I bought my first bag from LRM back in 2020 when I saw it featured on This Morning. I have a soft spot for handbags and a nice, yet affordable bag is hard to resist.
I discovered that LRM is a small business, quite local to us in Guildford, Surrey. The company was set up by two friends in 2016 after they struggled to find good quality, affordable gifts to buy friends. So they started their own leather goods business, but with a USP – personalisation.
Personalisation makes a product that extra bit special. It shows it’s undeniably yours. For a gift-giver, it shows thought and care has gone into choosing the item specially for the recipient, giving it an added touch of luxury.
And personalisation is part of LRM’s service. You can choose to have your initials, name or even emojis embossed on your item. The brand has put personalisation at the core of its value proposition, and through word of mouth and some lucky celebrity endorsements, the business has grown significantly in the last couple of years, expanding its product offering beyond handbags.
Customisation doesn’t stop at embossing initials or names. All LRM bags have detachable straps, so you can also buy accessories in a variety of colours and designs, making your bag unique and giving you multiple options with the same core product. I’ve had many compliments from friends who have gone on to buy their own, as well as gifts for friends and relatives.
Of course, as a marketing professional, I’m always interested to see what the brands I buy from do to keep me engaged and thinking about a follow-up purchase. When I opened my latest LRM package to reveal my beautiful new red bag, it included a note thanking me for my purchase and offering a teaser for one of the company’s latest products. Knowing I’m a fan, it’s a great way to keep me interested and thinking about which product I might ‘need’ next. I was also offered a 10% discount if I posted a picture of my item and submitted a review on the LRM website – brilliant for stimulating user generated content (UGC) and ensuring a steady stream of positive endorsements from customers.
Given that personalisation is at the heart of the LRM brand, they could elevate their customer marketing even further by personalising my thank you note and showing me a curated selection of products based on my buying history, perhaps with my own name virtually ‘embossed’ onto the product images. The individual customer data is at their fingertips, personalised digital print would enable it, and research suggests that a personalised approach to marketing could fuel their business growth even faster.
What I’m also learning since I arrived at AD Communications is that ultra-targeted print doesn’t stop there. It’s possible today to link marketing automation platforms with an automated print production workflow to produce a printed asset that reaches the consumer within 24 hours – something known as ‘programmatic print’. This approach can be used for all sorts of different assets, such as brochures that showcase the products a customer was browsing on the website, giving them time to peruse and explore those products on the printed page long after they’ve shut down an email, social media app or browser window.
According to Compu-Mail the average lifespan of an email is 17 seconds, compared to direct mail’s average lifespan of 17 days, so the scope for consumer engagement with print is much greater than I ever appreciated. Personalisation certainly engages me, and with a wealth of different automated systems out there, brands could be taking more advantage of the chance to personalise their marketing materials to really grab their customers’ attention.
Coming back to LRM, it’s incredible to see how a small start-up set up by two friends has grown so quickly into an affordable yet luxurious brand, largely by making the most of the consumer appetite for personal branding. And as an LRM advocate myself, I can definitely agree that it’s better to live #alifemorepersonal.