The ultimate customer experience has always been in the focus of luxury brands. Buying expensive products or services, people buy more than a thing. They want to become a part of a timeless brand story and reaffirm their connection with the world of luxury brands. For many decades, companies have perfected their in-store experience and offline luxury brand marketing to promote sales. Their efforts yielded the expected results until the emergence of e-commerce and the increasing role of millennials and generation Z. Based on the estimations, by 2025, these two social groups will represent over 40% of the luxury goods market. Just to compare, in 2016, they comprised 30%, which was still a large share. These are the people interested in social media, augmented reality, and advanced technologies. At the same time, 92% of millennials were nudged into a purchase by direct mail and 82% consider printed mail postcard more trustworthy than digital advertising.

Such changes reform luxury brand marketing and become a challenge to luxury retail. Today, expensive brands need to improve the quality of digital marketing to match the level of personalized in-store experience. Although affluent consumers have switched to online solutions, they still expect the same excellent treatment. 64% of consumers want real-time assistance across all channels they use. 33% are ready to spend more money if a company provides excellent customer experience. Therefore, to build an effective luxury marketing strategy, your brand will need to utilize a range of marketing channels. It will also be necessary to align all your marketing efforts around a strong marketing message and idea.

If you need a luxury brand marketing inspiration, read on to learn how AR, digital marketing, and mail campaigns can be combined into powerful integrated brand marketing. Such a cross-channel marketing strategy is a great way to reach luxury consumers that require special treatment.

Luxury Brand Strategy: 5 Things That Really Matter to Luxury Consumers

1. Exclusivity & Attention to Details: Don’t Skip your Analytics Homework

Luxury brand marketing is focused on a small share of the overall population. Not everyone can afford to buy a Rolls-Royce or an haute couture dress from Louis Vuitton. Nevertheless, those who can, considerably contribute to the prosperity of luxury retail. Before you launch a luxury marketing strategy, you need to collect as much useful information about your potential buyers as possible. It’s not only about their names or contact details. You have to record and analyze any requests and preferences. It may be useful to keep track of products that are the most often pinned or liked by affluent millennials. All available details are useful to create a portrait of a person that is likely to buy your luxury goods.

Moreover, to promote luxury products or services, you need to know what makes them unique.

Luxury consumers crave exclusive goods that are unavailable to other social groups. Make sure to remind them what is so special about your product.

2. Share Your Success Story to Inspire Luxury Consumers

Everyone loves a brand that has a story. Most luxury brands, including Prada, Hermes, Bugatti, Rolex, were founded many decades ago and went through numerous ups and downs. After years of struggle, self-perfection, and continuous growth, they have achieved the current level. Allow your luxury consumers to associate their personal achievements with your brand success by telling them more about yourself. Also, building a luxury marketing strategy, it’s important to formulate a clear marketing message with a strong call to action. Use it in all marketing channels, including social media and direct mail postcards.

3. Be There for Them: Quality Offline Support for Your Online Presence

Today, 87% of shoppers search for products using digital channels. They also prefer to check the availability of products online before going to a brick-and-mortar store. With the digitalization trends and the increasing purchase power of millennials, the importance of online presence will only grow. So luxury brand marketing must also utilize online channels and care about digital customer experience. Build your luxury marketing strategy upon the following resources:

• An optimized website with impeccable navigation.

Although it seems logical that all luxury brands should have equally luxury websites, the reality is different. Many of them are so focused on the in-store experience that they almost neglect their official web pages. Such companies probably believe that their brand reputation can make up for everything. This is also your chance to gain a competitive edge over other luxury products or services. Make sure your website looks true to your brand style, elegant, and memorable. Your brand style should be recognizable at a glance and consistent across all sections of your website. All pages should have clear navigation and provide easy access to a catalog of products. It’s also necessary to consider SEO optimization. As a result, your web resource will show up first in the list of search results and online users will be more likely to buy directly from your brand instead of visiting other pages. Appealing landing pages are crucial to both world-renowned brands and small businesses that have just entered the luxury market segment.

• Well-crafted content on social media.

Launch official pages on social media channels with the highest traffic and invest in professional SMM marketing. In 40% of cases, people make luxury purchases under the influence of what they see online. Such luxury marketing sets trends and can significantly increase demand. You don’t need to cover all existing social media channels. Just focus on the core ones. Based on recent research, the majority of Americans use Facebook (63%) and YouTube (73%), whereas Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular among young adults with 71% and 78% respectively.

Once you have launched vibrant social media accounts and a high-quality website, don’t forget to regularly update the content. Everything you publish must be well-crafted and synchronized across all digital channels. This will help you keep all users updated on new arrivals and other relevant information. And don’t forget about high quality 24/7 customer support, easily available from all platforms where you have a digital presence.

4. Complement Digital Marketing with Unique Direct Mail Pieces

Direct mail pieces can become your secret weapon to enhance digital marketing. Thanks to its 5.1% household response rate, which is several times higher than social media (0.4%) and email response rates (0.6%), you have more chances to be noticed. In addition, it was found out that people with a better level of education – that have the highest income among other social groups – are almost 4 times more likely to receive direct mail. And they still perceive direct mail pieces as a useful way to receive information.

Of course, selling luxury brands, you need something more sophisticated than direct mail postcards or leaflets. High-quality paper, unusual form and a reprint of a well-known classical art piece – if this is in line with your brand image, or a personal thank you note from your leading designer after an haute couture dress purchase…  It should be memorabilia rather than a mere means of delivering a message. Your direct mail pieces must be highly customized and tailored for each particular case. To achieve the necessary level of personalization, consider using a direct mail service with automation functionality. The tool offered by Inkit supports variable data printing and provides custom postcard builder to create unique mail marketing pieces. Thanks to CRM integration, you will be able to send the right direct mail piece at the right time.

Here are some tried and tested direct mail marketing options for luxury brand marketing:

• Personalized catalogs.

Have you heard that Tiffany sends catalogs to their customers? You can take things a step further and send a separate catalog to every customer. The main characteristics of the luxury goods market is a small number of buyers that generate large income. Therefore, your efforts to create something unique have a fair chance to pay off. Analyze the products your existing customers have already bought or shown interest in, and offer similar options. Luxury consumers will appreciate your extra attention and care.

• Event invitations.

If you run closed events for members-only, a direct mail piece is an optimum way to invite people. Make sure to cooperate with professional direct mail service or a mail company that can help you design a classy invitation. Use your brand colors, balance white space, and add a logo to boost your luxury marketing strategy.

• Thank you notes.

Create appealing thank you cards to complement any product you deliver. It’s a perfect addition to your luxury brand marketing that doesn’t require significant investments or effort. At the same time, thank you notes are a wonderful option to build a trustful customer relationship.

5. Leverage Cutting-Edge Technological Novelties

Although social media and web resources are the main means of digital marketing, there are some other options worth considering. Many brands, such as Burberry or Farfetch, have already launched applications for luxury consumers with machine learning and AR functionality. Since 2017, LVMH has been supporting a virtual adviser for the US customers that answers common questions and gives maintenance recommendations.

Therefore, if you want to bring luxury brand marketing to a new level, invest in technology. You can leverage AR capabilities to improve your customer experience both in a physical store and online. Use or create software for visualizing and testing products. This will help to provide seamless service and significantly speed up the purchase process. Also, you will get a better understanding of your customer behavior for even better personalization of your future luxury brand marketing efforts.