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Meet Jennifer Renaud
Jennifer Renaud, SVP and CMO of Masonite, has spent her career building brands at large enterprise companies like Microsoft and Oracle. She is currently tackling evolving a 100-year-old brand, Masonite, and changing what doors mean to consumers.
*The following content has been adapted from Porch Group Media’s Movers and Shakers Podcast
Movers as a Marketing Segment
Host: Do you and your team feel like the resource is out there to learn about movers, to identify movers at the right time, and so forth, or are there gaps in what the market is offering you, as a marketer?
Jennifer: I would say until I met you, I thought there were gaps. Now I realize it’s true.
Host: Yes, as you said, they’re there and this is where we give credit to our parent company Porch. They founded the company on this concept of the pre-move being a very big deal.
As people are going through the process of assessing their home or assessing what they want to do, there is an awful lot of formulation that goes on well in advance of what marketers have historically regarded as the prime time of selling to movers, which is the post move. That’s been a big revelation to us.
Porch knew this and we’ve been very fortunate to engage with them and learn more about the pre-move. That is the fascinating thing to us – both the economic opportunity and exactly as what you’re trying to build out, the opportunity to engage consumers as they are actively making decisions, as opposed to saying, ‘oh, it’s time for you to buy, here’s an offer.”
So are you helping consumers through a thought process as much as you’re selling them?
Jennifer: Yes, I would say that is a key part of marketing. What you’re really doing is guiding people through a thought process and through selection as they are thinking about timing and about what kinds of things they need to get done in order to complete a [home improvement] project. And hopefully, you are putting enough out there so that they say, “You know, I definitely want to do doors as part of my project.”.
That’s how you would want to be thinking about it. As an example, if I am thinking about consumer packaged goods, what’s that market basket? What other things happen at the same time?
Those are the things I don’t think we as marketers tend to think enough about. Although obviously, retailers are going to do that as well as consumer packaged goods because they really want to understand what sells with something else. There’s that old story that there’s a high correlation between diapers and beer, but let’s just say that’s true. Then you would want to be looking at whether things are happening pre or post-move and what’s happening during that entire continuum.
As you’re moving, as you’re starting that process of the pre-move, you’re already well into thinking of post-move and making the decisions now for when the move is done. Of course, there’s a lot that does happen after the move, such as you walk in and remember that you don’t have blinds on the windows. But you probably already knew that before you got there. So, I started thinking about when the decision-making starts and it is probably a little bit different.
Host: This is what we’ve learned, and it starts as people are just even beginning to think about moving. We’ve tried to really understand not just who’s in the process but who was even contemplating the process. And then of course, if you identify those people who do convert, you have to think about what kinds of experiences you’re going to serve them all the way throughout the journey. It makes the whole thing more complex and robust as well as its outcomes if you can intersect with that consumer and work with them, as opposed to just saying, here’s a great deal.
Jennifer: Right, ‘here we are’ when it’s probably too late in their decision-making process. So really understanding when the trigger starts, what’s the trigger, and when do they shift from trigger into inspiration and selection and start moving through that process. You really have to understand when it begins.
Host: With all the intelligence you’re applying to this, do you see where products like yours and others are becoming less reliant on discounting? Maybe it’s an unknown at this point but it’s always one of those interesting things to contemplate.
Jennifer: I think it’s a total unknown. It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen given what’s happening in the economy. I think there are a lot of things that impact the decision-making process and make it really tough to know what would get people to say I want a Masonite door. That’s really what I’m driving for all day long.
Getting back to that one marketing P on price – is this price right? That’s interesting because now you have to look at the process and say, if I have the right product, what are you willing to pay for the product? Where are you going to go buy it, and do you need help installing it, and everything else will certainly affect any one of those decisions. So, I think it’s hard to say.
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