Post-purchase customer events, full-price strategy and controlled retail distribution drive Uppababy’s marketing.
Word of mouth is the best marketing and the way premium baby products brand Uppababy wants its sales to grow, said Amy Alabaster, Chief Revenue Officer at the manufacturer of strollers, car seats and baby gear.
That referral on the playground, which Uppababy calls “Word of Mom,” is the truest signal that its products are serving its target market. It can’t be bought and is authentic to the person receiving it. And the only way to get a mom referral is to deliver a product parents truly love, Alabaster said.
The window to deliver that referral is slim. Many of Uppababy’s customers are new parents, who are doing intense research while they are pregnant, including going into stores, engaging with social media, reading online forums and asking parents on the street. And that means Uppababy needs to show up in all of these places, as well as at consumer shows, community events and registry destinations, with a great product and a strong point of view, she said. It also needs to listen to feedback that retailers hear from in-store shoppers.
This interconnection between intentional products and marketing is key to keeping Uppababy focused on a consistent vision, Alabaster said. In her role, Alabaster oversees global sales, brand marketing and revenue strategy. Uppababy does not have a Chief Marketing Officer.
In the Q&A below, Alabaster shares more on Uppababy’s marketing tactics, full-price strategy and limited retail distribution.
Chief Marketer: What are some marketing tactics that have been helpful recently?
Alabaster: We are deliberate in making sure that when it comes to our marketing strategy, we’re standing behind three major pillars. First, we have a disciplined retail strategy. We’re not here to be in every store. It’s definitely quality over quantity. We have a strong point-of-sale approach where if somebody’s walking into a store and wants to touch and feel our products, we’re meeting them where they are.
Our second pillar is about that digital and social strategy. So how are we showing up to them as they’re researching products? Are we conveying to them the stuff that we want them to know? Socially, we’re investing in great content creators, people who have amazing audiences aligned with us and who come across as authentic, speaking to things that are aligned with who we are and how we want to come across.
And then the third one is we’re really about showing up in person in the community. This takes form in a lot of ways, but there are a lot of things we do and market to our customer that happen after they’ve already made their purchase. We’re investing in a lot of service and support in community events. And because we make so many investments in showing up in this grassroots way and continuing to serve our customer after they’ve made their purchase, that goes back to how we’re making sure that our customers are our biggest advocates.
Chief Marketer: Do you have a few examples of those?
Alabaster: This year, one of the things that we kicked off and put a lot of weight behind was stroll tours. These are where we show up in various cities. We have a couple of partners that we do this with, but we invite all of the moms in this community to come on a walk with us and it’s a stroll. We’re taking walks through parks, we’re going around the community. We end at a location and give everybody breakfast and coffee and a gift bag and all of that stuff.
It’s a way to kind of bring moms and parents together in these cities and go for a walk and talk and come together. And we’re not trying to sell them anything. That’s not what this is about. We’re just doing something that’s fun, that’s bringing people out. And again, this is just a way that we get to talk to our customer and always know what’s going on with them.
Chief Marketer: How many of those do you do a year?
Alabaster: Our aim is to do closer to 10 to 12, maybe one a month. We show up in different cities and we’re starting to actually take this international as well because we’ve had such an amazing response here in the United States. We’ve got a lot of people who are kind of starting to hear that we’re doing this here, and they’re asking for it, and that’s coming from the customer. This is something that we see having a lot of opportunity to grow.
Chief Marketer: How many people show up?
Alabaster: Oh, it sells out. We have to cap it because there’s only so much space when we’re taking a walk, but it sells out every time.
Chief Marketer: Is it a dozen or 100 or?
Alabaster: Closer to 100.
Chief Marketer: If the goal is to be top of mind for your customer, show that you are there to support them with any of their service needs and to listen and to talk to them, then how do you guys as a company determine if it was a successful event?
Alabaster: The turnout and the engagement are indicative of being successful. The fact that we’re getting more and more requests for “Please do this in my city, please do this in my country” is indicative of success.
There are a lot of areas in marketing where we’re tracking to KPIs. We all know that those are what you do and we have those and we show up that way. But when it comes to measuring how we’re engaging with our community, we tend to just be holistic about it where it’s like, this is working if people like it. If they’re showing up, if they’re asking for us to do it again, if they’re hungry for it. People are hungry for community. And for us, it’s not the only thing we’re doing, but it’s something that is so important for us to show up and do well because it’s a way for us to connect in real life with our customer.
This is not just talking to them from an email blast or a social media post. This is us directly showing up and if it works, it works.
Chief Marketer: You mentioned quality, not quantity, for retailers. Can you talk a little bit about how many retailers you’re in and then why that strategy?
Alabaster: We probably have a network of 400 to 500 points of sale in the United States. This is inclusive of some major online destinations, some department store destinations, chain destinations and a variety of amazing specialty mom-and-pop boutique stores. We also have several locations of Uppababy Hub showrooms, which are spaces where you can bring your products in to get serviced so that their lifetime value gets extended, but also you can shop with us there.
We want to make sure that we’re finding a great balance between showing up online where customers know they want to shop, they want to do a search, they want to convert, it’s just easy. But for Uppababy, making sure geographically that we’re showing up in areas so that if you want to touch and feel our product, you can, we’re giving that to you.
That’s so critical for brands like ours because these are products where it matters how they show up. If all I’m trying to tell you is how this is going to function for you, the features, the ease of use, the suspension, how easy it is, you have to feel that to understand that this is a premium, great product that I’m asking you to invest in. So matching where I want to show up online for you so that that’s the experience you want to have great versus I want you to have a place in your neighborhood if possible where you can go and touch and feel my products and understand what I’m offering personally. That’s our strategy.
Chief Marketer: Why not then have it everywhere?
Alabaster: Because the experience needs to be really dialed in. We’re a premium brand. Premium brands just don’t show up anywhere. I need you, if you have questions, to have somebody there who’s going to help answer them for you. I need to ensure that my products show up and are merchandised in a certain way. So we’re very deliberate that we have to meet the customer where the customer is, but I need to be showing up in a way that honors the premium nature of the brand that we represent.
Chief Marketer: Are you guys at Target?
Alabaster: We launched in a select number of Targets earlier this year as Target rolled out a new premium destination within a segment of their stores called Baby Boutiques. This is the premium, high-end destination that’s in about 200 of their locations. They actually worked with us in close collaboration on what this needed to look like before we could get on board.
Chief Marketer: What were some of the requirements that you had?
Alabaster: We wanted a space that felt kind of like a store within the store at Target. We didn’t want to just have a premium destination within Target where it’s messy and there’s box stock everywhere and it’s not showing up in a way that feels really clean and explained to the customer. So we worked with their teams for almost two years to get to a place where we had alignment in what we want the vision to look like as you show up, and what the path to purchase and Target’s registry would be.
Target’s introduction in the baby category is going to be interesting to track, but we had no interest in being in 2,000 Target stores. We wanted to keep it tight and concise so that if somebody’s going there, it’s showing up in a premium way.
Chief Marketer: I know you guys do not discount regularly. Can you talk about that strategy, especially in today’s market?
Alabaster: In today’s very, very tight economy? If you’re a premium brand, having a discipline around your pricing strategy is so important. I think about it in terms of what it is that I want my price to convey to a customer. I am not trying to be the most expensive price on the shelf; I want my price to be fair. The price needs to convey the quality of the materials, the work that we did on all of the features and design. I want this to convey how long this product is going to last. We have products that are going to last you through years and years and multiple kids.
If I start to discount to get you in, my message to the customer changes from what I just said to: If you pay full price, you overpaid. That’s what I’m saying to my customer, and that is what we try to avoid at all costs.
If I try to grow through markdowns, I’m telling them to wait. I’m not telling them to buy. I’m telling them to wait until I go on sale. And that is something that we are so protective and precious about because you’re essentially training the customer when you start to go on markdowns or discounts all the time. We are disciplined about how we show up here.
Chief Marketer: Do you discount at all?
Alabaster: We participate in a couple of programs. So we have Black Friday, we do that kind of thing. We participate in some select programs with retailers like the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, et cetera, et cetera. If I’m introducing a new product, I may discount the previous iteration to move it through and get it out of the market, but those are very specific times and specific opportunities. The customer gets excited for that kind of thing, but they know that on a regular cadence, we are not discounting. We’re holding a typical price program.
Chief Marketer: How has your background prepared you for this role?
Alabaster: Working at Uppababy was actually the first time that I worked in the baby industry. My background before this, which lent itself well, is I’ve been working with premium and luxury brands for a long time. Coming to Uppababy, my background has spoken to how much I love product. I go back to just how much I love building brands, holding brand integrity, investing in product, investing in innovation, the sales and marketing tactics, all of that stuff.
So many of those tenets stay through, even though I’ve worked across a different array of industries and product categories, and baby products are no exception. When economies get tight, I don’t find that parents want to stop spending on their kids. They’re just deliberate about what they want to spend it on.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
