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Prior to 2003, Little Me was an infant wear wholesaler distributed via department stores and about 20 outlet stores. In 2003 they opened three full-price stores, as the first move in a brand initiative to go retail. Positioned for expansion, Little Me needed to grow its consumer base, market more consistently to its existing consumer franchise, and create more loyal relationships among consumers old and new. |
Challenge
Little Me outlet stores had been capturing names and addresses of customers but had not used this information for marketing; some of the data had become outdated. Now, with the opening of their three retail stores, they were launching a loyalty card that would capture new information. They asked KWI to help them maximize their loyalty program, and to mine their growing database for more powerful CRM.
Solution
According to the CRM team at KWI, “The most difficult part of relationship-building is to get the customer back a second time.” So the team’s first move was to place an offer in the loyalty card Welcome Package, to quickly stimulate another store visit. Since the loyalty action started in-store, the high performing stores and associates were identified and their best practices became company policy.
They next attacked the database file, which was significantly flawed by bad information. Using state-of-the-art cross-referencing resources, names were updated with current addresses, and enriched with additional information to increase deliverability.
With proprietary analytical tools, KWI sliced and diced the enriched database to reveal who the best customers were, where they lived, and what they were buying. This valuable information was used to target market the most lucrative customers, and merchandise the stores with the most appealing, fastest-turning product. A significant by-product was sales training to increase conversion rates.
Results
By enhancing the loyalty program and better training their sales associates to promote the program, Little Me lifted their capture rate from 10% to 40%. The updated and enriched database increased deliverability significantly. They continue to effectively communicate with a widening universe of customers.
As a subset of the loyalty program, a “top customer” initiative is building progressively higher levels of response and creating a frequency habit among the stores’ best customers.
By outsourcing their CRM initiative to KWI, Little Me has better identified their customer, increased sales and ROI from the database, and managed their loyalty program with no additional staff or costly
systems. As they gain insights into their retail consumer, business is steadily growing. Retail “learnings” are also being used to build the wholesale side of the business.
