Case Study

Brief
Barratts wanted to improve relevance and customer targeting by tapping into real-time online behaviours. The team lead by Paul Sanderson, ecommerce marketing manager, had the ambitious challenge of increasing revenue generated by email from 4% to 10%. Specifically the company wanted to reduce the incidence of abandoned shopping carts across its seven online brands: Barratts, Mini Barratts, Priceless Shoes, Discount Shoe Store, Petit Feet, Big Shoe Boutique and Love Your Shoes. 

The company knew that it had an opportunity to integrate real-time information about how customers interact with its online brands from its web analytics system with its email programme to gain a more holistic view of customers and prospects. Crucially Barratts wanted to achieve its goals without increasing the workload placed on a limited team, making automation a key part of its strategy.

Paul Sanderson explained, “Our key challenge was to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and establish behavioural email targeting. We knew that if we could personalise emails more effectively to encourage people to revisit their purchases, we would be able to minimise abandonment and increase sales.”

Strategy
Barratts took the decision to seek advice from the Responsys Technical Services team on how to integrate the two data systems to achieve its objectives. Responsys recommended deploying a trigger email campaign designed to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates using Responsys Interact Connect. The project targets individuals who abandon a purchase three days after they visited the site automatically. The first abandoned cart emails went live quickly, within just one month.

Sanderson continued, “We had been executing weekly emails for each site completely by hand. Responsys allows us to automate our e-newsletter programme and develop more tailored campaigns using the information we have to create trigger programmes. The Responsys Technical Services team worked with us to ensure the trigger emails are not too intrusive and set the right tone to engage the customer. We also worked closely with Responsys to improve the email design and a range of creatives to deliver a fresh message to customers so they weren’t being bombarded with the same message every time. The team worked with us to test a few different ideas on how to boost engagement such as offering free delivery and small discounts.”

Execution
To extend its message with customers, Barratts has been integrating social networking and mobile channels into its email campaigns. Adding the ‘share with your network’ capability and ‘follow us on Twitter’ functionality into email has helped to drive increased traffic to its online brands and social following, providing more opportunities for cross-channel engagement and targeting.

In March 2010 the company launched a bespoke shopping application on the iTunes store to coincide with an upgrade of its flagship Oxford Street store in London. This encourages customers to also shop online from a mobile device.

Sanderson said, “We fully understand the benefit of mobile and social in combination with email. We have been promoting our Facebook group and Twitter feed using email which has proved particularly effective at boosting Barratt’s social following. We have also run a few email competitions to win a handbag for ‘sharing’ and ‘liking’ on Facebook which has been equally effective.

“Most importantly we have learned that consistency and presence is a key aspect of building an integrated email programme that includes social and mobile. As a result we are planning to look more closely at a full m-commerce solution that integrates with Responsys. As more customers view emails on the move, the relationship between email and online promotions will be absolutely crucial.”

Results
In just one week the abandoned cart email programme generated a massive 11.5% increase in conversion rates from email compared with an average of 4.71%, exceeding the team’s objective of 10%. Overall the programme has led to a 168% increase in conversions rates and a 15% increase in average order values based on a 140% increase in open rates and a 123% boost to click through rates. It has been so successful that Barratts now plans to extend the programme across its other online brands.

Sanderson commented, “We now have greater visibility into customer patterns and online behaviours which has had an immediate positive impact on the company’s revenues. We plan to upgrade to Responsys Interact Suite version 6 to allow us to automate more programmes so we can target these new customers even more precisely according to their needs. We want to integrate our e-commerce system with our database, web analytics programme and Responsys to give us a deeper level of customer understanding. This will lead to more trigger email programmes, the introduction of a welcome programme for customers signing-up to e-newsletters and a recommendation facility to enable us to continue to boost revenues from email. In the future you can expect to see more integrated and tailored email programmes from Barratts and Responsys to offer customers a seamless cross-channel experience.”