REVENUE HACK: How GNC Turned Transactional Communications into Personalized Marketing Channels
Talk recorded live at NRF 2019 in New York City
In their presentation at National Retail Federation’s Big Show 2019, flexEngage CEO Tomas Diaz and GNC’s Director of Customer Marketing and Loyalty Jennifer Biefel discussed personalization across post-purchase communications. The presentation focused on the following three takeaways:
Why Transactional Communications are Underleveraged
Tomas Diaz pointed out that the lack of personalization and brand consistency across transactional communications (including receipts, order and ship confirmations, packing slips, etc) was largely due to the complexity required to update large numbers of transactional templates managed by disparate systems (POS, order management, ecommerce and others) and departments within retail organizations. Because these different systems often do not interact with one another, transactional templates must be updated manually, resulting in static or aged branding and messaging. With flexEngage, retail marketers can easily manage and dynamically personalize every transactional touchpoint, ensuring a unified brand experience and engaging post-purchase communications that drive greater loyalty and revenue.
Why GNC is Taking Action to Personalize its Post-sale Touchpoints
According to Jennifer Biefel, GNC is currently working to reduce its one-time buyer rate by rolling out new customer engagement features including a 2-tier loyalty program, a new customer data mart, and other personalization tools including flexEngage. As a part of its strategy, GNC is improving personalization throughout the customer lifecycle by leveraging clienteling, POS apps and personalized e-receipts, packing slips, and order confirmations. The company’s re-contact strategies are proving affective at retaining customers particularly as it presents relevant product suggestions and replenishment reminders based on shoppers’ buying habits.
How GNC and Other Retailers Are Improving the Post-purchase Experience
Along with GNC, other major retailers have begun implementing personalized digital receipts, printed receipt offers, digital packing slips, and dynamic order and ship confirmations into their personalization strategies. Through GNC’s long-time partnership with flexEngage, GNC delivers over 8 million digital receipts annually. While it’s customary for retailers to see 70% open rates and 15% click-through rates for their transactional communications, GNC’s latest e-receipt campaign also saw a 10x lift in sign-ups for their paid loyalty program, My GNC Pro Access. In addition, over 10% of purchasers opted into an auto-delivery plan and 7% of sales from digital receipts came as a result of personalized product recommendations.
What’s Next for GNC and Other Retailers
The presentation concluded with a brief overview of flexEngage’s personalized printed receipt offers, ecommerce order confirmations, and packing slips. These transactional touchpoints are helping other brands like Michael Kors, Under Armour, Aldo Shoes, Destinatio XL and Shoe Carnival further post-sale engagement with shoppers so that the end of every sale is the beginning of the next.
Let flexEngage reimagine your transactional communications.