Meet our Partner Series: Labelium

author

Perri O'Brien

April 23, 2023 | 3 min read

Last Updated: Apr 24, 2023


Karl Hoquante, Chief Operating Officer at StratNXT, the Digital Consulting entity of Labelium. Meet Karl Hoquante, Chief Operating Officer at StratNXT, the Digital Consulting entity of Labelium.

By way of introduction, what is your role and what types of customers do you serve?

Karl Hoquante: Labelium was born as a Media Agency 20 years ago. Now we have more than 20 offices worldwide, for our 10+ entities (and more than 1,000 employees. Labelium is also the largest Google partner in France and first agency certified Mobile Web by Google. At StratNXT we complement the group’s media DNA by consulting services around digital insights, onsite performance and growth plan acceleration. Incubated in 2021, StratNXt now has more than 20 consultants, all certified on Contentsquare!

What trends do you see in the customer experience analytics space?

KH : Well, I think there are a few key trends. The major trend, in my opinion, is that Customer Experience Analytics is not only a day-to-day tool. A few years ago, the solution was hardly used regularly by any level above a Digital Analyst. C-level were never exposed to customer journeys, pain points or more largely analytics. Now this is at the heart of our conversation with them. Secondly, brands and retailers have invested significantly on acquisition, and now they really understand that customer experience analytics can enable them to be far more cost-efficient, and reduce acquisition budgets.

What do you think makes for a good customer relationship?  

KH: We entertain great relationships with our customers because we understand their business. Customer experience analytics is not only about providing customers with stats and action plans. We complement our services with benchmarks (and not only competitors of our customers, because visitors can be exposed to other experiences just before visiting the website of our customer). I had the opportunity to work on the client-side for many years, with industry leaders such as La Redoute or LVMH, and I am convinced that this is instrumental.

Next to that, I think it is essential to engage our customers at various levels in their organization around customer experience. And that makes a great & balanced relationship.

How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

KH: The DNA of Labelium group is Performance. And I really know what it means for customers, because I used to be a (happy) customer of Labelium when I was at La Redoute! We have an end-to-end approach and are possibly the only “one-stop shop” for customers who want performance for media combined with onsite performance at a global scale. Also the very unique value proposition is that we can really provide our customers with a seamless journey for visitors, from media strategy to landing pages and optimized onsite experience. That’s why we have branded this service PerfXP.

Tell us about a successful customer engagement you worked on together with ContentSquare?

KH: There are quite a few now, but I really enjoyed engaging successfully with Afibel (Damartex Group) earlier this year. For many reasons: 

  • Having led digital transformations of mail order companies, I can bring lots of insights and expertise to our clients to help them speed up this transformation, but also our consultants to really understand what is still quite specific about this industry. Customer behaviors are driven sometimes by years of habits and analytics can be a bit odd/unusual on some KPIs.
  • Contentsquare & StratNXT teams complement each other very nicely, which brings lots of value to the client.

What about your business and the industry keeps you up at night?

KH: Performance. With all my Retail industry background, eCommerce performance of our clients is really the thing that keeps me up and I always propose ideas (but also challenge them) to perform better. I love commerce from the early days I was given the opportunity at LVMH to do Retail.  

Fun question: What’s your favorite vacation destination, and why?

KH: I have possibly visited more than 60 countries, but I have indeed a favorite destination: the Basque Country. I used to love it, but I was fortunate enough to marry a Basque from Biarritz, so my wife and myself enjoy spending time “at home” there with our children. The perfect destination for sea lovers, hiking & trailing, golfing, food, etc.