[CUSTOMER INTERVIEW] Advalo as seen by Grain de Malice: feedback from Laurent Bacquaert, CRM Manager and Marion Landry, Client Marketing Manager

Overview of the collaboration rich in developments with Grain de Malice and Advalo with Laurent Bacquaert, CRM Manager and Marion Landry, Customer Marketing Manager for the ready-to-wear brand. 

Could you tell us about Grain de Malice ?

Grain de Malice is a French local ready-to-wear brand that offers comfortable, modern products, suitable for all body types from 36 to 48, for an active, female woman aged 35 and over.

Grain de Malice’s mission is to advise and accompany all women, by creating a special bond that empowers them in a committed and responsible manner.

Grain de Malice, more than 500 employees across 1 head office, 2 warehouses, 160 stores in France and 2 in Belgium.

What were your challenges when you engaged Advalo ?

In 2016 we experienced a difficult Redundancy plan and we needed to prove the value and the importance of the role of our e-commerce site on the results of our physical stores, as well as its involvement in our customers’ shopping journey.

We wanted to increase proximity with our customers by capitalizing on a better knowledge of the purchasing process and thus personalize our digital communications in a relevant way.

Finally, we wanted to

Finally, we wanted to recruit new customers exhibiting strong potential.

Why did you choose Advalo ?

We chose Advalo for 3 reasons :

• availability of teams and an easy-to-use platform that is perfectly suited to our business profiles within the framework of a relatively small CRM team

• capacity for rapid development in response to the needs of increasingly demanding customers and our needs as a ready-to-wear brand for women to assert themselves in this very competitive market.

• marketing expertise and support that adapts to our needs beyond a technical platform, in order to differentiate ourselves from other ready-to-wear players.

How did Advalo respond to your problem?

Through the digitalization of our database and reconciliation of customers’ offline purchases and online behavioral data. Advalo enabled us to answer our first problem: enhance the impact of our e-commerce site on the customer journey of in-store customers.

As a result, we were able to see that 39% of in-store sales were preceded by site visits taking place on average 7 days before purchase.

This data, allowed us to:

• demonstrate how the customer journey is omnichannel
• ensure stores adhere to our digital initiatives and more importantly client data collection from checkout

As a result, Advalo supported us in the identification and implementation of use cases which proved to be very effective. We have improved retention and purchase frequency. We see this in our passing matrices, which improve from season to season.

For our customers who stated they received too many emails a day/per week, we worked together to relieve this marketing pressure and developed a more personalized newsletter with relevant advice and content. 

Finally, Advalo allowed us to establish a qualified acquisition based on our best customers look-alikes. 

What was the outcome ?

We now include product customization in our emails, and personalized targeting based on our customers’ interests has significantly increased our open and click-through rates.

We also increased points of contact and can animate customers who are not opt-in emails or SMS. Thanks to Facebook and Adwords we can now address 60% of our customer base with all the levers compared to the 10% that was reached only by email.

Thanks to the implementation of the look-alike, we have also divided our acquisition costs by 3 based on the behavior of our best customers.

All these cumulative actions allowed us to increase turnover by + 2% over the yearROI amounted to 1 € invested = 18 € of margin!

Why recommend Advalo ?

For all the elements mentioned above, and especially for the support and close relationship that we have  created with the team. We work together on use cases to best meet the needs of our customers. In addition, Advalo knows how to adapt to our strategy, our roadmap, to help us get where we want Grain de Malice to be in the women’s ready-to-wear sector.

A number to remember ?

An incremental turnover of 1.7 million euros on targeted clients via Advalo versus non-targeted clients, representing an increase in turnover of 2%.

This allows us to be profitable in 2018 and for the first time in the history of Grain de Malice. 

For more details, also find the Grain de Malice case study.

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For more details, read the Grain de Malice case study