Janome America is the largest subsidiaries of Janome Sewing Machine Co. Ltd., one of the leading manufacturers of domestic sewing machines worldwide. A leader in innovation, its sewing machines are recognized for ease-of-use and unsurpassed quality. Janome is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and sells its machines under the Janome brand name through distributors via brick-and-mortar specialty stores, and online retailers such as Amazon and Walmart.com. Janome was first in the industry with full color LCD touch screens and Wi-Fi certified sewing machines. Janome has also created apps, including its embroidery app, enabling users to purchase, edit, import and design from mobile devices to sewing machines for creation of the finished piece.
Janome’s products merit extensive research prior to purchase; yet research shows 75% of all this research is done online. Seeing an opportunity to widen its customer base by reaching younger shoppers inspired by creative online hubs such as Pinterest and Etsy, Janome needed a digital marketing platform to win over customers and build a fan culture around its brand.
While engaging customers online and building a community was deemed essential for brand awareness, Janome also wanted to drive store foot traffic to support its distributors.
Janome America had a product web site that was static, difficult to navigate, and content consisted of listings of products and Janome distributors. Plus, the process for funneling product information to sales teams at more than 1,000 partners involved thick notebooks of specs and selling points, and Janome could never be certain actionable information was getting to the right people.
To meet its goals to expand its customer base and brand recognition, Janome hired Michael Seminara in February 2014 to oversee a total digital marketing overhaul.
Key project objectives:
- Create dynamic, buzz-worthy content that drives customers to retail stores;
- Grow the Janome brand and community of makers through aspirational marketing; and,
- Attract a new generation of makers and create life-time customers.
Seminara’s chief goal is centered around content, as the Janome sale is driven by what’s possible. “The maker community is passionate about creating and is moved to action through inspiration,” he says. “Janome is working to hit the passion drivers in this community to grow the Janome culture of sewists, and attract the next generation of makers to be life-time customers.” Supporting this digital engagement strategy required a platform that offers control of content, including how and when it is distributed, and limitless scalability. The content also needed to be beautiful, to sell both Janome products and lifestyle. The community Janome built features user-generated content and inspirational projects in addition to information about the machines themselves. Janome needed to build a community with buzz so visually driven social platforms, such as Instagram and Pinterest, were key to the overall digital marketing strategy.
Janome.com focuses on highlighting the beauty of its sewing machines and projects that inspire through engaging content for its sewing/maker community.
Janome partners with thousands of bloggers and crafters – such as Merrick White who has more than 50,000 Instagram followers – key community influencers that embody the passion of the new generation of sewers. The website’s “Inspire” section features over one thousand projects.
Content is also focused on shaping a customer’s decision to purchase and informing retail partners on product changes in real time.
Seminara has mapped out a customer journey that he feels will generate a fresh, long-term customer base – by “selling without selling”; i.e., a novice aspiring sewer sees a Merrick White project on Pinterest and is connected to Janome.com. She purchases her first sewing machine – a lower-end model from Amazon.com.
Now a part of the maker community, Janome uses its marketing channels to show her other products available and to connect her more deeply into the Janome maker culture. By the time she is ready to purchase her next sewing machine, she is knowledgeable about Janome and eager to move up to more challenging projects with a more sophisticated machine, and knows that this support and machine is available at an authorized Janome dealer.
Since launching the new site in November 2014, Janome has seen site metrics showing a significant improvement in customer engagement. For February -July2014, returning visitors accounted for only 33% of web traffic; for February -July 2015, returning visitors made up 44%.
Comparing these two periods there have been significant spikes in additional metrics:
- Page views are up 667%;
- Average session duration is up 94.5%
- Number of pages visited per session is up 225%
- New users are up 98%
Janome’s presence on key social platforms is also impressive: At last count there were 450,000 pins of content on Pinterest (since April 2014). On Instagram, the #janome tag that the company encourages its community to use boasts nearly 18,000 posts and Janome America has over 19,000 followers. Compare this to #singersewingmachine used by a key competitor and it’s notable that there are fewer than 9,000 posts.
Most significantly Janome’s digital marketing transformation has resulted in a 21% increase in units sold year-over-year (Nov. 2014 – July 2015 vs. Nov 2013 – July 2014)
Janome is using EPiServer’s Digital Experience Cloud for digital marketing and digital commerce. EPiServer supports user engagement features such as ratings and reviews and the exchange of project ideas and inspiration, and supports beautiful content and aspirational marketing via the web, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube.
Janome’s digital content strategy is notable in that it simultaneously addresses two of the biggest challenges organizations have in their direct-to-consumer strategies: supporting and influencing the pre-sales evaluation process and keeping distributors in synch with new product information and changes.
Janome plans to leverage EPiServer for eCommerce, to support product configuration and purchases online to their local dealers. In this way, Janome is leveraging the web to give consumers a direct experience with its brand (D2C), leveraging the power of the Internet to build a community of interest to influence sales and to support its distribution network.
Janome will also roll out personalization tools to enhance user experience by tailoring content based on metrics captured through user visits. Truly agile online personalization is the Holy Grail for digital marketers. By providing tailored recommendations, Janome will close the gap between online and offline shopping. Whereas previously, digital commerce could not provide the same personalized customer experience as a Janome distributor. By tailoring the user experience, customers can now filter through hundreds of accessories (for example) to view those that are of genuine interest and use.
Seminara views the growing Janome culture as marker of success. “We are a creative company and we put out a creative product,” he says. “Before we were limited with how creative we could be. Today we are working with a truly unlimited platform that enables us to highlight the beauty of our machines and what you can make with them.”
