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#LEAwards 2021 highlight: Timberland puts best foot forward and nails loyalty programme

#LEAwards 2021 highlight: Timberland puts best foot forward and nails loyalty programme

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With the rise of eCommerce and the shift to digitalisation, retail brands are struggling to keep up with consumer engagement. As more consumers join the wave of online shopping, brick and mortar stores are slowly being forced to come up with strategies to engage with the public. Furthermore, as the pandemic continues, people are now less willing than before to head down to a retail store to shop for groceries, clothes and necessities. 

Timberland, a brand under American apparel and footwear company VF Group, had not been spared from this trend. Hence, it worked with digital marketing agency XGATE to come up with a 360-degree CRM campaign which saw it clinch the silver award for Best Loyalty Programme – Retailer at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2021. Here’s how the brand succeeded.

Challenge

With the shift in consumer behaviour, more retail businesses find themselves accelerating their digital transformation plans and doubling down on consumer engagement. Consumers are now no longer loyal to a single brand, and are always on the hunt to find the best deals available. To sustain a business, retail stores needed to evolve.

VF Group’s Timberland and XGATE understood the challenges in place and saw the need to take action. First, there was a lack of members’ insights which prevented the brand from having a deeper understanding of its consumers. As a result, it was not always possible to form purposeful connections with them.  

Additionally, there was also a lack of campaign ROI tracking as the company did not have an automated solution to manage and measure the life cycle marketing effectively. This, in turn, made it hard for the company to drive sales and grow its membership base.

Data silos and disparate systems also proved to be a challenge for the company. The reason being: data silos hinder the extraction of business and consumer behavioural insights to improve marketing ROI. To tackle these challenges, Timberland and XGATE came up with a 360-degree CRM campaign. 

Strategy 

Timberland and XGATE had a different approach to tackling its challenges. The company wanted to achieve a whole new level of CRM and loyalty marketing by delivering an exclusive, connected and personalised shopping experience. 

First, the company sought to understand its consumers by leveraging multichannel communications to target the right customer segments with the right message. Next, the company ensured it captured consumer behaviour patterns online and offline to drive a deeper understanding of the members. Brand loyalty was then enhanced by mapping out the members’ persona with purchase patterns to drive business insights and engagement opportunities.

With a strong knowledge of the target audience’s shopping behavioural habits, the company used headless commerce – an eCommerce solution that stores, manages and delivers content without a front-end delivery layer to ensure a fast campaign roll-out. This was done to grow the sales by providing a personalised customer experience. 

Execution

To transform CRM and retail operations, Timberland and XGATE embarked on a 360-degree CRM programme transformation for Singapore and Malaysia.

  1. Data integration to overcome data silos and facilitate data automation  

Data is being integrated across systems such as POS, CRM and BI to support an automated transfer. It would then automatically manage loyalty tiers, rewards and run CRM marketing campaigns. Operational efficiency was also maximised with the in-store portal, where members could experience a better quality shopping experience.  

  1. Life cycle communications and campaign ROI tracking 

Members who reached the gold tier were entitled to a life cycle voucher and an exclusive RSVP invitation for new season collections. The company was also able to track the metrics for the number of members using the welcome versus the upgrade voucher. 

  1. A headless commerce solution with personalised customer service  

Timberland launched an online headless commerce platform for members where they would receive a personalised EDM/SMS/order and pre-order link. The membership was then verified using a mobile and SMS code upon checking out. Different discounts were applied based on members’ tiers and order value. Additionally, the sales staff also provided advice or shopping guides for the consumers via WhatsApp, such as enquiries on products, style, size, order confirmation, payment and arrangement of store pick-up or home delivery.

  1. Personification and business excellence  

Personification and segment insights were mapped to the CRM life cycle stages to improve the CRM programme and CRM life cycle metrics.

Results  

Three months after the launch of the company’s 360-degree CRM campaign, there was approximately more than 4,500 members and a 5% increase in VIP member growth. There was also around a 25% increase in the life cycle e-voucher redemption rate. Furthermore, there was a 50%-plus increase in the sales conversion, an 8% increase in UPT and a more than 15% lift in sales by the store. 

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