At Klarna, we are focused on driving the growth and success of our retail partners by offering them solutions fitting whatever their individual needs might be. We’re pleased to have Wunderkind in our network, adding a partner focused on helping retailers create customized experiences through high-converting one-to-one messages at scale.
We sat down with Wunderkind’s director of strategic alliances Molly Shields to discuss our partnership’s value to retailers and what’s ahead for Wunderkind in the coming months.
Give us the Wunderkind elevator pitch.
Wunderkind is a leading performance marketing engine delivering tailored experiences at scale. Wunderkind’s superpower is helping merchants identify and engage more users than they ever could before. We use our identity-matching technology to connect merchants with users who appear anonymous but are already engaging with a brand. We then help merchants message those users via channels like email and text.
Wunderkind tailors campaigns to people who have recently taken an action onsite, making our campaigns relevant and personalized and resulting in some of the highest-performing programs marketers are running. High-converting messages, combined with Wunderkind’s identity technology and scale leads to robust revenue numbers and grows online businesses.
What solutions do you offer users today?
Wunderkind offers triggered and audience-based emails, triggered and on-demand text messages, onsite opt-in campaign strategies, and high-impact post-content ads to over 700 merchants.
What’s the most significant benefit Wunderkind offers to its users?
The scale we bring via our identity network, white-glove service, and over a decade of experience. Our expertise is in crafting the best strategies which engage users and enable our merchants to generate unparalleled returns.
What type of merchants and users do you work with?
We work with merchants of all sizes, from growing DTC businesses to multi-billion dollar omnichannel retailers. Brands such as Ugg, Forever 21, and Cole Haan leverage Wunderkind’s technology to engage with customers to achieve growth goals.
What differentiates Wunderkind from other providers in the market?
Wunderkind’s Identity Network is our main value prop and what separates us from the rest of the market.
Typically, merchants only identify 5% of their traffic, leaving 95% of their potential market on the table. Wunderkind can drive a 6x or greater increase in onsite identification, significantly scaling the number of people merchants can market to. This allows us to be the industry leader at capturing opt-ins from prospects (scaling capture programs by 3-5x) and increasing the volume of emails merchants can send, driving 5-10% of new digital revenue for our clients.
What value does the Klarna x Wunderkind partnership bring to retailers/users in the US and globally?
Wunderkind’s identification technology drives unmatched scale for high-performing triggered emails. With Klarna, merchants can pair that scale with messaging around flexible payment options, keeping their triggers relevant and highlighting their brand value prop with no added workflows. Wunderkind scales personalized triggers, while Klarna messaging keeps customers centered on the easiest way to shop.
What is the next big innovation or trend you see in performance marketing?
Since brands have numerous ways to engage with users, coordinating channel messaging is crucial to customer acquisition. Wunderkind helps merchants do this successfully by crafting strategies that factor in when a user last received a trigger email or text, maximizing the touchpoints with users, and avoiding over-messaging.
When merchants think of each marketing channel as part of a cohesive strategy to engage with users rather than separate silos, it improves user experience and increases revenue.
What’s next for Wunderkind over the next few months and beyond?
Wunderkind has successfully delivered personalized, one-to-one messages that push users to convert and drive significant revenue for merchants. Looking ahead, Wunderkind hopes to further benefit our offerings through promoting customized brand and product discovery at scale.
Paired with platform and product advancements, we aim to prioritize the active shopper experience and provide brands with the technologies they need to express themselves and communicate with customers.
What advice do you have for retailers before starting a new multichannel marketing initiative/campaign?
Merchants need to ensure that as many of their marketing technologies work together to deliver the best experience for the customer. When marketing initiatives live in isolation, they do not drive less value than when they’re integrated with other solutions.
For example, we have merchants integrating Wunderkind campaigns within their ESP (email service provider), so messages get sent through a unified platform and are then paired with content reflecting more comprehensive customer engagement strategies, such as highlighting a business’ BNPL offering.
What are some pitfalls to avoid when thinking about one’s marketing mix?
Given the volume of data available, merchants should avoid making decisions without first understanding customer behavior. Merchants with a high-performing marketing mix are utilizing data-driven decisions to ensure marketing dollars get invested in the most impactful channels.
Understanding customer behavior starts with understanding who is on a merchant’s site. Identification plays a crucial role in crafting a tailored and personalized strategy for engaging with customers.
What’s a marketing practice that needs to change?
Attribution and how to measure performance will be a significant change for marketers. When Apple released iOS 14 and 15, the amount of data that could be collected within the mail app and across other apps became limited, sending marketers into a frenzy. But even before iOS 14, digital tracking left something to be desired. As privacy changes continue, inevitable changes to attribution and measurement will follow. Brands already navigating this measurement transition (or beginning to) will have an edge against those that don’t.
What new trends in marketing strategies do you think are here to stay?
With so many brands competing for users’ attention, generating loyalty will be one of the biggest challenges brands will face as they try to win customers. Building a robust loyalty program and integrating messaging around loyalty benefits and status in marketing campaigns will be crucial.
Also, offering optionality in the shopping experience will empower the purchases of a wide range of customers. That is one of the reasons we are so excited about our partnership with Klarna. The flexibility to Buy Now, Pay Later is essential for capturing specific customers. Brands invested in solutions offering that optionality in payments will have an advantage against lagging competitors.