The World’s Largest Custom Dining Ware Brand Needed AI Marketing
Until recently, Replacements, Ltd., the world’s largest “supplier” of vintage and current dinnerware, crystal, silver, and collectibles had been using its home-grown, in-house system for all email marketing activities. Like many brands, most of their campaigns took a batch-and-blast approach to email marketing.
While this “legacy” model had worked in the past, the North Carolina-based retailer knew that they needed to make some changes to become more efficient and begin delivering more effective, more personalized interactions to their customers.
But even with an exceptional in-house tech team, personalizing communications with each of their 10 million global customers was no small task. That’s why Linh Calhoun, Chief Marketing Officer at Replacements, and her team decided to partner with Emarsys to help them better leverage their customer data and scale their personalization efforts.
Calhoun and her team used the revolutionary artificial intelligence marketing technology provided by Emarsys to completely revamp the way they interact with customers — forming real relationships based on who each customer is, where they are in the purchase cycle, and when and why they want to hear from the brand.
Using Customer Data to Resurrect Email
“We had a lot of data. What we wanted to do was better utilize that data, and be more nimble in how we communicated with our customers,” Calhoun said.
Replacements wasn’t necessarily searching for a marketing automation platform at the onset. Instead, the company was just trying to understand their customers on a deeper level, and connect offline resources with online resources.
But it also wanted to save time and reduce the volume of emails so that the marketing team could get back to creativity and strategy… not segmentation and manual, time-consuming campaign-building.
Replacements’ Goal: the brand knew their e-commerce presence needed some work to match the in-store experience. They wanted to radically improve email campaigns and track website behavior. They also wanted to save time and increase efficiency for the marketing team, while addressing consumers’ website behavior via email.
It used AI-driven data science to create more effective email campaigns in far less time. AI marketing technology allowed the brand to increase efficiency of its email program while simultaneously addressing website behavior with abandoned cart campaigns and browse-abandon campaigns.
Personalizing emails based on web behavior
A full-fledged marketing automation platform allowed Replacements to collect additional customer data that they previously did not have access to with their in-house system.
Armed with that information, Replacements had enough intel on online customer behavior that they could begin identifying when and where users abandoned web pages they had been browsing.
Within three months of using browse-abandon emails, Replacements generated an extra $26,000.
Abandoned cart emails
Replacements also found that, with AI-driven abandon cart campaigns, they could send reminder emails to customers who began online shopping with a cart but didn’t check out. Abandon cart emails helped the brand get customers who were oh-so-close to buying (but didn’t convert) get past the finish line.
Abandoned cart campaigns alone shot up to a 13.9% conversion rate. They generated $10,000 from the first campaign and a total of more than $101,000 in additional revenue within the first four months.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Replacements significantly improved their personalized interactions with customers through email and web browsing, as well as increased revenue with abandoned cart and browse abandonment campaigns.
It moved from a batch-and-blast, mass communication approach with limited segmentation to relying on AI technology to target customers at the individual level.
Replacements saw the following results in adopting AI marketing technology:
- Achieved 20% open rate among more qualified segments
- Modified communication frequency and reduced volume by 50% (without reducing revenue)
- Reduced opt-out rates
- $26k in revenue from browse-abandon campaigns in three months
- $101k in revenue from abandon cart campaigns in four months
- 100% ROI within weeks of adoption
“The machine learning piece helped segment our customers, and see their future revenue potential,” Dennis Neelam, Manager of Analytics & Customer Insights said. “It also brought a capability to do data science work without having a data scientist. The tool empowered the marketing team to do things they were good at — the creative process.”
The marketing team found that it could begin to focus less on data and campaign building and more on value-generating tasks like strategy, content, and creative work.
► Watch the video to hear more about how Replacements partnered with Emarsys to revolutionize its e-commerce approach… or grab the PDF case study to peruse at your leisure.
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