Smart use of customer data.

The industry

Retail cosmetics and beauty supplies

The client

A regional retail cosmetic supply and salon chain

A unique business model — modern and clean warehouse style retail with space for multiple salons at each location.

Challenge

Our client was building a network of retail stores successfully with a modern footprint and exclusive products in the beauty category. They had deployed a loyalty program but they needed to use technology and their first party data far more efficiently and successfully for marketing to loyalty program members.

Our findings

Our client was utilizing a proprietary POS system running four separate customer databases. Multiple databases were less than ideal and the current system offered limited marketing automation functionality.

The solution

We proposed a complete customer data audit in order to normalize the data across all store locations. We set up a streamlined process for regular data export into an external marcom system to allow ongoing email and SMS marketing campaigns with ease.

The details —
Establish a single source of truth

We completed the data audit and normalization of four customer databases into a single customer database with a structured process around how customer data could be updated regularly from multiple store locations. With a single source of reliable customer data established we now had the ability to fully leverage customer data for marketing automation and use within the mobile app and the public-facing website.

Leverage customer data for marketing automation

The proprietary point of sale system lacked many modern features including any type of data interoperability with external systems. Without an API or automated data export option, we devised a simple batch process to export formatted customer data for import into various marketing automation platforms. This allowed us to action the data in new ways, taking maximum advantage of the loyalty program.

Extend mobile app experiences

We worked with external vendors to enhance the mobile app experience, leveraging more customer data and integrating promotions managed via the website into the application UI. We were able to simultaneously provide more value to customers while offering the business more digital channels and touchpoints for customer marketing without the overhead of managing content in multiple systems.

“It's so very expensive to bring a new customer into your store so do everything you can for your existing customers.”
-Myles Kesten,
President, Riverdale Mac
The results

Our client went from a multi-system dataset to a single system. This allowed for a seamless supporting process for ongoing marketing utilizing multiple channels that were previously out of reach.

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