When Your Metrics Hurt Your Brand

Can your metrics hurt your brand?

I believe the best education involves a balance between academic theory and real-world application, and discussing great retail isn't nearly as effective as experiencing it.

So, last year, I took my "Retail Marketing Strategies" class on a Retail Experience Tour of Yorkdale Shopping Center.

With the help of two retail expert friends serving as tour guides, I divided my class into three groups, and we proceeded to visit specific stores in groups of 8 - 9 people.

But we ran into a specific (and unanticipated) problem at two stores.

Both of these stores were using technology to track foot traffic, then comparing that traffic to sales figures to determine conversion rates. That's a smart thing to do.

Unfortunately, when you're using technology to track foot traffic, and 26 students (and three tour guides) walk into your store but don't buy anything while they're there, that'll hurt your sales conversion figures.

But these two stores handled that same situation very differently.

The first store was Lucid Motors, a luxury electric vehicle brand. The team there was incredibly welcoming; they were the first to acknowledge the conversion issue we were creating, but the manager smiled and shrugged it off. He then spent ten minutes answering questions from the class about the store's design, layout, and the products they sell.

The team at Lucid were friendly, professional, and welcoming. And while none of us purchased a $150,000 car that day, all of us left with a very positive impression of the brand.

The second store was Knix, a brand founded in 2013 as a manufacturer of period-proof underwear; they've since expanded into bras, sports bras, swimwear, loungewear and more. Knix was a direct-to-consumer online brand until it opened its first physical retail store in 2019; the Yorkdale location was a temporary pop-up that has since shuttered.

Almost as soon as the first group walked in, the staff at the Knix store made it very clear we were not welcome; they told us without hesitation that it was because we were negatively affecting the store's conversion figures.

I explained to the staff that there was a very specific reason I was visiting the store: Joanna Griffiths, the founder of Knix, had agreed to visit my class and speak with my students at the end of my term, and I wanted all of my students to be familiar with the brand so we could have an engaging session. I said I'd be happy to send the store an email they could forward along to its senior leadership, explaining why the data for the day looked so bad.

But nothing I said was able to change the store's decision, so we left without having an opportunity to experience the store.

Nobody was looking to buy anything... that day.

But my class was roughly evenly split between men and women, which means half of the class was a target Knix customer, and the other half may have very well made a future purchase to gift to a loved one.

Yet, after our store visit, 100% of the class had a negative impression of the Knix brand.

When considering the potential lifetime value for a large group of potential buyers, sacrificing your sales conversion figures for a day to create a positive impression of your brand that could last a lifetime seems like the easiest decision in the world to me.

Apparently, the staff at this Knix location felt otherwise.

Are your metrics hurting your brand?

The students on my Retail Experience Tour didn't just represent "bad data". They represented 26 future paychecks, 26 social media feeds, and 26 holiday gift lists.

Lucid understood that a "no-sale" today can still be a long-term win for the brand.

Knix proved that winning with your sales metrics and winning with your consumers aren't always the same thing.

Metrics are a good thing. They can help you better understand how you're performing and what you can be doing better to serve your customers, which ultimately leads to growth.

When you sacrifice "Experience" on the altar of "Metrics," however, you might see better conversion rates in the short-term...

... but your long-term growth may start looking as empty as a shuttered pop-up location.

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P.S. We did visit one other store during our tour where the foot-traffic issue came up, and the way the store handled it is worth noting: Lindt & Sprüngli. The store's manager noticed a large group of students outside the store talking about the window display, and came out to greet us. Once we introduced ourselves and told her about our earlier experiences, she acknowledged the conversion issue and politely requested that we not go inside the store. But then she went into the store, quickly returned with a basket of samples for us to enjoy, and stood outside with us for ten minutes to answer all of our questions about the location.

It was a very happy middle ground between the wonderful experience at Lucid Motors and the decidedly-less-wonderful experience at Knix.