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Entertainment retailer zavvi was formed in 2007 by the zavvi Entertainment Group following a management buyout of Virgin Megastores UK. Through its over 120 brick-and-mortar stores and www.zavvi.co.uk, the company offers one of the country's most current and extensive ranges of music, DVDs, games and books.
The retailer's marketing team faced several challenges that limited its ability to build stronger, more consistent relationships with customers: the team managed multiple data sources of unknown quality, including website registrations and transactions; customer loyalty programme registrations; and in-store transactions; there was no central marketing data mart for collecting, gathering or consolidating customer information, preventing the team from establishing a single marketing view of the customer; the team was only able to execute campaigns against data collected from web transactions (versus all channels), and had limited campaign reporting capabilities. To retain and expand market share, it needed to gain customer insight, and then segment and target its dynamic customer base - one that is increasingly turning to other online alternatives for entertainment – to deliver precise marketing messages and improve its bottom line.
“Building a single view of the customer is critical for a multi-channel retailer like zavvi,” explains Suzanne Jiggens, CRM and new media marketing manager at zavvi. “We knew that the ability to view buying behaviour across all of our channels would provide a much richer platform on which we could base future offers and campaigns. Bringing that data together in a central place was the key.”
Taking control
zavvi set out to find a partner that could help it achieve its key marketing objectives. In order to establish a single view of the customer, it needed to create a central marketing data mart and establish better processes for matching, consolidating and cleansing data acquired across channels – at an individual and household level. It also sought to fully automate many of its manual marketing tasks, such as data imports and processing. After evaluating several enterprise marketing software vendors, the retailer selected Neolane based on its ability to most completely match the company’s marketing needs, with the flexibility necessary to map to future goals.
There followed the creation of an externally hosted, centralised data mart that would allow marketers to manage CRM activity more efficiently, and respond more quickly to competitive factors such as price, product and promotions. The outsourced solution reduces marketers’ dependence on IT and third-party service providers, giving them freedom and flexibility. zavvi can now synchronise all lead, contact and customer information into its central data repository where information is automatically matched, de-duped, cleansed (via integration with Experian) and enhanced to deliver one view of the customer. The marketing team then uses that data to segment and personalise offers. Neolane’s marketing process automation features improve internal co-ordination and team efficiency, letting zavvi set up automatic reminders and enabling marketing team members to easily update customer profiles and continuously track behaviours.
“We have limited marketing resources and really needed a way to increase our productivity and effectiveness. We wanted to run all CRM and marketing activity on our own, without help from our IT department or service providers, while also increasing campaign volume. Neolane’s flexibility helped us quickly address these critical needs. In fact, it was implemented and usable within two weeks of purchase,” says Jiggens.
Seeing the big picture
With a consolidated data mart, zavvi is now able to see the 'big picture' view of its customers, and customisable Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reports provide powerful campaign measurement tools. The reports can be as simple or as complex as the business demands. “The solution is very intuitive and easy to use. In fact, two internal marketers run all our campaigns,” notes Jiggens. “Additionally, we have been able to gain more control and flexibility in terms of timing, content and reporting which makes it easier for us to communicate with upper management.”
Achieving a marketing ROI of 23:1
Today, zavvi sends more than 400,000 emails a week. Campaigns encourage online or in-store purchases with discounts, and weekly, bi-weekly and monthly newsletters update customers on exciting new music, films, games, books and special offers. Those communications can now be created in one day, instead of one week. Over a 20-month period, zavvi executed 365 highly targeted campaigns, achieving click-through rates from 10 to 30 per cent. Seasonal campaigns, created well in advance, run automatically to tap into market opportunities such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. And multiple campaigns can run simultaneously without overloading marketing staff. Since moving to Neolane, zavvi has determined that for every £1 spent on direct marketing, it generates as much as £23 in revenue. “The marketing-friendly nature of the system greatly enhanced our ability to quickly react to competitive moves and issue timely, targeted campaigns,” says Jiggens. “The intuitive, graphical user interface gives us the freedom to experiment before launching a campaign. Response rates are way up, and opt-out rates have been less than one per cent since we started using Neolane.”
Closing the marketing loop
“Our marketing team realises we are only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of exploiting the full functionality of the Neolane platform,” notes Jiggens. Moving forward, zavvi plans to further automate its marketing campaigns, and capture real-time ROI data for campaigns that drive transactions at its website. This 'closed-loop' approach will leverage customer behavioural and transactional data to drive dynamically personalised campaigns. Eventually, the company plans to take advantage of the mobile channel, knowing that Neolane will be easily able to incorporate mobile SMS, WAP Push or MMS into existing campaigns and treat the data as part of a unified, cross-channel campaign strategy.
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