July 19, 2019

Farfetch

Farfetch is leading the way in high-end fashion retail, offering an inspirational shopping experience to fashion-forward consumers. Their success means that they enjoy triple digit growth rates and a $1B valuation on the back of very high customer satisfaction.

The Challenge

Farfetch were aware that they had an amazing asset in their existing customer base. They realised that a referral programme represented an opportunity to accelerate their already impressive growth.

Farfetch initially built a simple referral scheme themselves that they promoted in the My Account section of the site but failed to see any meaningful increase in acquisition. In the midst of explosive growth across all channels, the marketing team did not have sufficient time and resources to invest in further developing their own refer-a-friend scheme.

Whilst the marketing team were optimistic that refer-a-friend represented a good opportunity, the channel hadn’t proven itself sufficiently to justify further investment during product prioritisation meetings.

The Strategy

Farfetch selected Mention Me as a partner to deliver a referral programme. The Mention Me solution allowed Farfetch to get up and running quickly without the need for development. Nor did they have to sign up to big upfront license fees.

The Mention Me platform gave the marketing team the freedom to test and optimise the programme with the ability to AB test different offers by cohort. Additionally they could call on the Mention Me team for their experience, advice and examples of best practice. Farfetch were particularly keen to give their audience the ability to share by name which they felt would work very well for their customer base.

The referral programme was live within six weeks. The initial launch was on the English speaking sites. Early success resulted in the rollout into six other languages, with different offers and share options being tested in different markets.

The Results

Within just nine months, Farfetch achieved:

• An increase in acquisition of 15 per cent
• More than 20 per cent of referrals coming from Mention Me’s unique name sharing technology
• Higher average order value from referred customers than other new customers
• Each customer who shares with their friends generates over £100 in incremental revenue from new customers.