2016 Bronze Best brand building campaign

Agency RAPP UK

Client Mothercare

Campaign summary

How emailing receipts transformed a business

Campaign overview

Although an estimated 80% of expectant mums visit Mothercare during pregnancy, they bought elsewhere.

So Mothercare wanted to play a greater role in their lives and increase customer visibility from 2.3% to 20%, while raising life time value by 10%. The mother of all challenges!

Strategy

The strategy centred on owning the pregnancy journey across all channels via the ‘My Mothercare’ loyalty club.

Data unearthed a strong purchase pattern from early pregnancy and Mothercare needed to know their customers and what they were buying.

So it rolled out e-receipts across their 200 UK stores enabling Mothercare to collect customers’ email addresses. They knew what customers had bought, and could plot their parenting journey from that point using the CRM programme. They planned to deliver customers back into store, either to buy specific and relevant items or attend specially designed store initiatives like the Expectant Parent Events and Personal Shopper service.

Integrating e-receipts around the customer contributed to the turnaround of the business by delivering better connected experiences to the widest possible reach of people.

Creativity

The campaign used more than 200 personalised emails,with tailored advice.

It encouraged mums back in-store to buy certain items, see new ranges and attend events. It invited them to Expectant Parent Meetups where midwives showcased relevant products.

And the data went deeper.

When invited for a personal shopping session, store advisors knew what products the customer had looked at online, how long they’d spent researching, their budget and so on.

Mums could create wish lists and make future appointments, both of which increased sales. The same store colleague helped customers with their first bra fitting at 12-weeks to their last fitting post-pregnancy. More than 5,000 customers on Mothercare’s database give birth every week, and they were invited to New Mum Meetups - a place to chat and build lasting relationships with other mums (and Mothercare). That data became a human-first experience, and the stores became Mothercare’s biggest customer experience asset.

Results

Within 18 months Mothercare was reborn, proving that creative thinking and the strategy were a huge success.

The e-receipts rolled out across 200 stores within six weeks, and within the same timeframe stores became a bigger source of data than the website. And it didn’t stop there.

Mothercare’s weekly orders attributed to direct marketing campaigns increased by 1,431%, showing how effective emails were.

In-store, Mothercare saw an uplift of 275.46% in expectant parent events, which translated to revenue from these events rising from £307,000 to £978,000 (Oct 2013 vs. Jan 2015), driven by increased customer awareness without increasing store admin overheads.

Additionally, 1,885 personal shopper appointments were booked in 2015, compared to 0 in 2014.

Team

Glyn Birchall (Director of CRM- Loyalty & Insight) • Sue Moss (CRM Data Architect) • John Boreham (Customer Insights Manager) • Parvez Ahkitar (Senior Data Scientist) • Mark Savage (Account Director) • Gary Robbins (Senior Project Manager)

Contributors

Y-Receipts (EReceipt functionality supplier)