Campaign: Implementing a data-driven email marketing platform

Client: Jeanswest

Agency/tech partner: Responsys

Background: 

Jeanswest is one of Australia’s leading fashion retailers. With more than 3000 stores across Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Fiji and China, the company is continuing to expand its international footprint to become a truly global brand. Back in 2009, however, the company’s Australian email marketing activity was still stuck in the 90s and it was sending out generic, largely untargeted, batch and blast emails to its local customers.

Operating in the dynamic nature of the Australian retail environment meant that email should have been the ideal marketing channel to communicate more targeted news and new offers to drive consumers both online and in-store. Jeanswest knew that, in order to be industry leading, it needed to find a more effective approach to data management and reporting, and a more personalised way to communicate.

 

Objectives

Jeanswest was caught in the grind of manually sending emails through its previous platform. The brand wanted to develop a broad range of smaller and targeted programs, but lacked the time and resources. Its key objectives were to:

• easily access customer data and cre- ate more personalised relationships with customers,
• increase efficiency and reduce staff time,
• execute automated marketing campaigns daily,
• increase email open rates and drive click-throughs to the Jeanswest website, and
• drive revenue.

 

Strategy

Budgets were fairly lean and, without a huge team, Jeanswest needed a solution that was quick to implement, easy to use and would deliver a substantial ROI.

Jeanswest began using the Responsys Interact Suite in order to achieve these goals, recognising that the suite offered more flexibility and sophistication than other solutions on the market. While integrating Responsys, Jeanswest also launched new ecommerce and web platforms. This strategic move consolidated its digital marketing efforts and made it easier to access cross-platform data, as well as target customers with emails based on such information as past purchase behaviour.

Execution

Through Responsys, Jeanswest has devised three types of targeted and automated email campaigns that run concurrently with its promotional calendar campaigns:

Targeted activity: campaigns are developed based on a customer’s data and past behaviours. For example, customers who purchased a top in a floral print previously are targeted when Jeanswest releases a new top in a similar style with a different pattern. When Jeanswest tried to do something like this in the past, the data was nearly impossible to access and the process was time and resource heavy.

Triggered campaigns: Jeanswest created tailored campaigns at significant milestones based on a customer’s loyalty status. Email campaigns like ‘Birthday’ (triggered on date of birth), ‘Anniversary’ and ‘Congrats, you’re now a Gold member’ have proven to be some of the most successful ever launched, driving the highest ROI while requiring the least amount of maintenance.

Life-cycle marketing: lifestyle marketing strategies were developed, where customers were delivered individualised offers and promotions depending on their relationship and engagement with Jeanswest. For instance, regular shoppers were sent a thank you offer as a reward for being a valued customer, new shoppers were sent an offer to welcome them to the Jeanswest program and irregular shoppers were sent an offer to help reignite their interest and encourage them to re-engage.

 

Results

Email campaigns are now developed faster, are more cost-effective and managed completely in-house. A new campaign can be conceived and executed in half a day.

The results of key campaigns include:

Increased revenue:

• 400% higher ROI from triggered, automated emails than untargeted emails, and
• 200% higher ROI from product-targeted emails than untargeted emails.

Improved targeting

• Up to 150% higher open and click-through rates for targeted, event-triggered campaigns than untargeted emails.

Automation

• More than 50,000 highly personalised emails are now triggered and delivered automatically each month.