What does your company do and what is your USP?
Mention Me is on a mission to put trust back into the heart of marketing by harnessing the most relevant form of advertising: word of mouth. Our USP is Mention Me platform’s A/B testing and name sharing functions.
We’ve carried out extensive research into the psychology of referral and help clients. This helps us to implement strategic AB testing roadmaps for our clients, that deliver strong results and provide invaluable insight into how brands can optimise campaigns and messaging for different target audiences.
In addition, our unique name sharing function lets brands tap into customers’ offline conversations and reward customer advocacy, so no opportunity is lost.
Since 2013, we’ve delivered more than 1.5 million referrals totalling £500m revenue for more than 450 brands globally. We use a cost-per-acquisition business model, which means we’re as invested as our clients in achieving success.
How would you describe your vision?
Our vision is for trust marketing to be globally recognised as a key ingredient in every brand’s marketing mix. As marketers, we know getting a brand in front of the right audience in a cost-effective manner can be a challenge. Consumers are bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages and increasingly distrust traditional media.
Against this backdrop, referral marketing delivers real, measurable value. We want to help brands realise this and unlock remarkable results.
Which retailers do you work with?
We work with hundreds of retail brands, including Farfetch, PrettyLittleThing, Bloom & Wild, Kurt Geiger and Charlotte Tilbury.
How would you describe your growth?
Since we founded Mention Me in 2013, our team has transformed from a handful of employees with a few clients to more than 90 referral marketing specialists working with more than 450 brands.
We made a deliberate choice to only raise money when the time was right. After 18 months we raised an angel round, then operated out of cash flow until our first Series A funding round with Eight Roads in June 2018.
We’re now ready to accelerate growth. International expansion is the primary focus; we’re opening an office in France later this year and plan to open more international offices over the coming years.
How are you using emerging technology to support the retail growth?
Mention Me uses cutting-edge technology to provide clients with a market-leading platform that delivers outstanding results.
We’ve designed our customer journey to be consistent with brands’ positioning, integrate seamlessly into the user experience, and be mobile-first. We’re continuously releasing new updates to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint.
In addition, our platform lets clients easily see their performance and make adjustments to optimise results.
What do you see as challenges for the retailers and suppliers over the coming years? How are you prepared to meet those challenges?
I see three key challenges for retailers and suppliers: acquiring customers; retaining customers with strong lifetime value; and mimicking real life transactions online.
Our platform provides a solution to all three. New customers acquired through existing ones are likely to be a strong match for your target market with a greater lifetime value than customers acquired through other means. On average, referred customers spend 25% more, have double the lifetime value of customers acquired via other channels and are three times more likely to refer someone else.
Another major challenge for retailers is tapping into offline conversations; we may be living in the digital era, but 93% of all referrals take place offline. Our name share feature offers a solution to this that feels natural and authentic, creating a sense of brand loyalty that’s difficult for online retail giants like Amazon to replicate.
What targets are you aiming to achieve in the next five years?
We have three key targets for the next five years. The first is building upon our vision of trust marketing being globally recognised as a key ingredient in every brand’s marketing mix.
The second is supercharging our international expansion into Europe and North America. Our extensive AB testing of clients’ referral schemes in different markets around the world means we already have a strong understanding of what works, and our platform supports more than 20 languages. However, we have to be mindful of our people as we expand – I’m incredibly proud of Mention Me’s unique culture and am committed to only making it stronger as we grow.
Lastly, we have ambitious targets for rolling out our new product, Mention Me Repeat, to clients around the world. Referral helps acquire new customers; Repeat helps to keep them. In a climate where it’s increasingly expensive to acquire customers and difficult to retain them, Repeat offers a solution, driving repeat purchases and increasing customers’ lifetime value.
Give us your elevator pitch.
Mention Me empowers online businesses to harness customer advocacy to drive up to 30% of new customer acquisition, boost average order and lifetime values and, ultimately, generate more revenue over the long-term.
CASE STUDY: Ted Baker
Ted Baker is a UK lifestyle brand founded in 1988, offering men’s and women’s clothing as well as accessories, kidswear and fragrances.
Ted Baker began using Mention Me in 2018 to tap into customer loyalty and offline conversations by allowing customers to pass offers onto friends. The companies ran a split test in Australia, the UK and US, identifying the most effective channels for customers to refer.
Referred Ted Baker customers on average spent 34% more than those acquired through other channels while the purchase rate of referred customers during peak months is 16%.
Mention Me in brief
Founders: Andy Cockburn and Tim Boughton
Founding Date: 2013
HQ Location: Vauxhall, London
No of Employees: 93
Customers: 450+
Website: https://www.mention-me.com/
This Company Spotlight was produced by InternetRetailing and sponsored by Mention Me. Funding articles in this way allows us to explore topics and present relevant services and information that we believe our readers will find of interest.
