The Bexley Story
Probance delivers Bexley menswear a personalized customer communications solution that brings the online and offline worlds together.
Bexley Calls on Probance to Help Connect Ecommerce and In-store Marketing
Founded in Lyon by Eric Botton in 1985, the Bexley brand of mens dress shoes has long stood for affordable luxury. The company sells exclusively through 23 company-owned stores across France and Belgium, and on a thriving e-commerce site: www.bexley.com. Bexley continues to expand in France and in Europe.
Ten years ago, they began to branch out from shoes into additional lines of menswear, formal and casual wear and accessories. The idea is that online or off, at Bexley, a man can find everything he needs from weekday to weekend. With a clear pricing strategy — one price for all items in a category, and volume discounts — they aim to sell more to existing customers.
€340,000
generated by emails in December 2020 alone
30%
of e-commerce revenue driven
by marketing automation
1 in 2
customers in store opened
an email that week
The Need to Connect Online and Off
Capucine Boutin is Bexley’s Marketing Manager, heading a team of three. She’s responsible for the marketing and communication strategy, and CRM activity, both online and off.
Boutin had a clear vision: deliver more relevant customer communications and recommendations to drive sales. She also wanted to deliver a consistent cross-channel experience, whether it was through emails, the e-commerce site, or in-store communications. By joining the dots – for example, connecting point-of-sale data with online behaviour – she could guarantee a more coherent and personalized marketing message. She knew that customer loyalty and increased sales would follow.
The Limits of Email Platforms
However, her previous customer communication tool was an email platform. While it had worked well back in the day, she had been bumping up against its limitations for some time. The mass marketing, product-focused messages were no longer sufficient. Says Boutin, “We needed to improve our customer relationships. The world has moved on, and customers expect more personal experiences.”
Boutin and Bexley urgently needed to evolve their marketing solution to improve personalized communication. The ultimate goal was increasing sales with existing customers.
Capucine Boutin
Marketing Manager, Bexley
“Probance drives our business both online and instore. Half of our foot traffic is influenced by our personalized newsletters.”
Get the Data to Get the Customers
“We took a long look at the options on the market. We wanted the kind of customization and data collection that’s usually provided by a full-service marketing suite, but that level was out of reach, and way too big for us. We chose Probance as it was less costly and more flexible.”
In 2017, Bexley contacted Probance with their specific challenges.
- Increase sales and loyalty through consistent, personalized messaging across channels.
- Incorporate point-of-sale data: Stores and online could no longer remain separate.
- Implement specific marketing scenarios tailored to the way Bexley does business.
Automated and All-in-one
Probance provided a fully-customized all-in-one solution that runs unattended, freeing up Boutin’s valuable time. It includes:
- A multidimensional database unifies online and offline customer data, the product catalog, stock availability at the level of each store, loyalty data, and more.
- 10 marketing scenarios, specified by Bexley including birthday messages, shoe-care guide, basket recovery, and post-purchase surveys.
- Multichannel marketing that covers email, SMS, direct mail (for loyalty coupons), Facebook ads, etc.
- Easy-to-read KPIs and stats, giving Bexley a unified view of offline and online sales, and how their marketing makes an impact.
- Great customer support.
True Customization for Better Personalization
Because the Probance solution is fully customized to Bexley’s stock flows, customers and business requirements, communication is now more relevant and effective.
“The different marketing scenarios work really well together. All of them are fully-personalized based on individual purchase patterns and interests. This enables us to send more tightly-focused messages with high open rates. In turn, this drives increased sales,” says Boutin. “The abandoned basket retargeting is super effective.”
“Probance is also pretty flexible in terms of targeting. For example, when we do follow-up campaigns, it helps us exclude those who just made a purchase, or those who opened emails many times without buying anything. Basically, it means we don’t hassle customers who aren’t likely to buy.”
In addition, the KPIs are clearly visible on the tailored dashboard and reports, so Boutin can measure the performance on sales. “We can measure the performance of our digital marketing on sales figures. Probance is good at analyzing in-store sales as well as online sales – better than the tool we have just for that, in fact!”
Benefits
Fully Customized
Receipts, loyalty status, on-site behavior, full product catalog and business goals – it all goes into the custom data library.
Connects the Dots
Unified e-commerce and in-store data ensures the customer experience is seamless, and fully personalized.
Easy-to-read Analytics
Custom dashboards and reports enable Bexley to measure the performance of automated marketing – at a glance.