Ignite Conversations: Masonite

As part of our continuing commitment to share best practices with the industry, we spent some time catching up with Megan Spangler, Business Development for Masonite Corporation. Like many other suppliers, the company needed to pivot during the 2020 lockdowns, to expand their eCommerce offerings. It’s a challenge many suppliers face as eCommerce continues to grow – the need to drive brand consistency and equity, while meeting the often-changing recipient requirements for product information.

One of the things that is core to Masonite’s culture is their focus on quality, and that includes their online product information. The team is very focused on accuracy and consistency, which became much more complex with need to add additional enhanced content that met their online branding needs as well as the needs of their recipients. Navigating this new landscape required a strong partner that could provide the accuracy and flexibility that Masonite needed.

There’s a real balance between having a strong brand presence and keeping all the item characteristics and assets necessary to meet recipient specifications, according to Spangler. It was a challenge that the Masonite team accepted – and ultimately excelled at. Even as the company was experiencing growth in the past year, they had a desire to upgrade many of their products (and the content that goes with it).

“We rely heavily on Syndigo to house so much of our data. The platform continues to expand and grow its capabilities. We are just learning how to utilize the analytics function, it has been a great tool for us to streamline our efforts and really understand our own data.” — Megan Spangler, Business Development

This is crucial because of the high expectations of today’s customers – brands need an “I know…” understanding rather than an “I think…”, according to Spangler. And to do this, data and analytics are critical. For example, going deeper into understanding page movements on PDPs and other analytics has been incredibly valuable, as the Masonite team was able to better understand what their customers want to see – which can help optimize pages based on facts, rather than intuition.

Working with the Syndigo team, Masonite was able to build the programs they needed that met their recipient requirements, while optimizing their content for more effective sales. They are “navigating with analytics,” according to Spangler, to keep themselves accountable.

What advice might the Masonite team have for other suppliers in the same situation? “There’s no greater time – ever”, according to Spangler, to update product information in a way that combines both branding and the technical content needed for recipients. This means making sure suppliers are giving shoppers the confidence in their purchase with accurate technical information as well as adding personality through the brand. And Masonite is one of the clients demonstrating that commitment.