Improved Database Helps Golfsmith Boost ROI
A consolidated database helped golf superstore Golfsmith better target customer segments and improve overall marketing response rates.
When Golfsmith and Golftown merged in 2012, the company was presented with a tremendous data challenge. The newly merged retail organization had seven separate database to stitch together—two point of sale databases, two website databases, two email files and a Golfsmith call center database.
“The goal was to bring everything together for a unified view,” said Kim Lewis, vice president, omnichannel marketing, Golfsmith, who presented at the recent Gartner Digital Marketing Conference in San Diego. “To drive loyalty we needed to merge, purge and clean the data, and get out of the ‘data disaster zone’.”
Golfsmith partnered with Experian to help realize their vision of the customer view they wanted to create. A big problem was the fact that there wasn’t a common thread connecting all the seven disparate files. For example, many of the email records had the email and nothing else. In the POS database, some records just had the name, and in the Canadian databases many had two addresses, one winter and one summer.
“We needed to organize the information and have a preferred method of contact across all channels,” said Lewis.
To create an identity profile of each customer, Golfsmith started with first party information to help link records across channels.
Once the database was in order, Experian helped the retailer look at things like which product categories had bigger spending levels and loyalty, and then focus on increasing sales in those categories. Golfsmith also discovered that customer who shopped in more than one channel typically spent 50% more than other customers
Golfsmith started as a catalog, and the company still mails catalogs during the holiday season. As printing can be expensive, the company wanted to test the effectiveness of postcard mailings that would direct customers to a digital catalog.
In 2014, the company tested a postcard drop to a small percentage of the file. The postcards actually did better with moderate spenders but the mini-catalogs still drove more purchases for higher-level spenders.
For holiday 2015, Golfsmith sent postcards to a higher percentage of the file and carefully targeted print catalog drops. With the cost savings, it was able to add an incremental Black Friday mailer and increase overall total postcard distribution by 25%.
For 2016, Golfsmith is restructuring its direct mail strategy to target lapsed customers and high value buyers. Online, the company is using retargeting to reach digital lookalikes. It is also using knowledge from one channel to inform others, such as targeting email inactives via Facebook.
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