Case Study: From blast and spray to personalised customer engagement at Forty Winks

Before the pandemic, Australian mattress and bedding retailer Forty Winks had no clear view of its customers, and no way of tracking the ROI of its customer engagement activities.

Digital Nation Australia spoke to Kira Poole, senior digital and e-commerce marketing manager at Forty Winks about the organisation’s investment in omnichannel customer engagement platform Emarsys.

According to Poole, one of the biggest challenges that the business experienced was the siloed fragmentation of its data, which prevented personalised communication.

“Our data was not an essential point and we had no real single view of our customer and we weren't able to actually deliver any personal communications to them over this time, which was really vital for us, especially when our stores were closed,” said Poole.

“That started our journey on identifying the need to become an omni-channel retailer, the need to start looking at our friction points across offline and online, and really integrating out data to enable us to do that.”

Prior to the partnership with Emarsys, Forty Winks was engaging in a blast and spray, one-sized fits all communication style she said.

The Emarsys solution has enabled the business to deliver communications to customers that are more relevant and personal.

“It’s actually gone beyond just the first name in communication and actually identifying, using the smart insights that Emarsys has and looking at them, predicting potentially what they might be looking for in the future,” said Poole.

“Perhaps give them some sleep tips, demonstrate our sleep expertise and actually be helpful and relevant for them at that particular stage and where they are in their journey with our brand.”

Despite the fact that Forty Winks is not able to create a benchmark for success, as this is their first experience in tracking and measuring the impact of customer engagement, Poole said that the business is focused on generating leads and customer retention.

“We're really looking at how can we acquire and grow our customer database, and then looking at those people that we're bringing into the brand and bringing into Emarsys, what's the conversion rate like for them, what's the engagement like for them and utilising that.”