FreshDirect slices and dices more sharply than ever — how about them apples?
FreshDirect, LLC is sharpening its suite of marketing tools to get its customers what they want, when they want it, before they know it. Like a chef combining certain spices and flavors to deliver a perfect meal to a customer, FreshDirect now delivers marketing message ingredients that optimize customer acquisition and retention campaigns.
FreshDirect wanted to maintain its leadership position in the US grocery marketplace. The company realized that creating more relevant products and promotions could help it to achieve this goal, but it faced the tough challenge of gleaning actionable insights into individual customer preferences and behaviors.
Dave Gerridge, senior director of marketing operations, FreshDirect, explains: “FreshDirect offers food from trusted sources that’s simple to order and easily customized according to dietary preferences and requirements. Delivering on our customers’ high expectations requires us to communicate in a personalized and relevant way.
“To help us to understand the right messages for each customer, the aim was to perform meaningful segmentation to identify individual customer needs. We wanted to bridge the gaps between our data on online purchases, survey responses and browsing behavior on our mobile apps, as well as data from third-party providers.”
To solve its challenge, FreshDirect selected IBM Campaign and IBM Digital Analytics software, part of the IBM ExperienceOne solution set. The new solutions enable the company to gain a single view of customer activity across the digital channel, and develop tailored communications based on fine-grained customer segments. “Prior to the IBM solution, we were unable to recognize who was interacting with our site, or to factor previous purchasing behavior into our marketing communications,” says Dave Gerridge. “The great thing about IBM Campaign and IBM Digital Analytics is that we can get all of our contact histories for each customer into a single data warehouse. This enables us to analyze the effectiveness of our marketing communications with each customer, determine the approaches with the highest return on investment, and optimize our communication strategy.”
Gerridge continues, “Today, we can communicate with customers in a more personalized, relevant manner. When customers visit the e-Commerce site, we can recognize who they are, their dietary requirements and preferences, and the products they are likely to be looking for. Moreover, we can factor these insights into our communications with customers. “For example, we can now see that direct mail is the best channel for customer acquisition and email for retention. For existing customers, we’re increasingly seeing the value of communicating on mobile devices; for example, using SMS messages to notify customers when their food is being delivered.” FreshDirect has already put its IBM solutions to the test in high-profile holiday campaigns in summer and winter, and has plans to extend the platform in the future.
