Debenhams Maps In-store Service to Customer Communications, Boosting Loyalty & Sales

Debenhams Maps In-store Service to Customer Communications, Boosting Loyalty & Sales

The UK’s 2nd largest retail department store by market share implements Neolane

to boost customer direct marketing and build loyalty in a competitive market

Customer name: Debenhams

Industry: Retail

Business Need: Improve loyalty and sales

by moving from mass communications

to personalized relationship marketing

“Our email conversion rates are up 75% and email-driven sales volumes are up 200%.”

Robert Unsworth, head of trading fi nance and commercial

insight at Debenhams

OBJECTIVES

• Move from mass customer campaigns to individualized, relevant communications

• Improve brand loyalty, design customer journeys and infl uence behavior

• Increase sales and the return on marketing investment

RESULTS

• Customer communications managed from a single, centralized point of control

• Designed and launched a new loyalty scheme in just 12 weeks

• Over 75% increase in email conversion rates

• Over 200% increase in email-driven sales volume

• Mobile marketing took just 4 weeks to defi ne and ready for launch

Debenhams is a British retailer with annual sales of designer clothing, beauty, homeware, gifts and electrics exceeding £2 billion (approximately $3.2 billion). The company operates 167 department stores in the UK, Ireland and Denmark, has 61 franchised stores across 24 other countries and also offers customers fully transactional websites at http://www.debenhams.com and at http://www.debenhams.ie.

The retail sector is highly competitive and Debenhams is committed to offering greater value, a wider choice and excellent service. So when it comes to customer marketing communications, shouldn’t they too refl ect the same standards of service—and be personal, relevant and engaging?

The challenge: falling campaign resultsDebenhams has for many years offered customers the opportunity to receive direct marketing communications. But its customer data was held in multiple siloed databases. There was limited integration. Segmentation, targeting and reporting capabilities were simplistic.

“We had lots of data, but limited visibility into the behavior and preferences of our customers,” said Robert Unsworth, head of trading fi nance and commercial insight at Debenhams. “As a consequence, our customer marketing campaigns were really just mass-messages such as in-store sales and promotions.”

“The impersonal nature of the content wasn’t consistent with the brand experience Debenhams stands for. Also, falling response rates were undermining marketing effectiveness,” said Unsworth. “We needed to improve the service value of our communications by making them more personal and worth reading.”

Neolane conversational marketing technologyDebenhams considered implementing enterprise marketing software. In trials, response-rates and re-activity rates improved signifi cantly and opt-outs fell; all enabling marketing to prove its business case.

“We selected Neolane because it offers one-to-one, cross-channel customer marketing centralized for the entire enterprise on a single platform,” said Unsworth. “Neolane had everything we sought and proved it in the trials.”

One concern Debenhams had in investing in a solution was the up-front IT and licensing costs. Available in SaaS mode, Neolane enabled a low-cost, low-risk entry with the advantage of offering scalability to full implementation.

Full implementation included integration of the Neolane datamart with the Debenhams customer data warehouse, some 18 additional departmental databases and a number of third party feeds. This historical data enabled basic content personalization to commence almost immediately. Today, Neolane holds some six million customer records and is used to generate some two million personalized content communications per week. The platform manages the frequency of communications sent to any single customer (across all channels) to avoid either over- or under- solicitation. Online and text opt-ins and opt-outs are handled automatically.

Cross-channel, customer response behavior is captured and tracked by the Neolane platform. This intelligence adds to the customer’s profi le, possibly triggering follow-on campaigns and in any case, supporting more relevant cross-channel conversations in the future.

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“We ultimately selected Neolane because it offers one-to-one, cross-channel customer marketing centralized for the entire enterprise on a single platform.”

Mobile campaignsWhen Debenhams chose to launch mobile campaigns, enabling it as an additional channel on the Neolane platform was relatively simple and swiftly successful.

“It took just four weeks from go to defi ne and be ready to launch mobile campaigns,” said Unsworth.

Email campaigns and advertising tempts customers to text a short-code to claim a voucher. They then receive a texted code unique to their phone number, which they can show and redeem in store. Mobile campaigns have alerted customers to in-store events, the Debenhams Sale, key promotions and have also offered further discount vouchers.

“As customers request their own mobile voucher, we are experiencing a higher redemption rate than the average for printed vouchers,” said Unsworth. “As the mobile voucher expiry date approaches, automated reminders are sent to customers who’ve not redeemed them.”

Debenhams Beauty Club – a clear winnerThe value of Neolane is illustrated by specifi c reference to Debenhams Beauty, a core department store offering led by internationally branded products. In store, health and beauty consultants provide customers with one-on-one advice and consultations. Through regular acquaintance they often develop personal knowledge of loyal customers’ preferences.

“Beauty is a highly competitive market. To add to the personal in-store experience, and differentiate ourselves from competitors, we elected to launch the Debenhams Beauty Club,” said Unsworth. “Our core objectives were to build and reward customer loyalty and increase long-term sales.”

He continued: “We took the Debenhams Beauty Club loyalty idea from conception to implementation in just 12 weeks. This was only possible because we’d already implemented Neolane across the enterprise, making it easy to design customer journeys and add new campaign workfl ows.”

Members earn points for purchases and other loyalty behaviors when they use their card. Once registered, they can redeem points for rewards, which can then be used as full or part payment against new health and beauty purchases.

“Customers are keen to follow their loyalty points balance and see them turn into rewards,” said Unsworth. “Within regular statement emails, we use Neolane to generate and present tempting offers and messages appropriate for the customer. These messages get through. We use them to drive preferred customer journeys and encourage deeper engagement in the scheme, further purchases and other loyalty interactions.”

“We know that a Debenhams Beauty Club member redeeming rewards spends fi ve times as much as our average non-member customer,” said Unsworth. “We also know that on average, once customers become members, they signifi cantly increase their spend with us over the next 12 months.”

For all campaigns, clear analysis and reporting allows marketers to prove which campaign ideas and customer journeys are delivering the best results; enabling optimization of the Debenhams marketing investment.

“It’s easy to show that marketing automation and personalization is improving the returns we gain from customer marketing investments,” said Unsworth. ”Our email conversion rates are up 75 percent and email driven sales volumes are up 200 percent.”

In its fi rst year of operation, Debenhams Beauty Club attracted two million cardholders. This is still growing. Revenue for its health and beauty department is ‘signifi cantly up’ as a direct result of the loyalty initiative. It’s now one of the store’s best performing departments.

Looking to the future, Debenhams may add additional channels to its marketing strategy. There’s the integration of its iPhone app and its Facebook and Twitter communications with Neolane for example.