Cheetah Digital Helps Future-Proof Castorama’s Customer Loyalty Programme

Like many brands, DIY retail giant Castorama was concerned about the upcoming death of the cookie. They were looking to take a proactive approach to be prepared, have peace of mind and be in a strong position to navigate the change.

Specifically, Castorama was looking for a way to capture insights left by consumers across in-store and online visits, orders, and purchases. At the same time, it also desired a full, 360-degree view of its customers, allowing for more transparent and effective communication. Achieving this meant Castorama needed to develop its contact list and gather consumer consent ethically.

It turned to Cheetah Digital, a leading cross-channel customer engagement solution provider for the modern marketer, for a solution.

“We have to prepare ourselves for a world without cookies where zero-party data will be increasingly complicated to obtain, strengthening our customer knowledge by other means. Zero-party data fits completely into this idea of giving our customers the opportunity to give us their information at the time they consider most appropriate,” says Phillippe Deschodt, Data and CRM Manager at Castorama.

“I was quite attracted to the solutions provided by Cheetah, which offer our customers different, specific experiences based on the information they provide. This value exchange is essential to the communication of tomorrow.”

After exploring options with Cheetah Digital, it became apparent that what Castorama desired was a redesign of its customer data platform. The customer data platform allows the storage of data and therefore, enriches its various systems. This data is what feeds Cheetah Messaging, resulting in messages being sent that are aligned with customer preferences and expectations.

“Critically, we wanted to be able to connect Cheetah Messaging with our system, our data lake, which would allow us to not only be much more relevant but also better positioned to collect feedback from Cheetah in order to enrich our own knowledge of our customer base,” Deschodt explains.

From its brainstorming and planning sessions with Cheetah Digital, a new world of relationship marketing, replete with personalised experiences at each critical touchpoint for Castorama was born.

“We worked on our campaign typology, adapting it to different profiles. We conducted more traditional promotional campaigns and product campaigns to inspire. Then we also worked on automation and triggers that allow us to send messages directly when they matter most to our customers,” Deschodt says.

According to Deschodt, email is and will remain an essential channel for creating proximity and being able to communicate effectively with customers. However, email alone is no longer enough and must be complemented with other customer-preferred channels like SMS and push notifications, for example. Now each new campaign is replicated across Castorama’s various channels, but with their own objectives.

Through its engagement with Cheetah Digital, Castorama sends roughly 180 million emails per year, and its conversion rate is 40 per cent.

“We’ve been working in collaboration with Cheetah Digital for more than seven years now. This longevity is due to the support we receive from the Cheetah teams, and their responsiveness to our problems,” Deschodt adds.

Cheetah Digital’s VP of Client Success EMEA, Nick Watson, says that it’s exciting to work and evolve with longtime customers like Castorama, continuously leveraging innovative loyalty solutions to help them transform customer experience at scale and remain agile in a dynamic marketing landscape.

“The death of cookie tracking has been a great opportunity for Castorama to revamp its brand-consumer relationship, establishing personalisation at scale. We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to build on our strong partnership, helping to position them strongly both now and into the future” Watson says.

Castorama is a well-established brand that the French have warmly embraced since its inception in 1969. The brand was born with one aim — to house all of the elements for interior design under one roof. With a customer-first focus, Castorama continues to thrive today with 92 stores across France and an impressive $3 billion in turnover.

You can read more about this case study here in English, French, Spanish