Wickes: £7m in incremental revenue with Deployteq’s marketing automation

How Wickes use data to transform consumer habits

Wickes, a leading DIY retailer, faced challenges in engaging and retaining customers effectively. They needed to address limited category shopping, infrequent visits, and a perception gap among its customer base. Wickes embarked on a journey to implement a customer strategy centred around behaviour change and segmentation.

This award-winning case study (see the long-form case study here) highlights how combining marketing technology, behavioural science, and machine learning helped DIY retailer Wickes shine a light on the power of its customer data.

The challenge

While Wickes offered an extensive array of products to meet every DIY need, many customers found themselves shopping from only a limited selection of categories. This narrow focus not only restricted their overall spending but also highlighted missed opportunities for deeper engagement with the brand.

• Limited Categories Shopped: Despite the vast product range, customers primarily purchased from a narrow set of categories, limiting their overall spend.
• Infrequent Visits: A significant portion of customers visited Wickes sporadically, indicating a lack of ongoing engagement and loyalty.
• Perception Gap: Many customers viewed Wickes as a destination for specific products rather than a comprehensive solution for all their DIY projects.

These challenges revealed a critical need for Wickes to enhance customer engagement and reshape perceptions to encourage more frequent visits and broadened purchasing behavior.

• Identified TradePro Missions: We pinpointed 8 distinct TradePro Missions for tradespeople, allowing us to tailor messaging for specific groups such as Gardeners and Painter Decorators.
• DIY and Showroom Missions: We recognized 10 DIY and Showroom Missions, like Kitchen Renovation, utilizing purchase data to provide helpful content that guided customers through their projects while cross-selling additional products.
• Tailored Content through Social Listening: By leveraging social listening, we offered newsletter subscribers more personalized content based on their preferences, motivating them to embark on their DIY missions.
• Personalized Showroom Journey: Our customized journey for Showroom Missions ensured that customers were engaged at their exact point in the buying process, providing them with valuable content to streamline their experience.

This strategic framework not only enriched customer interactions but also significantly improved their overall shopping experience.

The results

The implementation of the Missions & Motivations Engine led to remarkable outcomes, transforming customer engagement and driving significant sales growth. As customers responded to the tailored messaging and personalized experiences, the impact became evident.

These results not only underscored the effectiveness of personalised marketing strategies but also established a solid foundation for future customer engagement initiatives, paving the way for sustained growth and deeper connections with our audience.

What’s next for Wickes?

Looking ahead, Wickes aims to prioritise live operations, finalise ongoing initiatives, optimise processes, and revolutionise its customer strategy. It plans to shift focus from measuring program value to customer opportunity value, targeting high-value customers and investing in personalised experiences.

Wickes’ transformation of its customer strategy demonstrates a proactive approach to addressing customer challenges and driving growth. By leveraging data-driven insights, segmentation, and personalised communications, Wickes aims to enhance customer engagement, retention, and lifetime value, positioning itself as a leader in the DIY retail space.