there, I followed my passion to Lifetime Fitness. So I was very passionate about nutrition and fitness and I said, you know what? I wanna do this full-time. So I went over there and I joined the athletic events team. And we had a blast. I mean, we were a bunch of like-minded people. We called ourselves the BTE, which was the best team ever.
Kailey Raymond: Love it.
Erika Reed: We worked 40 hours a week. We also did mountain bike races in five Ks and we rebranded events from social media to designing the event t-shirts to CRM strategy. So again, it was a little bit of everything. I mean, we operated sort of like a small company inside of a large company, which was pretty interesting.
Kailey Raymond: I was a lifetime member for many years and definitely appreciate. It's like a spa. It's amazing.
Erika Reed: Yes. And I mean...
Kailey Raymond: So good.
Erika Reed: The perks, it's pricey, but it's worth it, I think.
Kailey Raymond: I fully agree. Yeah, it's definitely a premium tier gym. But you get a pool and you get a sauna.
Erika Reed: And a sauna. Yeah. [laughter]
Kailey Raymond: Very important to note. You get a sauna and a steam room.
Erika Reed: Yes. Yeah. So if you don't wanna work out, you just wanna go to the steam and the sauna. I mean...
Kailey Raymond: Get a massage. Why not?
Erika Reed: Yeah, drop your kids off too. You can do that. So I was there for a couple of years and the team decided, the athletic events department was moving to Colorado. And at that time I was like, "Well, I'm not ready to move Minnesota yet." So I continued my tour of corporate Minnesota, as I call it, and I headed over to Best Buy.
[laughter]
Kailey Raymond: Yep. Check, check, check.
Erika Reed: Yep. I have not been to Target.
Kailey Raymond: I was wondering, I was gonna ask you the follow up.
Erika Reed: Not yet.
Kailey Raymond: Not yet. [laughter]
Erika Reed: But I tried marketing operations over there and looking back, what's interesting is, it was a lot of data strategy, but it was titled Marketing Operations. And I was hired to do the operations for the wedding registry platform and yeah, I know, eyebrows. Because it doesn't exist today. We ran into a lot of challenges because at the time, this was about 2012 or '14, the data was located in multiple data warehouses. And so we couldn't connect the consumer experience. So whether you had a Geek Squad plan or you had just bought a TV or you just created a wedding registry, we couldn't connect it. So it was very challenging but also very exciting and also got to be a part of filming a wedding registry commercial in the middle of a Best Buy in the middle of the night. That was quite exciting.
Kailey Raymond: Any highlights or was there like a Flash Mob? What was the vibe?
Erika Reed: Oh, there was a band. We had to hire the actors. I mean, it was incredible. But after about a year and a half, they decided to scrap the program. And at that time I was really jonesing to get back to the strategic side of things. So I moved over to the agency life. So I moved to the dark side and...
Kailey Raymond: Gotta get that well-rounded experience, you know? Yeah.
Erika Reed: Yes. I joined Olsen, which is now called ICF Next, and I was there for about four years. I worked in loyalty and CRM strategy on brands like Wyndham Hotel Group, [0:06:21.5] ____ Luxottica, Smucker's, and I think we all were starting to feel the pendulum swing from brands going in-house. So there was a ton of leaning into agencies. Then it was swinging back to in-house. I think it is a constant swing.
Kailey Raymond: Back and forth every five years or so.
Erika Reed: Yes, exactly. Yes. So I started to poke around a little bit and see what was out there. I also had had a couple of kids by this point, so I was like, agency life was just too demanding for raising two kids under two.
Kailey Raymond: It's a hustle.
Erika Reed: Yes, yes. And so I had a recruiter actually reach out from General Mills, and it was for this data and analytics role, which I was like, no, that's not me. I said, "I'm not an analyst." And they were like, "Perfect, we don't want an analyst, we want a strategist." And so I started General Mills at that time, which was March 9th, 2020.
Kailey Raymond: Perfect timing.
Erika Reed: What a time. What a time to start a new job.
Kailey Raymond: Manufacturing comes to a halt. Grocery stores are closed. Perfect.
Erika Reed: Yes, yes. But it was actually a really great time as consumers shifted from eating out to eating in their home. So it was a fantastic time to join. And since then I've thoroughly been enjoying the ride. And maybe it's because it's quite challenging. So that's when I started at General Mills.
Kailey Raymond: Very cool. So you've had a little bit of every kind of marketing experience from in-house to agency side, ton of different industries that you've seen so far, and now in CPG.
Erika Reed: Yes. The hardest of them all.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. I'm excited to get into that. We're gonna talk challenges today, so I'm sure you know you're gonna highlight some of those for us. I wanna kick off talking about some of the big trends. Some of these are probably cross-industry, but I'm sure now that you've been in CPG for three or more years, you're starting to really see a lot of these macro trends impacting your industry specifically. So are there any ones that you would highlight, especially as it relates to consumer engagement?
Erika Reed: Yeah, as it relates to CPG specifically, we've really seen that shift from in-store to online grocery shopping. And with that comes a lot of changes. A lot of changes. And so we're constantly testing and learning and now we're battling for eyeballs on the digital shelf versus the physical shelf. And also, with our biggest customers, which we call our retailers, our customers, and then our consumers are the people consuming our product. Our biggest customers now have their own retail media network. So the struggle is real and it's expensive and it's constantly changing. In addition to that, now post pandemic, people are constantly looking for convenience. So selling CPG direct to consumer is not that convenient and it's expensive.
Kailey Raymond: Right.
Erika Reed: The only time it might make sense is when there's a separate reason. Maybe it's a limited time box flavor that we have for Cheerios or for the Dunkaroos relaunch that was a direct to consumer.
Kailey Raymond: As a '90s kid, I can really appreciate that.
Erika Reed: Yes. And now my kids are into Dunkaroos. I mean, it is coming full circle.
Kailey Raymond: Full circle level.
Erika Reed: Yes. Yes. And maybe it's a subscription too that that could make sense for D2C and for most of our brands it doesn't. However, for ratio it does. Ratiofood.com, check it out [laughter], there's a subscription option.
Kailey Raymond: Shout out. Okay. I'm not familiar, but I will truly check it out right now.
Erika Reed: Yes. Yes. Good. And also the shipping side of things. So that's where it gets really expensive. And if it's not arriving at your house within three days, then the consumer's gonna go elsewhere. So it's that shift to digital purchasing. And then it's also that convenience factor in every facet of our lives. Not just as I think as a marketer, it's just me personally too. What am I doing to change my behavior so that things are a lot more convenient?
Kailey Raymond: Yeah, I was talking about this yesterday, relevance and convenience, kind of being at the heart of the consumer experience. And that's kind of how you need to be able to shift your strategy. And a lot of, I think, what you're speaking to is talking about consumer demands for personalization, making sure that you're speaking directly to them and consumer demands for channel of choice. I want to purchase this in a store, or I want to purchase this via a subscription. And making sure that you can keep up with that.
Erika Reed: Yes. And being there when they are ready to make that choice. And that's what I think gets complicated is it's showing up digitally, it's showing up in store, it's showing up online, it's showing up in your email when the consumer wants it to. And with the right content that they are looking for.
Kailey Raymond: It's really hard to do. It's really hard to build a meaningful journey that makes sense to an individual, not necessarily at a household, an account, et cetera. Getting down to the individual level, really, really hard. Kind of touched a little bit on the consumer demands that I mentioned, but are there any consumer behaviors that you might wanna highlight as it relates to CPG in the past few years that have kind of changed the game?
Erika Reed: For us in CPG, I think, as a whole, it's not just CPG. It's consumers are not as readily able to divulge their data. And I think this comes for a couple of reasons. One is, at the beginning it was a data free for all out there and everybody was just like, give me all the data, give it to me and I'll just take it all and I'll store it somewhere and I'll do something with it at some point.
Kailey Raymond: And I'll spend a lot of money on storing it somewhere and not know how to do it. And yeah. Yep.
Erika Reed: Yep. Very expensive and not very strategic, but everybody felt the pressure and it was like, you have to collect the data or else...
Kailey Raymond: Amazon's doing it.
Erika Reed: Yeah, Amazon's doing it, we can do it too. And so I think part of the shift that I've seen is consumers readily divulging information to brands. So while a consumer isn't that interested in giving you their data, they will however do it for the right value exchange. So whether that value be dollars or perhaps convenience, like we talked about. And I like to take the Kroger loyalty program into consideration for this because you become a member and you get value back and all you have to do is scan your card and it's really convenient. Love it. And then on the flip side, Kroger gets all of this really rich data back. In fact, they made $1 billion last year selling this data at an aggregate, of course.
Kailey Raymond: Okay.
Erika Reed: They have their own data science company called 84.51, and they have all of this data that they've just put to use and sell to other CPGs.
Kailey Raymond: You are literally blowing my mind right now. Okay. I didn't realize that that was such a monetizable portion of the grocery market. Okay.
Erika Reed: Yes. So you get consumers understanding there's this fantastic value exchange and it's really great for Kroger too. So it's sort of a win-win. And that's why people, whether they know it or not, are willing to give that data. It comes back to that value. So in my opinion, I think that if brands continue to put the consumer first, they're going to continue that relationship. But it's understanding what that consumer wants and what that consumer wants is constantly changing.
Kailey Raymond: It is. It is a moving target. That is for sure. I think some of what you're talking about is related to too many forms of data actually. But somebody giving you data through a loyalty program, somebody giving you data through an app and kind of their behavior, somebody giving you data through a survey, all of those are labeled different things. Zero party data, first party data, third party data. And so I guess I'm interested in learning a little bit more about that from you is how are you seeing? To your point, consumers demands are ever changing, but it seems like we're on the time of privacy at this exact moment. How are privacy demands coming from consumers impacting the way that you and your team do your work?
Erika Reed: Yeah, I think that's... There's two parts to that. It's the privacy regulations that are coming from the government and then there's what the consumer hears. Maybe it's not directly, but they hear it on the news and they're like, "Oh, okay, so I'm gonna stop giving my data because it's really important and it's my personal data." So where I think I'm seeing that in two different ways is, one is acquiring new consumers through just an email acquisition program. Because what we found is when we know you and we can build that relationship with you, we get more out of you in the grocery store. So...
Kailey Raymond: Totally.
Erika Reed: We see the value. And so it's understanding, okay, what are consumers willing to give us? Or what do we need to give consumers in order to get their email address? And it comes back to being really relevant to that consumer. So for example, pillsbury.com, the biggest thing that we offer is recipe inspiration. But recipe inspiration for me is different than it is for you. And so we have to be really precise in the questions that we're asking upon registration in order to tailor a customized personal relevant experience to you. So understanding what that looks like and being able to do it legally is tricky.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah.
Erika Reed: Tricky. And our legal department is very, very strict and we follow whatever the laws are in the most strict state. California. We follow that for everybody, which is probably best practice. So it's hard to collect data from consumers, both from a consumer perspective and from a legal perspective. So there's a dance there. One way that we did it strategically was just asking a simple question in registration, who do you cook for?
Kailey Raymond: I love it.
Erika Reed: Is it yourself? Is it your partner? Is it kids? And then we combine that with understanding age, and then we can make some assumptions on the type of content, so we're not creating thousands of pieces of content per email and we can really do one to many in a sense. On the flip side, for things that the consumer maybe isn't as knowledgeable on is sure there's all these restrictions. Let's take California again for example, and we partner with Fetch Rewards. So float with me for a second. Fetch Rewards, if you know what Fetch Rewards is or if you want and I'll give you a little spiel.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah.
Erika Reed: A points-based rewards system for scanning receipts into an app and Fetch has made it incredibly engaging with haptics and just different points for simply scanning a receipt, which will get you to come back and scan additional receipts. We've partnered with Fetch and we now get all of Fetch's purchase data into our systems. We also have a loyalty program within Fetch called Good Rewards. And we are rewarding consumers for purchasing General Mills products. And we also get all of this purchase data. We get 63 million rows of data a day.
Kailey Raymond: Wow.
Erika Reed: From Fetch. I know, it's insane. 6 million daily active users, 18 million monthly active users and it's growing.
Kailey Raymond: Wow.
Erika Reed: So we get an idea because we're CPG, it's really difficult for us to see anything close loop. We'll run a campaign over here, we have no idea what happened because we're not in the retail, which is my point earlier, why CPG is so hard. So this partnership with Fetch has actually been really interesting for us because we can start to understand people's purchase behavior as it relates to marketing campaigns that we're doing, which is fantastic. But back to the privacy point. So California, for example, has all of these really strict privacy laws now, and how that's impacting us with Fetch is that if you're a California resident, we're no longer able to see who you are. We can see at an aggregate what your purchase behavior is from a California resident, but we no longer get your email address associated with your purchase data, which then doesn't help with our paid media targeting strategy.
Kailey Raymond: Yep. I think what you're talking about is known and unknown users, it's third party data and making sure that you need to aggregate that together, really hard to understand exactly how to build a customer profile.
Erika Reed: Yes, yes. We spent, I think, six months alone trying to define what a known user at General Mills is. I think we finally got it though. But our digital and technology friends had one idea of a known user, and that would've been any anonymous person who has ever hit any of our sites and is associated with an ID. And then way over here on the other email program or email strategy side of things, unknown user is only somebody who we can contact and build that one-to-one direct relationship with. And so now we have this really good understanding of who a known user is and we're able to categorize that or at least put them in our CDP in a way that makes sense to say, these are the people that we know. This is a unified visual of people. So if they're coming to pillsbury.com and they're a fetch member, they're a Good Rewards member, they're now unified and we can say, hey, that Pillsbury campaign, what did it do? Did it drive any purchases in store? And we can see that all 'cause it's now unified.
Kailey Raymond: I love it. You close the loop.
Erika Reed: Yes.
Kailey Raymond: Very cool.
Erika Reed: It's pretty fantastic. And we're just getting started. So we just got our CDP stood up and so we're in the infant stages of our CDP.
Kailey Raymond: We just came out with a book and the data maturity curve, perhaps you're early on and kind of developing some of your first use cases, but you're getting to a realtime personalization in the next year or so.
Erika Reed: Yes, absolutely.
Kailey Raymond: It's definitely an iterative process. I think that we talk about that a lot on this show is it can feel really overwhelming when you're starting this journey because it feels like you immediately need to get to Amazon level of... You know, like every page is personalized and they know exactly who you are and have all of your purchase history and they do it so quickly, but it's really, really hard to do and it's iterative and it takes a while and that's exactly the way that it should be. And that's normal. You're talking about things that are really hard. You've mentioned the trickiness of all of this a couple of different times. We've put out a couple of words like unknown traffic and identity resolution and customer profiles and things like that. And I'm wondering on your journey, what's been the biggest challenge towards customer engagement, consumer engagement?
Erika Reed: I think the biggest challenge thus far is getting a sticky user as I like to call them. So getting someone first off to say, yep, I'm gonna give you my email address. That is hard in itself. There are many different tactics that you can go after, and you can pay a small amount to get an unsticky user and you can pay a very large amount to get maybe that return on investment over a few years. The biggest challenge for me is understanding where people are coming in, where we're acquiring people, how much we're acquiring people for, and then what does that behavior look like throughout time, let's say. Let's just call it 12 months, and then looking at how much they spend with us during that 12 months. And then being able to tie back how much they're spending to acquisition source to then drive that total ROI, at least within 12 months. But keeping people engaged I think is pretty difficult when we're not selling directly to consumers.
Kailey Raymond: What's really interesting is that what you're talking about, in the language of tech and in the world that I live in is LTV and CAC ratio. What's your customer acquisition cost? And then what's the lifetime value of your customer? But you're talking about the same thing in CPG, which is you wanna understand how much it costs to acquire a new customer, what channel they're coming from, and then how much they're spending over a year, five years, et cetera. And making sure that that ROI is there. And it's just fun to note that, you know, across every industry it's, the challenges are really similar. We might have different names for it, but they're really similar.
Erika Reed: Yes. That's why I like to go to conferences that aren't necessarily CPG because it doesn't have to be CPG and you can get a lot of insightful strategies from retail or just grocery stores in general. So it's super interesting. I think one of the other things that I would say on the challenge, and we started to figure this out in the last year, but a big challenge we were seeing is we were getting a ton of site traffic to pillsbury.com and bettycrocker.com. I won't say how much, but a large amount and...
Kailey Raymond: Big, millions perhaps. I'm gonna say it's large y'all, think in the millions or more. Yeah.
Erika Reed: I think so. Yeah. So, we wanted to find out a little bit more about those unknown people, but we didn't really have a way, we partnered with Data Global and they have a proprietary data platform and they were able to pixel our sites and say of the unknown users to General Mills, if we compare them to our General Mills. So let me back up. We sent them our list of our known users, again, a large number, and pixeled our site and said, all right, compare them. Compare our known users to our unknown users. Tell us a little bit more about these people because our acquisition messaging and strategy might change a little bit because we have the brand over here saying Millennial moms, Hispanic households, we have to acquire them. And I was like, yeah, absolutely us and everyone else in the United States wants to acquire these people. So let's find something again, going back to the value exchange. Something that really matters to these people. But what we found was so interesting in that the majority of our unknown users who are hitting the site are older women without kids in household, AKA grandmothers.
Kailey Raymond: Of course.
Erika Reed: Of course.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. Pat is out there and she is definitely interacting with Betty Crocker. Shout out...
Erika Reed: Absolutely.
Kailey Raymond: To my grandma. Yes.
Erika Reed: And it makes sense. So then when you take a step back and you're like, okay, all right, so we cannot lose those people. They are our loyalists, but also how do we change what we're doing to attract a different type of person? And that's been challenging just to change the mindset, but also really enlightening to say, look at this data that we have. Look at these people who are hitting the site. Look at what content they're consuming, where they're transacting. 25%, this is a side note that's really hilarious to me. 25% of our known consumers have transacted at Christopher & Banks. Now that just tells you a lot in itself, doesn't it?
Kailey Raymond: It does, yeah.
Erika Reed: I just love that. So we've learned a lot over the last year and we're starting to shift and understand our consumers because it comes down to being relevant to our people.
Kailey Raymond: So interesting. And something that just kind of like came up for me when you're going through this is, it sounds like based off of a lot of that insight that you're gaining, are you creating lookalike audiences and then feeding that into your channels and how is that impacting some of the tactics and strategies that you're deploying? In particular I'm imagining it's probably reducing your customer acquisition costs with some of this newfound insight.
Erika Reed: Yes, I think it is. Where my team comes in is we have consumer experience strategists and we have data scientists. So we surface all of this and we almost consult as a central unit to other parts that say, hey, use this piece of data. It's really incredible. On the other side of it is our paid media teams. So this is where we're finding and using lookalike audiences because we have to get to scale. We don't have enough owned data in order to hit the entire United States as I think most people don't. So that's when we use lookalike audiences and we're using lookalike audiences based on purchase data. That's our biggest thing is we have all of this behavioral data, which is the most important type of data in my opinion. We can get to know a lot about you based on what you're buying and we can use that to go find more of you. And that's where we're using a lot of look-like audiences.
Kailey Raymond: Very interesting. And probably suppressing ads from people that you just acquired as customers...
Erika Reed: Exactly.
Kailey Raymond: Which is a cost saver too.
Erika Reed: Yep.
Kailey Raymond: Very cool. I asked this question to people that have like a house of brands, and you have what, over a hundred at General Mills?
Erika Reed: Yes. Yep.
Kailey Raymond: Do you bring together data and insights from multiple different brands to help create those customer profiles? And how is that impacting some of the tactics and strategies? What are some of those unique interactions that you see happening? I don't know if you have any things you wanna share about that.
Erika Reed: So historically at General Mills, our media budgets have been very siloed and they are brand by brand basis. So doing any type of cross portfolio, paid media or branding has not been as successful. It's just too complicated with the budgeting. However, when we launched our loyalty program with Good Rewards in the Fetch app is when we've now been able to drive that cross portfolio purchasing. We set out on a goal to get individuals buying four or more of our brands as Good Rewards members. And we have surpassed that. So for context, we launched our Good Rewards program in July of last year. And our goal for the year was to acquire a million people. And again, I can't say numbers, but I will say we surpassed our goal in three months.
Kailey Raymond: Damn. Okay.
Erika Reed: And so that was one goal.
Kailey Raymond: The bar moves, The bar gets higher.
Erika Reed: I know.
Kailey Raymond: It always just gets higher, you know?
Erika Reed: Yes. And so that was one goal. And then getting those users, I think part of the Good Rewards program helped consumers understand our portfolio brands. Because most people look at General Mills and they say, they name like four cereals because we put the Big G on every cereal box that we have. But you may not know that we sell Nature Valley, we sell Totino's, we sell Yoplait, Go-Gurt, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury. I mean the list is endless and these are household names. And so driving cross portfolio is important for us, but it has been complicated due to budgets and that is why we launched, or partly a reason why we launched a loyalty program to help with that.
Kailey Raymond: So interesting. I mean, the fast work that you've already done is clearly gonna make such an impact in the future of that cross sell.
Erika Reed: Yeah. It's pretty fun.
Kailey Raymond: Very cool.
[music]
Kailey Raymond: I wanna ask you about, because you mentioned you consult with other teams, you make sure that they're using this data that your team is... And these insights that your team is surfacing. You're really like the center of excellence in a lot of ways. So how would you define good data? What does that look like for you at General Mills?
Erika Reed: So, it's a good question. I get it all the time and it's tough to answer. My answer typically is we need the Goldilocks of data just the right amount. Email address is incredibly important to drive conversion outside of our owned platforms. And what I mean by that is we've got these CRM programs with our bigger brands, but we don't have it for a hundred brands. And so, we need email address to unify that consumer, understand their purchase behavior and then target them in paid media. So that to me is really important. And then it's really understanding what we need. I don't need your favorite color and I'd argue I also don't need your demographic data.
Kailey Raymond: Controversial take, perhaps. I like this.
Erika Reed: Controversial. Yes. And this is the example I give is my neighbor, my neighbor who lives right next door to me. She's a white female. She's the same age as me. She's married, she has two kids, boy and girl. I have boy and girl and I guarantee our grocery receipts look very different. Very different. Our pantries couldn't be more opposite. She's a vegetarian. You wouldn't know that from demographic data. So I do think that historically, and this is as it relates to food buying and CPG. Historically we use demographic data as a proxy to get closer to relevancy. But now we have all of this rich purchase data that can give you signals that demographic data can't.
Kailey Raymond: I love that. You're not making assumptions anymore. You actually know what somebody's eating, what is on that receipt and how that is a part of your portfolio and your strategy.
Erika Reed: Exactly. What people are buying, what they aren't buying, what are they buying in addition to what you have. So for example, what we learned in a performance marketing test that people really like Pillsbury and Old El Paso. And so when we think about the cross portfolio marketing, we did a little bit of testing and again, it's very complicated. But once Old El Paso saw that, they're like, oh yeah, I'll throw some more money in the pot to advertise with Pillsbury and save dollars. It's the same consumer. 80% of people in the United States have a General Mills product in their pantry.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah, Of Course.
Erika Reed: So it's just about growing that, the number of products that you have in your pantry and ensuring that we stay in your pantry too.
Kailey Raymond: My mind immediately went to the recipes on the Pillsbury site and what are the crossover El Paso And Pillsbury recipes. And immediately I was like, how are we doing a croissant taco? But I don't know if that sounds right to other people.
Erika Reed: I don't think so either.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. It didn't hit, it was an idea and I don't think it's gonna stick.
Erika Reed: No. [laughter]
Kailey Raymond: Oh boy, here we go. This is what happens when we do 4:00 PM interviews is my brain is really getting in the creative juices flowing.
Erika Reed: I Love It. I love it. This is where we get goofy. And I think that's the content people are here for.
Kailey Raymond: It is. Well, at least I hope it is because there are bad jokes bound from me typically on this show.
Erika Reed: I can't wait.
Kailey Raymond: You've mentioned a lot of awesome examples so far, but if there's any other programs or tactics, strategies that you wanted to highlight with some of the ways that you're using a lot of this good data that your team is gathering and then sharing across the organization.
Erika Reed: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we're starting to do is get to be a little bit more predictive or prescriptive in our media targeting. Whereas historically we've been pretty descriptive. It's like, okay, give me all of the people who aren't buying Nature Valley in the last 12 months and let's hit them with an ad. And sometimes that works. But we're now starting to be able to be a little bit more efficient and effective, have the right message at the right time with the right audience based on their purchase behavior. That's something new for us that we've just started launching and it's pretty exciting.
Kailey Raymond: I like it. Yeah. Instead of using some of that stale data that perhaps has been in your CRM for a little bit of time and downloading the spreadsheet and uploading it to a different system. And we've all been there.
Erika Reed: Yes. A lot of people are still there.
Kailey Raymond: A lot of people are still there. If you are still there, please know there is a light, there is a way out. Erika's here to show you the way. [laughter]
Erika Reed: I think that it's Kailey that's here to show you the way. [laughter]
Kailey Raymond: I don't know, I'm just here asking the questions. You're the one that's doing it every day. I'm gonna flip this now and talk about any inspirations that you gain. So who do you think is doing it right in terms of consumer engagement and experience?
Erika Reed: I have always put DSW on a pedestal.
Kailey Raymond: That is... Wait, I literally interviewed the CMO of DSW yesterday.
Erika Reed: No.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. That is so weird that you just said that.
Erika Reed: Yes. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I have always done this. And these are the reasons why. So they connect to purpose with souls for souls and reward you with points for donating.
Kailey Raymond: I just learned this and it's the coolest thing. Yes. I love that you're bringing this up.
Erika Reed: Side note, my son is five years old. We went to DSW on Sunday. He needed a new pair of light up shoes. His old light up shoes got a hole in them and there's a box right when you walk in that says, donate your shoes. And so I had this amazing opportunity to teach my son what it meant to donate his shoes. And he took the shoes off of his feet and he put them in the bin. And he left them there.
Kailey Raymond: That is so cute.
Erika Reed: And at five years old, I mean that's very, very difficult for a five-year-old to do. But I did it and I had points in my account immediately. So number one is connecting to purpose while also rewarding you as an individual. They let you choose how you wanna be rewarded. The program is easy to understand. It's clear what I've earned and what I need to spend to get to that next reward. And then additionally, just this weekend I received an email introducing a new perk from DSW called Big Moments, this New Perk.
Kailey Raymond: I love this. [laughter]
Erika Reed: You talked about this, didn't you?
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. They just launched it like a week ago.
Erika Reed: Yes. I just got this email. But I mean, it is genius because they're collecting all of this ripe data that they're then gonna be able to personalize your experience based on all of this relevant stuff. You're having a kid, oh, customer for life. You are running a marathon, you're gonna go [0:38:08.5] ____ through three pairs of shoes. I mean, it is so genius. So absolutely DSW.
Kailey Raymond: I love that. Yeah. I was talking to her and... Because I do think retailers have really cool loyalty programs in so many ways because they have such a human connection with their customers that it's just like a lot of inspiration can be gained. So that's very funny that that...
Erika Reed: What a coincidence.
Kailey Raymond: Literally 24 hours ago, very big coincidence. Do you have a favorite campaign or even a piece of data that you would wanna talk about?
Erika Reed: I don't think I have a favorite piece of data. It's more or less a type. And that goes back to behavior, behavior data. I think it's out with the demographic data and with the behavior data.
Kailey Raymond: I think this is so smart because demographic data is just, it feels biased. It feels like it's living in the past. And this is the real signal for the way that people are acting and gives you a lot of rich insights to be able to make strategy on.
Erika Reed: Yes, a hundred percent.
Kailey Raymond: So we talked about trends at the very beginning. We're gonna talk about trends again, but future looking. So do you have any hunches for trends on the horizon as it relates to data over the next six to 12 months?
Erika Reed: I don't think it's a hunch. I think everyone's talking about it and it goes back to privacy. Where this is interesting is, we got this new CDP and our executive leaders are all about data enrichment. Okay, we've got this place, now let's go enrich it with data. But what's really difficult is, A, you don't know what you need to collect until you test and learn. And B, there's a lot of regulations around what we can get. And so we don't wanna just go out and buy data to buy data that's putting us back 10 years ago. When we were just all hoarding it. And so I would say that there's going to be additional privacy restrictions. And then additionally, especially in the food category, what we're seeing in EU AU is the type of food you're marketing to consumers has to have a certain nutritional level or you can't do it, you can't market to people. So it's gonna be really important to continue to drive those one-to-one relationships in order to even have a voice to our consumers. 'cause a lot of the stuff, I mean Haagen-Dazs, are you kidding? It's incredible. It is not low in sugar.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah. It's not necessarily good for you, but it's amazing. It's delicious and it's a treat.
Erika Reed: 100%. So good. Oh, the best ice cream out there.
Kailey Raymond: I like that you mentioned this one-to-one as well. If I may, how do you differentiate one-to-one versus household? I imagine that's a challenge with folks that might have different diets that live within the same household, but you're trying to market to an audience of one, how do you think about tackling that?
Erika Reed: Yeah, so for our own platforms, we talk on a one-to-one basis. So we have their email address and we talk to them specifically. We aren't talking to a household. And then when we think about paid media targeting, we're also taking at an individual level and finding lookalikes to them. So it continues to be at that individual level. For our owned platforms, this is where I think the nurture part is so important. We need to continue to understand our consumers. We need to continue to deliver that relevant information. And in order to do that, we have to ask the right questions.
Erika Reed: Maybe it's they're gluten-free or maybe they have a peanut allergy or something like that where we then apply that attribute to that consumer and then we ensure that our communications go forward, don't have peanut recipes in them or whatever it might be. So nurturing that one-to-one relationship is really important as we build those direct relationships. And then also just understanding at an individual level when we do paid media targeting, 'cause it's their potential purchase behavior, but you're onto something there in that they're probably buying for the house. So it's tricky. It goes back to it being very tricky.
Kailey Raymond: All of this is really hard to do. It's really hard to do.
Erika Reed: Yes.
Kailey Raymond: That's why I have a lot of respect for people in your position that are managing a lot of this and making sure that you are communicating this effectively throughout the organization because it is leading you to make better decisions and drive efficiencies across an enterprise, which is really, really challenging, but drives real business impact. Last question for you. What are any steps or recommendations that you might have for somebody that's looking to uplevel their consumer engagement strategies?
Erika Reed: I think there's only one answer and it's CX strategy. Hire a consumer experience strategist. They will ground their recommendations in data to build a strategy using the technology available to them. It's the secret sauce, as my boss likes to call it. And part of CX strategy is prioritizing consumer research. You have to hear from your consumer, your consumer, what is important to them, what do they expect from you? Don't assume just because it works for someone or has worked in the past it's gonna continue to work. And it's also okay to do this in a scrappy way. I know not everybody has the budgets to do this. Social media is one big research platform. Just ask your consumers, make it simple. Send them a survey and think about your consumer as a whole. Get a journey map because your strategy and social can't be siloed. It's gotta be human, it's gotta be consumer focused. Human focused. Understand their challenges and be there for them when they need you. And you can do that with CX strategy.
Kailey Raymond: I love it. Keep it simple and have somebody who's really driving strategy around the consumer and prioritizing them. Keeping them first.
Erika Reed: Yes. And lastly, test and learn. Fail forward fast. Do not make a big production about testing. Just constantly be testing, always learning. Because change is happening faster today than it was yesterday. And if you aren't changing with your consumer, your consumer's gonna find a brand that is.
Kailey Raymond: You need to up the bar. The bar is always changing. You know when you hit a million in three months, the bar is gonna get raised.
Erika Reed: Right, exactly.
Kailey Raymond: I love it. Erika, I had a lot of fun. I learned a ton. Thank you so much for being here.
Erika Reed: Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.
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