Brands staying ahead of the curve with store events

Recent research from Barclaycard has given brick-and-mortar retailers some hope by revealing that hosting in-store events and creating an immersive experience can drive revenue.

After surveying 251 senior decision-makers in retail and over 2,000 customers, the researchers found that hosting events and providing entertainment in physical stores could boost their annual turnover by 14% on average.

With in-store events becoming the biggest trend for 2018-2019, we are highlighting how some of our customers use events to create an unforgettable experience and increase revenue.

Mothercare doubles event revenue

Mothercare, a global retailer for parents and young children currently operates over 1,100 stores across four regions - Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

The Challenge

The relationships Mothercare shares with its customers revolves around the most important part of any family’s life: parenthood. And yet, this contrasts with a market that has moved toward discounting, cost-cutting, and commoditization.

At the core of Mothercare’s offering was their loyalty club, an initiative that built strong, high value customer relationships. The visibility and data it provided were limited but showed huge strategic potential. Mothercare quickly invested in electronic receipts and customer relationship management (CRM) upgrades so they could gain even further insight.

This developed a new level of clarity that Mothercare could use to further understand customers, but they still felt something was missing. To grow their community to be bigger, more engaged, and more loyal, they needed a new way to attract customers back to the store.

The solution? In-store services, including events.

Events for expectant parents were known to be effective, but burdensome. Stores would spend up to a month chasing sign-ups that had been recorded manually on paper, draining store staff’s energy and motivation. Also, there was no place to quickly see how many parents-to-be attended events or who they were. Yet, the potential for in-store services was undeniable.

Mothercare began a mission to refine how they offered in-store services to the public so they could take advantage of the huge potential to build better relationships and increase revenue.

The Solution

The initial requirements of the project were simple.

Mothercare knew they needed to centralize events and make them easy to manage, so staff and customers would find it useful, convenient, and enjoyable. To make events and in-store services core to the Mothercare experience meant making sure any system could scale to serve hundreds of stores and customers at once.

Following their CRM and electronic receipts projects, it was essential that any new system would seamlessly sync with them and share clean, compatible data.

Starting slowly, Mothercare implemented BookingBug to offer various in-store services – car seat consultations, how to pack a maternity bag, and preparing for the first months of a new arrival. The experience was perfectly responsive to any device and fully branded as a Mothercare experience.

Mothercare started to host custom events, marketed via email and in-store signage, to streamline the process and learn from the data generated by such appointments.

Soon after implementation, events were hosting 50+ attendees and driving tens of thousands of pounds of extra sales, even with little marketing. Meanwhile, they had created a data feed of all upcoming events, which could be integrated into their broader marketing strategy.

Mothercare used BookingBug to kickstart their focus on customer loyalty, engagement, and events. Now, they had new ways to engage with customers and provide value. It didn't hurt that these services were a new source of revenue for Mothercare.

The Effect

Ryan Davies at Mothercare elaborates on how this project has stimulated success for the company as a whole:

“It would be easy to say that the most conspicuous benefit of this project is that our event revenue has doubled, providing hundreds of thousands of pounds of new revenue. Or that we saw 25% of that growth in just three months since BookingBug was added to the mix, even before being rolled out in some of our larger stores.”

“But the other benefits are just as important to this company’s future. We’ve achieved this while actually liberating staff from the time-consuming manual processes they used to face, allowing them to concentrate on the customer experience. We’re developing meaningful connections with a growing proportion of our visitors that build their trust and loyalty to us over time. And we’re gathering data about their behavior that lets us just keep improving it.”

At Mothercare today, in-person services are just as important as the products they offer. They also create an omnichannel bridge, attracting customers back in stores and complementing the online offering.

“Our work with electronic receipts and CRM let us see our customers properly in a whole new level of detail. But it was BookingBug that let us cross the bridge and create a frictionless and ongoing valuable relationship. The extension of this is quite amazing: if I know your local store is Watford, I can send you an email letting you know events you’re interested in are happening, we can invite other local companies to join too, adding even more value.”

“This project has put loyalty and CRM right at the top table where it belongs. The desire to achieve that has existed for some time but the projects that prove it are now here. It’s just a matter of taking the initiative and delivering what’s possible today.”

Waitrose Cookery School becomes a recipe for success

The Story

British supermarket giant, Waitrose, has 352 of stores across the UK and are known for their great customer experience in their cooking school.

However, the cooking school wasn't always a part of Waitrose. The idea was born from a Waitrose survey that revealed that more than one in ten people, given the chance, would retrain as a chef. This was the most popular choice, and beat other career paths such as modeling, teaching, and property development.

Upon seeing these survey results, Waitrose created a cookery school that would serve all customers regardless of experience level. Some school sessions are cuisine-specific, focusing on food from places such as France, Thailand, and Italy. There are also skill-based lessons that covered bakery, butchery, fishmonger, and knife skills. Teachers and chefs also run topic-specific workshops, such as "how to assemble a dinner party menu."

Waitrose became the first supermarket in Britain to run their own school, and were quickly known for showing customers what they can do with the contents of their baskets.

Executive Chef Neil Nugent said: ‘We want to inspire the nation to move from just watching cookery programs to actually cooking and experimenting with new ingredients. We really do hope it will appeal to everyone, from the total beginner up. We will accommodate everyone’s needs, from peeling an onion to making a souffle – we want everybody to be comfortable.”

To make this vision a reality, Waitrose partnered with us to build a dynamic booking interface that was in-line with their brand and offered a seamless customer experience. Our events product allows them to add courses as they came available, and track sign-ups across all locations.

Waitrose also enjoy using our waiting list feature, which allow their customers the ability to join a waiting list if a course is at full capacity. If a customer cancels their booking, the next customer in line will be automatically contacted and asked if they still want to book. This prevents a loss in revenue and increases the customer's chance of attending.

By using event booking software, Waitrose also sell course tickets as gifts, which has helped them to tap into the experiential gifting market.

Success

Since opening their first cooking school in 2010, Waitrose has expanded and opened two more with an average of 1,700 bookings a month.

Offering courses on everything from couples brunches, winter cooking, and even children classes, Waitrose is tapping into all areas of their customer base and creating a cooking community. This innovative approach to customer engagement has created a new revenue stream while exposing current customers to new product ranges and ingredients.

By working with JRNI to design & implement a booking system, Waitrose has:

• Reduced the amount of time staff spend on administration
• Created a database of engaged customers that can be marketed to accordingly
• Made it easy for customers to check course availability, book, and receive updates about new class offerings

Read how Waitrose uses JRNI data to design their event marketing strategy.

Three UK helps over 10,000 consumers improve their digital skills in one year

Their Mission

Three is a mobile network and broadband provider giant who has 10 million customers and 320+ stores in the UK. Their current project is to increase brand trust, and change the perception that the mobile industry is only focused on selling. To do this, they are rolling out 50 "Discovery" sites, which aim to help visitors improve their digital skills.

Sian Laffin, Head of Discovery and Innovation at Three, believes that the Discovery spaces will “change the current perception the mobile industry” and move the brand beyond competitive pricing.

She goes on to say: “We’re creating a space where we’re not just about selling a phone, but developing an emotional relationship. If you’re signing a two-year contract, that is a long relationship and trust is the most important thing that will sustain that. These spaces are a perfect environment to nurture that trust.”

What is Three ‘Discovery’

The Discovery spaces, which are separate from Three’s retail stores, are a new and free way for people to learn about technology. Topics range from smartphone use to coding, and are open to all consumers and employees.

Consumers can either book sessions in-store, or on Three’s website with our booking software.

So far, Three has worked with charities, community organizations, local schools, and small businesses to build custom sessions that help attendees develop their digital skills. Three has rolled out the service across 50 stores in the UK.

Success

In the past year, Three has helped improve the digital skills of over 10,000 people as part of its Discovery program. This has been enabled through partnering with JRNI and allowing not only customers, but the wider public and organizations, to engage with courses. By creating a smooth and integrated user experience, JRNI has assisted in creating an experience that attendees want to talk about.

Jessica Tompkinson, Community Engagement and Discovery Manager at Three, explains that the initiative can’t be linked to a KPI “in a traditional sense."

“It’s a wider investment in the brand, where we’re really pushing to change perceptions of Three. Just over half (51%) of visitors who come into the Maidenhead discovery space weren’t our customers. Of those, 98% would recommend Three to friends and family,” she added.

“It’s those referrals and conversations and those people who follow up afterwards, who might be in their purchasing window and we expect them to come to us as they’ve built up trust."

If you’re considering using events or appointments in your retail store, check out our recent eBook: Transforming your customer experience with in-store events.