SELGROS saves distribution costs for advertising

Customer Reference
SELGROS saves distribution
costs for advertising
materials with Blue Yonder
» We were convinced by the
professional expertise and
knowledge of the employees.
Still, Blue Yonder first had
to prove that the solution
would work in practice, and
they did that. «
Holger Penndorf,
COO, SELGROS Cash & Carry
Customer Reference
The challenge:
Optimize sending brochures
The retail company SELGROS Cash
& Carry sends brochures to as many
as one million customers every two
weeks. Sending the catalog is cost-intensive and time-consuming in terms
of personnel, because the customer
selection is done manually. SELGROS
makes the decision about which
customer receives a catalog based
on customer segments and decision
trees. It was not making the most of
its advertising budget because it had
not considered all the dynamic and
customer-specific influencing factors.
In order to change this, SELGROS met
with Blue Yonder in order to evaluate
approaches and solutions for customer targeting together.
The goal
The use of customer targeting
should improve and automate decisions regarding customer selection.
This way, SELGROS Cash & Carry
can save advertising costs without
affecting customer satisfaction and
revenue.
The solution
Blue Yonder analyzes the individual customer purchasing history of
the last five years, and, using the
Blue Yonder algorithm, forecasts
the purchasing probability and the
shopping cart size at customer level
with and without advertising material. Using the results, Blue Yonder is
able to make an optimal customer
selection. Before each catalog mail
out, SELGROS Cash & Carry receives a
regular recommendation from Blue
Yonder and can automate it into the
campaign process. For the automation of operational decisions, Blue Yonder uses its own causality model, with
which it extracts information from
the data that reveals the effects of
promotions on individual customers’
purchasing decisions. In this way, only
those customers whose purchasing
decisions are positively influenced by
advertising material will receive any
advertising.
Customer Reference
The project
In order to optimize advertising mail
outs, Blue Yonder included SELGROS’
management and the manager and
employees from the Customer &
Marketing department in the project
from the start. In close collaboration,
all project participants discussed the
solution and made the decision to
implement. After a successful kick-off
workshop in February 2015, the project started with an A/B test, which
lasted from April until October over
13 biweekly modules. In September, based on positive test results,
SELGROS Cash & Carry decided to get
the solution up and running in productive operations. At the same time,
SELGROS Cash & Carry planned to
further expand the solution in 2016
to additional customer groups.
The result
During the A/B test, substantial savings on advertising materials could
be achieved in the Blue Yonder test
group, and this was attained with nearly unchanged revenues. After the
first month, SELGROS realized the ROI
due to directly measurable savings.
The next steps: after implementing
the project, the planned expansion
will be tested in spring of 2016, in
order to further optimize the catalog
mail out.
SELGROS is the second largest retail
company in the Cash & Carry sector
in Germany, and the company is a
distribution chain of Coop Switzerland, which belongs to Transgourmet
Holding. The company operates
altogether 86 markets in Germany,
Poland, Romania and Russia. In
SELGROS Cash & Carry markets, commercial customers can find 53,000
foodstuffs and non-food items. The
product lines are customized to the
needs of restaurant owners, kiosk
operators, retailers and other trades
people.
Would you also like to optimize your direct mail spend? Contact us.
About Blue Yonder
Blue Yonder is the leading SaaS provider for predictive applications in retail.
Predictive applications give our customers the freedom to move beyond rigid
practices, allowing them to become more profitable and grow faster by aligning
operational decision making with strategic direction. Some of Europe’s biggest
brands in grocery, fashion, consumer electronics and e-commerce trust in Blue
Yonder’s blend of data-driven optimization and vision for the future of retail.
Blue Yonder UK Limited
6−9 The Square, Stockley Park
Uxbridge UB11 1FW
United Kingdom
Phone +44 203 008717 0
Fax +44 208 610606 0
[email protected]
blue-yonder.com