Our client is the UK’s largest independent builders’ merchant, boasting more than 60 branches across England and Scotland. With aspirations to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for building, timber, and plumbing supplies, they stock a wide range of competitively priced products from the industry’s leading manufacturers. Find out how Blueberry helped them generate an impressive £19.5 million in sales growth.

WHAT THEY NEEDED

Our client developed a sophisticated customer matrix which gave them an insight into the meantime between orders, spending behaviour and patterns. They noticed that a high percentage of their customers were low-spenders and that their turnover rate was on the increase. So, they introduced a loyalty scheme to increase wallet share by encouraging low-spenders to spend more frequently and ultimately create longevity in a very price driven market.

WHAT WE DID

Our first objective was to understand relevancy, given that the general state of the industry played an important role in customer’s spending habits. We needed to understand if customers were still trading, entering retirement or were one-off spenders.

We established a target market for our direct mail and email campaigns, which ran alongside our telemarketing activity. We segmented the data on active, lapsed and dormant customers, which allowed us to tailor our approach to securing engagement.

Firstly, active spenders were encouraged to join the loyalty scheme to prompt an increase in spending. Next, we re-engaged with lapsed customers, finding out why they had stopped spending and addressed any issues they had with their local branch. Lastly, for dormant customers, we developed win back strategies to encourage relevant parties back in store, such as branch promotions.

Part of our task was gathering insights into customer spending behaviours and uncovering what their annual spend was on building supplies. We matched this data against previous historical spends to show our client how they could increase their sales. We discovered who else they were spending with and why. And we identified the type and frequency of their projects, which was often affected by seasonal fluctuations. These insights assisted marketing strategies moving forward and identified priority segments for targeting purposes.

We acted as an additional point of contact for customers, highlighting any queries to the most relevant branch to investigate. We were also proactive in gathering details of upcoming projects and highlighted potential opportunities for our client to explore.

WHAT WE ACHIEVED

Before our campaign, 47 per cent of our client’s database of customers were spending under £1,000 each annually. After introducing a loyalty scheme and employing Blueberry’s services, their spend increased three-fold. Larger accounts, spending more than £20k in the pre-scheme year, grew by 15 per cent - an increase of over £7k per account.

Low-spending and lapsed customers were successfully encouraged to join the loyalty programme and win back strategies were developed for dormant customers. New sales opportunities were identified, and wallet share for low-spenders were enhanced.

Ultimately the project generated £19.5 million incremental sales growth for our client and led to several new branch openings. Our team are now delivering on new client acquisition projects to assist the company with their expansion into new regions.

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