331. The CX Team that Receives Christmas Gifts instead of Sending Them - Marianna Satanas, Hanro USA

Marianna Satanas didn't expect a beach photo with no product in it to become one of HANRO USA's best performing ads for months on end. But that's exactly what happened, and it says something bigger about how she approaches acquisition, retention and service.

Satanas is president of North America for HANRO USA, the US arm of the Swiss loungewear brand now headquartered in Austria. She started her career at Net-a-Porter in 2006, staying almost ten years through the launch of The Outnet and Mr Porter, before moving to New York in 2016 to join DKNY on the brand side. She has led HANRO USA for three years, her first role as a president, overseeing a business that has replatformed and rebuilt its acquisition strategy almost from scratch.

Starting paid social from zero

Before 2024, HANRO USA ran on a proprietary platform that was not properly optimised for mobile. Marketing was email and Google search and shopping, with no paid social at all. In 2024 HANRO re-platformed onto Shopify Plus, and when it went live with its full collection that August and September, it started running Meta ads in the US for the first time. New customer acquisition and traffic both increased sharply in the first year.

The US business runs as its own site, separate from HANRO's European operation, with its own marketing budget and strategy, though it shares assets and messaging. Comparing 2025 to 2024 was never going to be a fair fight, Satanas says, but growth has continued. Retention is up too: existing customers are shopping more frequently than a year ago, even as new customer growth has slightly softened, which is why acquisition is now the focus.

The ad with no product in it

One of the most surprising results has come from paid social. HANRO ran a lifestyle image, a beach with the caption "new arrivals", from May onward. Long after summer ended it kept generating strong units and revenue, often outperforming product shots.

"With fashion, if you advertise a particular product and the people who see that ad aren't interested in it, that's it - you don't get anything from it. Whereas with a mood or feeling, you catch someone's attention, they click through, have a look, and they might find something they like."
Will Laurenson

Satanas thinks this is category specific. Intimate apparel is functional and personal rather than fashion led, so a product photo lets a shopper self select out before they click, where a mood image earns the click first. It is also why location makes almost no difference to performance: East Coast, West Coast, Texas and Florida all convert similarly, because customers shop for what works for them, not a regional trend.

Clients, not customers

HANRO's approach to service reflects the same logic. Its customer service team functions as a client services team, building genuine one to one relationships rather than only answering order queries. Some clients have sent the team Christmas gifts, a level of loyalty Satanas says she has not seen elsewhere.

Since March, that same team has sent small, targeted emails to select customers based on past purchases and interests, instead of mass campaigns to the full list. The emails read as one to one communication, and the approach has driven repeat purchases and direct replies.

"You can have the best marketing campaign and throw so many millions at it, but if your customer service lets you down, you lost that client."
Marianna Satanas

A return rate that refuses to move

HANRO offers a generous return window, even by fashion standards. Satanas expected the return rate to climb as the US business scaled. Instead it has stayed flat, a sign, she says, that new traffic is high quality rather than just high volume. New customers now have a higher average order value than returning customers, who tend to replenish styles they already know, a pattern she is watching as she plans the next phase of acquisition.

Fighting bad data and confirming fabric matters

Growth has brought its own noise. Bot traffic inflates numbers in ways that are hard to untangle, so HANRO filters some out using a tool Shopify introduced, plus by excluding regions it does not serve. Reconciling Shopify, GA4 and a merchandising search tool added in June is a constant exercise in checking each platform tells the same story.

That search tool also confirmed something Satanas had only suspected. Customers filter by fabric, including cotton content, often enough that material is a genuine selling point, not just a line on the product page.

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