Francesca’s Campaigns to Build Loyalty
Francesca’s, the trendy sportswear, jewelry and accessories chain, is intensifying its marketing with an unorthodox spring campaign.
Geared to funnel more women into the Fran Club loyalty program and promote Francesca’s “Free to Be You” branding message, the campaign incorporates brand ambassadors, sales associates and customers.
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The campaign, launched Tuesday, was shot during a Fran Club beach party in Miami on March 7. Elevate Pictures, a transmedia entertainment company, produced both the commercial video spot and the live event. The event and commercial spot are intertwined, showcasing Francesca’s spring products.
“We generated different kinds of content, so we have social content, the CTV campaign, assets used on our website and as part of our store experience,” Jann Parish, chief marketing officer, told WWD.
“This is our first heavy-duty campaign to grow awareness around our loyalty program and get customers to sign up directly,” Parish said. The Fran Club loyalty program, introduced in October 2022, offers events, early access to product, points based on dollars spent to get discounts on future purchases and other benefits.
“What makes the campaign interesting is it’s made up of three important parts — our existing loyalty customers, our sales associates and our brand ambassadors who are given gift cards to shop our stores and they decide what items they want to speak out about on social media.” There are also a few models in the campaign.
“The point of difference is that you can be part of our ad campaigns. You can be part of the brand,” Parish said. “It’s much more about the person seeing themselves in Francesca’s than Francesca’s projecting itself out. We see incredible value in engaging directly with our community to celebrate self-expression. The customer face is our face. And so the idea is to make this really an institutional part of Francesca’s in the long term.”
She expects another version of campaign to launch around the back-to-school season. Francesca’s audience is primarily 18- to 35-year-olds. Typically they’re either in college, college graduates on their first job, and often they’re new moms. “They’re fashion-forward and value-oriented,” Parish said. “It’s really about making you feel good about yourself and finding your identity. I would say our sweet spot is probably the 18- to 24-year-olds.”
She said the campaign also casts Francesca’s as “building a brand that rewards our best customers.” It’s the first time Francesca’s has incorporated its brand ambassadors in a campaign.
The campaign will be distributed across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pluto TV, The O Network, Freeform, the Francesca’s website, email, SMS and imagery in the stores.
Mntn, which builds advertising software, is assisting Francesca’s in placing content and measuring its effectiveness. Mntn uses current customer profiles to determine potential customers to market to.
“We are trying to think about our marketing in a different way from what has traditionally been done in fashion and retail,” Parish said. “One of the biggest, key performance indicators, the KPIs, attached to this campaign is the sign up rate on our loyalty program.
“One of our biggest objectives in this year is making sure we know our customer,” Parish said. To a great extent, that’s accomplished through sales and customer profile data captured through the loyalty program. Successfully building up the loyalty program will lead to greater profitability since marketing to existing, loyal customers, is less expensive than mining for new customers.
Since being bought out of bankruptcy in February 2021 by TerraMar Capital LLC, the new company that was formed, Francesca’s Acquisition LLC, has been in a position to resume growth and spend more on marketing. The company operates about 454 Francesca’s and Franki by Francesca’s boutiques, and a website.
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