2016 Gold Retail

Agency Karmarama

Client DFS

Campaign summary An email right now, from the person standing in front of you

Campaign overview

DFS needed a way to convert 80% of visitors who did not buy during their visit to a store.

These prospects left without DFS capturing their data. A huge opportunity lost. What’s more, they were most likely walking right into competitors’ stores after leaving.

Strategy

DFS’ greatest strength is its salespeople. Despite their great work, 80% of conversion opportunities left without buying. People needed more time to consider their purchase.

A new strategy let salespeople simultaneously capture valuable leads’ data and break barriers to purchase.

The DFS team were trained on Connect (Karmarama’s proprietary CRM system), loaded onto tablets, to quickly and easily capture relevant data without hindering customer service.

However, DFS’ salespeople perceived prospects being diverted online and commission lost. So Connect was programmed to tag prospect data with the salesperson’s details. Prospects knew who they’d spoken to in-store, and could come back to them when they were ready to buy.

Over 90% of customers who returned came back to their original salespeople and the Connect CRM system was welcomed across all stores involved.

Creativity

Each salesperson coupled the product a customer was interested in with other data captured, so the creative served was both personalised and relevant.

Each email included predetermined creative with the information needed to make a decision about the product they were interested in.

This data-driven creative offered continuity between in-store and online. In-store visitors could find all the information they needed right in the palm of their hand - from the salesperson they’d met in-store.

On top of this, Karmarama delivered relevant brand truths to overcome barriers to DFS’ brand and product: all sofas come with a 15 year guarantee, and are handmade in Britain. Prospects were even offered free removal of their old sofa, to help raise money for the British Heart Foundation.

Results

Engagement metrics revealed that prospects appreciated the personal touch: open rates for this campaign were 76% compared with circa 10% for standard promotional emails from DFS.

The creative inspired customers to spend more: the average order value for orders made in the campaign customer journey was a significant 27% higher than other orders made in the same period.

Additionally, using data to make creative relevant to prospects drove greater conversion, with a 33% uplift compared with customers outside this campaign.

Team

Stuart Cave (Senior CRM Manager) • Davnet Reid (Head fo Customer Experience and Analytics) • James Prior (Senior Software Engineer) • Greg Caswell (Head of ECRM) • Ming-E Yip (Digital Designer) • Matthew Brown (Managing Director) • Mark Runacus (Partner) • Max Richards (Planner) • Anna Agapiou (Head of Digital Design) • Jon Iredale (Creative Director) • Jamie Paul (Data Planner)