RESOURCES
RESOURCESXMPie Automation Wakes Sleeping Customers for French Retailer
CASE STUDY
At A Glance
The Challenge
How to use omnichannel marketing to reengage dormant retail customers and transform them into high-value shoppers.
The Solution
Circle Omnichannel Marketing Automation
The Results
Estimated added turnover of €75,000 per year.
Feedback rate of more than 30% on postal mailing.
The entire campaign was designed to be reusable for the future to take advantage of the work already completed and time and money spent and to ensure brand consistency.
"I am convinced that this type of partnership will develop, that it will be the new way to produce profitable communication for a brand or company. And 'Oui Pub' [legislation] will accelerate this trend [in France]."
Bernard Dossman
Direction Générale chez INNEO Solutions
Background
INNEO Solutions, a commercial printer in France, has a background in producing high-volume Variable Data Print powered by the XMPie Platform. As part of its expansion in 2021, it invested in Circle Software, XMPie’s omnichannel solution, to offer omnichannel marketing services to marketing agencies and brands on an industrial scale.
Epsilon GC, a marketing agency based in Reims, France, is a proponent of one-to-one marketing with 40 years of experience with database optimization and delivering marketing campaigns in the retail sector. It was the obvious choice when the local branch of the French supermarket chain Biocoop needed help addressing a critical marketing challenge: How to wake its sleeping customers.
Challenge
Biocoop is a French supermarket chain specializing in organic and sustainable products. Founded in 1986 and owned and operated by a network of members, including farmers, distributors, and local consumers, Biocoop has over 700 stores across France, making it the country’s largest network of organic stores.
As an alternative to exclusively targeting new customers and luring them away from the competition, Biocoop Saint Thomas in the town of Reims decided to focus on attracting existing customers. These were primarily sleeping customers who had not purchased from the store for a while or who never deviated from their regular shopping list.
It needed a software solution and marketing partners who could analyze the purchase history of its customers, tailor messaging and content accordingly, and execute a marketing campaign with a consistent visual and messaging style across all channels. One that would result in easy brand recognition, high customer satisfaction, loyalty and increased sales and revenue.
Print was a favorite among the company’s chosen multiple marketing channels to entice customers back to the store. It also wanted to measure results at each stage to determine each channel’s value and identify campaign strengths and weaknesses. Creating innovative marketing campaigns can be time-consuming and expensive, especially without a large marketing team or budget, so it also wanted the campaign to be reusable for the future, with minimal additional cost.
“"The urgency… was to reactivate [Biocoop's] profiles in the long term and generate an immediate and sustainable turnover,"
Muriel Naivin
General Director of Epsilon GC.
The Solution
INNEO Solutions and Epsilon GC used XMPie’s award-winning Circle Marketing Automation solution to attract Biocoop’s sleeping customers to the store with personalized discount offers. These were delivered via a holistic communications campaign beginning with print and linking to digital channels.
The first (and most time-consuming) stage of planning its campaign messages and discount offers was to clean up the customer database. During this RFM segmentation process to assess each customer’s Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value, Epsilon GC identified characteristics, including the last purchase, how often they shop in the store, and overall spend.
The campaign was launched using personalized Direct Mail because it has a high trust and open rate. Unlike emails which are often opened, skimmed, and forgotten in seconds, printed Direct Mail requires more time and attention from the recipient. Even so, the QR code scan rate for each Print touchpoint was analyzed to determine campaign effectiveness. 360° Campaign analytics included complete ROI measurement at every touchpoint, including the conversion rate of each channel, traffic generated in-store and final sales. This way, Biocoop did not have to rely on intuition to decide its marketing strategy. It could see what worked best in real-time based on customer behavior and make informed decisions based on that information.
The campaign, which sent a customized weekly offer during the campaign, included personalized print vouchers with a digital gateway via QR code, follow-up emails with customized digital vouchers, and a dedicated, personalized website for customers to access their customized vouchers. There was also POS (Point of Sale) synchronization at check-out so the cashier could welcome the customer by name to the store.
The print touchpoints were created with XMPie’s plugin to Adobe InDesign. The email templates and personalized website were created with the designer’s preferred tools using shared data and logic between print and email channels, so correct branding was guaranteed. And because Circle’s single personalization engine generated all messaging to every channel, the team provided a consistent, branded, and seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
The next stage of the campaign will be to launch a marketing portal for different franchises to create and order customized branded marketing material or campaigns-on-demand. Each branch will be able to respond to marketing challenges in their catchment area, such as store anniversary, drop in sales, stock to liquidate etc.
"Why did we start with a postal mailing? Because there is this credibility of the mail. There is all the trust that can be put behind it."
Nicolas Stas
Epsilon
Results
Feedback rate of more than 30% on the postal mailing.
Estimated added turnover of €75,000 per year.
The entire campaign was designed to be reusable for the future to take advantage of the work already completed and time and money spent and to ensure brand consistency.
"Print is the most effective medium to reach the consumer. SMS and mailing come next to nourish the relationship that has been created, and this over time. If the relationship breaks down, then the print media will be able to reactivate the link, as we have observed and measured with Biocoop [results]."
Bernard Dossmann
Direction Générale chez INNEO Solutions
"Everyone says they know how to send text messages, everyone says they know how to send email, everyone says they know how to print, but XMPie is [the] only omnichannel software that allows you to combine all three. And that is a great tool!"
Bernard Dossmann
Direction Générale chez INNEO Solutions
Critical Success Factors
- The entire campaign was designed to be reusable for the future to take advantage of the work already completed and time and money spent and to ensure brand consistency. Biocoop can also refine this successful campaign with data analysis and optimization to garner even more positive results.
- The campaign complied with the imminent French 'Oui Pub' legislation which will likely be enacted to reduce the amount of wastepaper. The scheme gives residents the option to display a small sticker on their letterbox if they want to receive promotional material. All unaddressed mail will be banned from letterboxes that do not display "Oui Pub" stickers.
- XMPie supports the Adobe InDesign workflow from set-up through preview and composition, enabling faster onboarding of templates with fewer steps in the design workflow. It also offers full graphics support and color management to protect the Biocoop brand identity.
