Interview: Iain Martin, MD of Moonpig.com

A few months ago I started wondering “what do people really think of digital outside the bubble I inhabit?” Luckily some of the UK’s brightest business minds indulged me in a little Q&A and these are the results.

Founded in 2000, online greeting card company moonpig has 90% of the online greeting card market, and has expanded into both Australia and the US.

They are also responsible for THAT Moonpig TV advert which, when the jingle gets stuck in your head, is pretty hard to shake.

Could a business which grew brand awareness so successfully via television ever really recommend the digital marketing route? Managing Director Iain Martin answers my questions.

1. Moonpig is famous for growing brand awareness with that catchy TV jingle. Is TV still the best marketing medium?

We had a brand new product that nobody had offered before.  Awareness was therefore almost zero and TV has been good for us because it has allowed us to explain the product, the ordering process and the fact that a moonpig card is a real card and not an e-card.   TV is also great for showing how people react to the cards when they receive them.

However, the best marketing medium we have is the cards themselves.  People that join moonpig.com after having been sent a card makes up a large % of the overall number of new customers.  The product is truly viral  and we’re now sending out in excess of 10 million cards each year.

2. How important is digital marketing to Moonpig?

Digital marketing is important to us but the trick is to identify the things that make a genuine contribution and provide a decent return on investment.   We recently stopped one of our affiliate programs and now just work with a select few affiliates.  We found that running a big program was taking up a huge amount of resource for relatively little return.  In our case we ended up chasing the long tail rather than actually benefiting from it!

Our emails play an important role in maintaining contact with our customers.  We work very hard to get the balance right and are always told by third parties we should be sending more emails.  But then, who really wants 4 emails a month from a personalised greeting card supplier? We really don’t want to be intrusive.   We do all the usual splits when we send emails and we try to ensure that our newsletters are interesting, enjoyable and relevant.   We are constantly adding card ranges to the site so the emails are the best way for us to keep the customers informed about all of the latest products.

3.  One reason the name Moonpig was selected was due to the potential to dominate in Search Engines as the name is so unique. Is this something more new businesses should consider?

The name is a bit of a hot topic at the moment!  It was very useful in the early days when you typed in moonpig to a search engine and just got the moonpig website returned.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case as Google now allows anybody to bid on our trade name and recent European court cases have failed to protect brand owners from this type of paid search bidding.  The result is that lots of people try and piggyback on our traffic using paid for search on the term Moonpig.  This isn’t in itself a problem, we can see that all of the people searching for “moonpig” do come through to us despite other advertisers so we don’t actually lose the traffic.  What is more of an issue is that because more people are bidding on it the cost of bidding on your own trade name increases considerably.  The result is that everyone in our sector now pays considerably more for search to advertise their own brand names.   It seems to me that the only real beneficiary from this is Google who must be seeing increases in revenues at the expense of brand owners who are now forced to pay extra to advertise their own brand names.

So, answering the question, unique names are great but the way that search engines now operate means there is considerably less benefit in terms of search.

4. Moonpig is a successful example of a lean, profitable, e-tail business. Should every traditional retailer be considering an e-tail part to their business?

Yes , I think it is hard to see how any retailer could ignore the online opportunity and not miss out in the longer term.

Our experience has been that some traditional retailers find it difficult to make the transition.  We are lucky, on-line is all we do.  Our entire team is 100% focused on providing personalised greeting cards from a website.   I think that traditional retailers with an online presence face far more complex operational and marketing issues.     Of course some have done a brilliant job of e-tailing,  notably the businesses who had some involvement with mail order previously.   I think these businesses have lived with a multi-channel culture and so were faster to solve the issues.

Why?

The simple answer is that there are times when the customers want to be able to shop on-line.   A simple example, on-line shopping goes up when it rains!  However, I think it’s more than that.  How many times have you thought about going to a store and checked out the product online before you make the trip?  I know I have.   For bricks and mortar retailers I think the on-line store is much more than just a retail outlet.  I think its also a part of marketing the brand and the hook to get you to visit the store.

5. All the buzz/hype that businesses need to sort out their social media strategy – how important is it?

The Social Media phenomena has amazed everyone and left marketers drooling at the mouth and wondering how they can get a piece of the action.  Without a doubt the sheer number of people engaged and the hours of engagement present a big opportunity.  The problem is that it is a semi-private space and if companies take the wrong approach it can feel like someone’s just walked up to you and your mates in a pub wearing a sandwich board, interrupted your conversation and tried to sell you something!  I think the clue is in the name “Social Media”……………marketers beware!

So yes, we do need strategies to interact with social media but at moonpig we are treading carefully and respecting how the space is used.

Learnings from moonpig:

• TV still works but having a product people love receiving really creates word-of-mouth
• Email marketing is important to maintain customer contact
• Unique names are a good Search Engine consideration but the current way Google allows competitors to bid on trademarks is a hot topic
• Every retailer should examine their options online
• Online could be a complement to getting customers to your bricks and mortar store

Big thank you to Iain for taking the time to share his thoughts.

Related articles

• UK’s largest online greetings card company Moonpig launches its iPhone app (intomobile.com)
• Choose the right name for your business – Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins (businesslink.gov.uk)
• What’s it like to work at Moonpig (retail-week.com)