Key CCG Services
Situation
Proflowers, Inc., headquartered in San Diego, California, is the largest direct-from-the-grower flower company in the U.S. and the first flower retailer to offer a seven-day Freshness Guarantee. Using its proprietary supply chain compression solution for the floral industry, the company offers customers an ever-changing variety of fresh, affordable flowers and plants through its network of growers. A rapidly expanding international flower provider, Proflowers earned Forrester’s number one PowerRankings in the Flower category and has sustained the number one florist ranking from BizRate for two straight years. Proflowers was officially launched in August 1998 and has since become the standard in the online floral industry.
Although still a young company undergoing significant growth, Proflowers.com recognized early on that it needed to retain customers to ensure long-term profitability. Proflowers turned to CCG in 2001 to help it design and implement a customer database solution as well as analyze its customer base, create customer segments, determine lifetime value and develop strategies to grow and retain this critical base of business.
Over 90% of its orders are placed online.
CCG took the lead.
Data Solution
The company had nearly 900,000 customer names and that number was rapidly growing. CCG took the lead for Proflowers in specifying database solution requirements and identifying a partner to help consolidate disparate databases (both internal and external) into a single source. Proflowers intended to use a high degree of personalization for selection and creative in its customer communications and needed a system that would be scaleable, flexible and economical. The solution also needed to support online as well as offline channels. After partner selection, CCG provided the strategic vision during the installation and implementation process to insure the marketing database would eventually meet Proflowers’ corporate and, specifically, marketing objectives.
Although Proflowers had always tracked and analyzed customer behavior, CCG employed a different methodology to segment and applicable metrics to customers which identified some intriguing and actionable patterns.
In addition to identifying those with the highest value to Proflowers, CCG created a lifetime value calculator that allows Proflowers to review the 24-month value of customers acquired during different months of the year. The calculator not only confirmed some earlier hypotheses, but also showed some distinct patterns that CCG helped Proflowers better leverage acquisition channels and enhance email response.
Analysis, Action, Results
CCG also examined which products customers purchased and for what occasions. This was added to demographic/psychographic information to create detailed portraits of the segments. This led to testing of different communication strategies and merchandising to these segments. For example, Proflowers excluded customers within older customer segments from Mother’s Day promotions which lowered the total deployment quantity, but the overall response rate from the campaign was slightly higher than previous Mother’s Day efforts. Using gender for Valentine’s Day had produced similar results.
CCG also showed Proflowers how to incorporate results from the testing into a long-term strategy. This has resulted in a continued increase in response rates and decrease in acquisition costs.
Key CCG Services
Strategic Customer Initiatives
Strategic CRM consulting
Loyalty program development, refinement & management
FasTrackTM program implementation
Cross-sell or upsell program development
CRM business case development
ROI measurement
Digital marketing plans and optimization
CRM/loyalty program support services
Data, Analytics & Research
Database analysis & mining
Customer scoring
Qualitative & quantitative customer research
Segmentation & cluster analysis
Technology Sourcing & Implementation Support
RFI/RFP process management
Implementation support
Requirements documentation
Process documentation
Creative Assets
Content development
Design
Direct mail & other print assets
Print production & fulfillment
Loyalty program communications audit, planning, design & execution
Are you next?
Do you need to update your customer database solution? Or learn new ways to leverage your customer data to retain customers and build a foundation for long-term customer profitability? CCG’s retail and loyalty marketing experts can help, from identifying technology solutions, to assisting with implementation to developing strategies to sustain growth. Complete the form below or call us at 303.986.3000 to schedule a free consultation and see how we can help you.
