The recent Retail Week Technology Awards highlighted the vital role technology plays in enhancing the customer experience.

The recent Retail Week Technology Awards highlighted the vital role technology plays in enhancing the customer experience. And it’s not just restricted to in-store retail theatre fads or digital social trends. As our shortlisted customers proved, the right technology behind the scenes can enhance the customer experience by enabling programmes that impact the customer lifecycle and synchronise cross-channel brand experiences.

There were three ‘Customer Initiative’ projects up for prizes at the event, two for Thomas Pink and one from Liberty.

In the Multichannel Project of the Year category, Thomas Pink’s ‘Single Customer View’ project showed the power of creating one customer database across all channels. It’s not easy to do - but the benefits are worth it as the SCV acts as the foundation for a whole host of other customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives. In Thomas Pink’s case, leveraging the data from different channels by personalising and simplifying the customer experience has paid off, with signs of increased customer satisfaction, increased cross-channel behaviour and improved communication click-through and conversion.

Thomas Pink’s other award entry was for Marketing Solution of the Year. The retailer’s ‘In the Pink’ campaign was created on the back of loyalty research that revealed that rewarding ‘multibuyers’ for their Loyalty would result in incremental customer value, increased customer satisfaction and a positive impact on the bottom line.

Thomas Pink logo

Thomas Pink

The programme designed to tap into this insight, ‘In the Pink’ achieves a number of loyalty aims - it thanks and rewards customers; keeps the messaging fresh and relevant; and positively impacts multibuyer activity. The result, in incremental sales alone, are way above the target set out in the original business case, with increases in average customer value and overall revenue.

Sitting alongside Thomas Pink for Marketing Solution of the Year was Liberty, with its ‘Retain/Reactivate’ customer lifecycle programme. Liberty provides a unique shopping experience and already boasts excellent customer loyalty. But the ‘Retain/Reactivate’ programme used the retailer’s multichannel database aimed to reach out to less active and dormant customers.

Liberty

Liberty

Once again, data analysis was the starting point. The Customer Insight team dived into the customer data to identify customer ‘drop-off’ points. They could also see that enticing people back within a specific timeframe resulted in a significant increase in customers going on to make two or more orders. Off the back of this, Liberty undertook a hugely successful two-staged ‘We’ve Missed You!” marketing campaign which provided customers with various offers, depending on their current status, and resulted in significant retention and reactivation. Best in class CRM retailers know that long-term sustainable profitability comes from the retention of existing customers, not just acquisition.

Both retailers are pleased with the results they have seen, and are already devising and implementing higher levels of CRM excellence over the next twelve months!