Empowering Johnson & Johnson to build meaningful customer relationships with the power of first-party data

This post is sponsored by Epsilon.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has a heritage of more than 130 years and is the world’s largest and most broadly-based healthcare company known for its top-of-the-line personal health and hygiene products.

As part of its growth strategy, J&J Taiwan was keen to build closer consumer relationships. It recognised the need to acquire more high-value consumers and engage with them effectively across the consumer life cycle. This would help improve consumer lifetime value, thereby boosting customer retention, revenue, and profitability.

Effective customer engagement requires first person (1P) and second person (2P) data analytics, strategic customer segmentation, and real-time data insights to support the formulation of more precise marketing strategies. Also, having clear 1P data alignment and activating PII data through key media channels can help optimise and build precision marketing plans.

Hampered with access to only basic customer segmentation that was not model-driven, J&J partnered with Epsilon to bring real-time data analytics and actionable insights. This would enable the brand to activate first-party data for effective customer engagement.

$1.2 million potential new sales opportunities identified.

280-plus strategic data attributes identified for consumer behaviour.

14-plus strategic recommendations to enable a DTC model.

The challenges

The constraints of unfamiliarity

The team earlier used social channels such as LINE, Facebook, and YouTube for customer engagement. In addition, each brand was driving consumer engagement through various content and loyalty programmes via their canvas websites. 

They experimented on communication and personalisation re-targeting, but the absence of structured CRM journeys hampered their efforts. While they had access to some data insights, the scale and volume weren’t sufficient to deliver meaningful results.

The lack of a model-driven customer segmentation system made it impossible for J&J to properly analyse customer behaviour and arrive at actionable insights. Other than being unable to provide a real-time pulse of the business, the existing data and analytics framework also seriously limited online-2-offline CRM. 

The lack of data harmonisation and direct-to-consumer (DTC) enablement also made it challenging to attribute sales and monetise 1P data. Therefore, it was critical to enable actionable insights through strategic segmentation and monitor metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV), engagement rates, and loyalty conversion rates to help monetise the 1P data.

The solution

A four-step strategy for data acquisition and analytics

To better analyse its customer base, Epsilon determined that a robust data acquisition strategy and a reporting and analytics framework would be the best option. The team picked four strategic consumer segments and supporting experience paths. 

These segments were developed with specific product correlation to product groupings/bundles for two very diverse brands – Johnson’s Baby, which consists of an extensive range of baby care products, including baby powder, shampoos, body lotions, massage oil, shower gels and baby wipes; and Regaine, which consists of scientifically proven treatments to stop and even reverse hereditary hair loss.

Epsilon recommended a four-step approach that entailed:

1. Identifying the opportunity: Epsilon worked with the consumer insights and brand marketing team at J&J to come up with business outcomes and set up the analysis.
2. Building an environment: The team then developed a customised analytics environment across data, technology, and analytics that also complied with privacy policies, thereby ensuring the ethical use of customer data.
3. Analysis: Through an extensive analysis of consumer data via multiple sources, a strategic plan to monetise J&J’s 1PD was formulated.
4. Strategic segmentation: The artefacts derived provided the richest and most comprehensive foundation of consumer behaviours and actionable insights that were in line with the campaign’s objective and key results.

New opportunities, actionable insights, optimised campaigns

Strategically segmented consumer brand data helps J&J gain knowledge to enable strategic conversion of prospects. The new framework helps uncover cross-sell and upsell opportunities via transaction data and other related data. Identification of consumer engagement characteristics can drive loyalty via campaign optimisation in the CRM journey.

In addition, the new framework helps set the foundation to track and measure KPIs and analyse transactions in real-time. It provides the necessary building blocks to automate the CRM life cycle journey and enable CLV/propensity analysis to better forecast and optimise future acquisitions. The framework can also be replicated as a skeleton for E2E consumer data engagements.

With an enriched 1P data framework, the organisation is better prepared to allow various ad hoc analyses, and gear up for a cookie-less future.

With the framework in place, J&J can now:

• Enable deliberate contact and targeting strategies to increase an invoice-based loyalty response and website engagement.

• Create potential opportunity to gain analysis to determine the impact of non-targeted consumers on purchase behaviour.
• Develop and translate insights into personalised email recommendations to ensure the most relevant communications to drive engagement.

The results

• Four strategic consumer segments and supporting experience paths were developed with specific product correlation to product groupings/bundles for the Johnson’s Baby and Regaine brands.
• Provided segment-level campaign recommendations with distinct test and learn strategies, consumer journey mapping, and KPI tracking that helped activate precision marketing use cases.
• Using consumer segmentation: developed a deliberate contact and targeting strategies to increase invoice-based loyalty response and website engagement.
• Partnered to create potential opportunity to gain analysis to determine the impact of non-targeted consumers on purchase behaviour.​
• Develop and translate insights into personalised email recommendations to ensure the most relevant communications to drive engagement.