Background
For three decades Boden has been delighting it’s loyal customers with stylish, feel-good clothing. Synonymous with bright patterned garments complemented by masterly tailoring, a Boden dress or polo is as identifiable as one’s own fingerprint. From its humble beginnings as a pure-play mail-order retailer, to becoming early online adopters boosted with a smattering of retail outlets, Boden gets digital better than most - with the brands online presence delivering a seamless eCommerce experience to all of its customers. As part of its on-going commitment to put the customer at the heart of its creative process, Boden teamed-up with Cheetah Digital to embark on a journey of delivering truly-personalized content and product recommendations from a strategy rooted in data-driven marketing.
Challenge
A Digital Maturity assessment of the Boden customer journey in late 2020 found that although the retailer boasts strong foundations per channel, to deliver truly excellent digital experiences it needs to:
- Place the customer journey at the centre of its marketing operations
- Fully utilize its technology stack
- Apply first-and zero-party data to prioritize online experiences
To solve the challenges highlighted above, Cheetah Digital assisted the team at Boden in developing a fully-fledged cross-channel marketing strategy that delivers customers targeted, relevant messages to drive conversion and loyalty.
This would effectuate an entirely new way of working and a data-driven approach - from previously working in disparate silos across channels and teams to using collaborative online tools and placing the customer at the centre of the process.
To realize this, Boden came up with two complex buyer personas: Veronica and Cassie, both with multifarious styles and tastes and turned to Cheetah Digital to tailor bespoke customer journeys to them.
Cross-Channel Messaging Solution
“Let’s do personalization” is not an uncommon phrase to be heard in marketing departments, however this normally amounts to little more than a first name and recommendations derived from previous purchase history. The team at Boden landed on a three-pronged approach to connect on the right channel, with the right message, at the right time.
Testing and Reporting:
Used data to identify suitable test segments, clustering customers by product affinity, as well as creating new reporting and analysis tools to assess results
Persona Building:
Brought those segments to life by creating personas based on all the data available – and so Veronica and Cassie were born, and served with highly-personalized product recommendations, content and offers that resonated with them.
Customer Journey:
Identified key customer touch points across marketing channels and the website, and created a cross-channel communication plan. Leveraging the capability of existing marketing tools and technology to automate highly personalized email messages alongside content sent through your other online and offline marketing channels.
Next Steps
The beauty of any cross-channel messaging strategy is it never ends, it simply evolves. The team at Boden live by this mantra, continually optimizing their messaging, refining cadences using the latest data and constantly enriching audience profiles.
Boden are embarking on a plan to win back lapsed customers using Cheetah Messaging and Cheetah Personalization to trigger highly-customizable re-engagement cross-channel customer journeys. All of this seamlessly integrates the Cheetah Digital Engagement Data Platform to manage the entirety of the customer lifecycle and deliver access to robust data insights and analytics.
We’re looking forward to seeing the results from this initiative.
