With integrated marketing communications, GSI helps Children’s Bookshop glean data
In retail, knowing your customers has always been essential. But customer demographic information is often difficult to obtain.
Through integrated marketing communications, Children’s Bookshop and Teaching Supplies rewarded loyal customers, gathered reams of valuable data, and increased holiday sales at four Seattle-area locations.
The ChallengeChildren’s Bookshop needed to gather deeper data on its four main customer groups: teachers, parent educators, parents, and institutional buyers, including childcare providers and faith-based organizations. The Children’s Bookshop team knew that their main customer groups had a wide range of product needs. But the retailer’s customer database lacked this level of information, while contact information needed to be refreshed. To prepare for the holiday shopping season, Children’s Bookshop also wanted to spread the word about its wide selection of educational toys, a product category with growth potential. The SolutionIntegrated marketing company Graphic Solutions Inc. (GSI) worked with the Children’s Bookshop team to create an individualized, multi-touch campaign that gleaned data and drove sales. Using its existing database, Children’s Bookshop pulled a list of 8,600 loyal customers representing all four of its major demographic groups. Next, GSI worked with the retailer to create an eye-catching, oversized four-color postcard, individualized by first name. The postcard thanked customers for their loyalty and invited them and their friends and family to save 40 percent on selected items during the month of November.
The ResultThe integrated marketing campaign doubled the response rate of previous customer surveys, which had relied on reader response cards. In just seven days, Children’s Bookshop gathered significant and valid demographic data on its customers, while refreshing and growing its database. The data included percentage breakdowns of the ages of children whom customers purchased for, types of schools attended by children, types of products that most interested customers, preferred communication methods and more. |
Recipients were invited to visit a pURL (personal URL). Here, each visitor was personally greeted as a valued customer, offered further savings and invited to complete a short demographic survey, while updating contact information.
Follow-up emails invited both responders and nonresponders to upcoming sales.
“Through our work with GSI, we now have a clear picture of who our customers are and how we can best serve them,” said Karl Beavers, President, Children’s Bookshop. “With increased sales, our marketing campaign more than paid for itself.”
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