CCG - Results This Year

excerpted from
StrateScapes – Volume 4, Number 1

Results THIS Year
Can you feed your hungry current-year bottom line without resorting to stopgaps that don’t advance your CRM imperative? Here’s how one of our clients answered that question.

In Perspective

“Getting CRM-based communications out there fast requires a team that can quickly get its arms around who the customer is. The creative talent can’t just be behind the scenes — they must understand the strategy and customer data that goes into relationship-based marketing.”

— Lane Ware, CCG senior vice president of strategic consulting

The Bon-Ton’s Biggest-Shopping-Days Countdown.

“One of the main reasons we got the green light on our best-customer program is that we could get it done in time for the holiday shopping season,” says John Gleason, VP of corporate credit for Bon-Ton Department Stores, headquartered in York, Pennsylvania.

Gleason brought in CCG last year to design a rewards-based CRM program for top Bon-Ton cardholders. When the company’s board of directors endorsed the initiative, it was already late fall. But with the biggest shopping days of the year coming up, the board couldn’t help but see a chance to bolster the year’s bottom line.

“We would love to have had a year to roll out our program,” Gleason reflects. “But in retail you’ve got to shoot while the ducks are flying.”

CCG put the project on the fast track, developing a complete tiered-rewards program — plus signage, brochures, statement inserts and the first issue of a best-customer minimag — all in time for the holidays.

Within a month of launching the program, The Bon-Ton saw the impact on its very best customers — with a 14 percent lift in sales.

In Perspective:

“Getting CRM-based communications out there fast requires a team that can quickly get its arms around who the customer is. The creative talent can’t just be behind the scenes — they must understand the strategy and customer data that goes into relationship-based marketing.” — Lane Ware, CCG Senior Vice President of Strategic Consulting

STRATESCAPES and STRATESCAPES SUPPLEMENTS are published by Customer Communications Group, Inc., a full-service agency specializing in relationship marketing and customer communications. Our comprehensive, turnkey services include data analysis, customer segmentation, strategic consulting, account management, creative execution, print production and multimedia solutions.