Hunter Douglas lifts sales by directing positive reviews to dealer websites
Hunter Douglas is a world-leading manufacturer of window coverings and architectural products and is the industry market leader in Australia for its innovative window covering products and components. Luxaflex® is the company’s core brand, which it sells wholesale to a national network of approximately 150 dealers in Australia, who on-sell to consumers.
“To address the [marketing automation] issues, we decided to build a complete digital marketing ecosystem that would capture and share the experience of our satisfied customers. Our primary objective was to generate and publicize positive customer reviews to assist our dealer network in generating future business and revenue.”
Business challenges
- Declining repeat and referral business
- No marketing to capture and amplify messages of happy customers
- Lost business from negative reviews
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The company’s success lies in generating high-repeat and referral business and providing an excellent purchasing experience to customers. Recently, however, repeat and referral business has slipped and there has been little marketing effort made to capture and amplify the message of the vast majority of happy customers. With the increasing reliance on reviews to make brand choice and buying decisions, negative reviews—although only small in number—were being reported by Hunter Douglas dealers as the cause of lost business.
Additionally, the company’s existing marketing automation system was one step removed from the customer’s purchasing journey and the loop needed to be closed. In particular, the system suffered from an inability to track a customer’s journey from initial inquiry (online or in store) to final purchase and to capture the after-purchase experience (ratings, testimonials, reviews).
Hunter Douglas selected Oracle Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cube, a specialist technical marketing automation agency, to develop a solution, which was rolled out in stages. The digital ecosystem design and integration was a major component that was developed over three months.
The resulting system:
- Provided a single, integrated view of the national consumer base over the complete customer lifecycle—from initial interest through to purchase and post-purchase.
- Enabled the automation of powerful, targeted marketing communications that are relevant to each stage of the customer journey.
- Facilitated the development and implementation of an innovative solution for harnessing and sharing customer testimonials by integrating Trustpilot’s product review service with the Oracle Marketing Cloud platform, which, in turn, serves as a valuable tool for attracting new customers to its Luxaflex products.
Hunter Douglas and Marketing Cube integrated Trustpilot, an online review community that enables businesses and consumers to communicate with each other, along with Oracle Marketing Cloud, to automatically trigger e-mails to recent customers and prompt them for a rating and a review. These reviews then appear on a dedicated Trustpilot page.
Each review is tagged with the customer’s order number and the dealer details so that store-specific reviews can be segmented and placed on that dealer’s website.
The campaign canvas provides steps for excluding certain customers, for example, those who have previously provided a review, before sending them an e-mail (with a unique link) asking to review their experience. There are two versions of the e-mail, featuring different images based on the customer’s gender.
The e-mail is co-branded with the customer’s dealer details and is designed to look like it was sent from the dealer whom they purchased from and formed a relationship. The e-mail includes a competition with a chance to win prizes to encourage completion of the review.
“We are delighted that we can now send co-branded communications to existing Luxaflex customers based on their purchases, to reinforce the brand and relationship the customer has built with the dealer,” said Jenny Brown, national marketing manager for Hunter Douglas.
The review platform can be integrated with other systems to verify reviews as legitimate customers, increasing the review’s credibility. As a Google Partner, this platform also links the reviews to Google search results and Adword campaigns, which allows positive reviews to supplement the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) activities.
Results
“The results achieved with these reviews to date have exceeded the company’s expectations,” Brown said. “We have been provided with tangible testimonials and a review score that well surpasses the expectations of our management team.”
- The benefits to the company include:
- Full consumer lifecycle tracking
- Less time spent on contact management
- Increase in consumer brand preference
- Improved loyalty from dealer network
- Positive morale for staff due to positive customer feedback
“We have also had a 50% increase in e-mail open rate since co-branded consumer e-mails have been sent ‘from’ a consumer’s local dealer, and an improved customer review metric. Previously, the primary customer review rating for Luxaflex Australia was from Product Review, where the company’s score was 1.6/5 (32%). By proactively requesting ratings from our customers, our new Trustpilot consumer rating is 9.5/10 (95%).
“We are delighted with the results. The ability to segment Trustpilot reviews to individual dealers, displaying only those results on their website, has provided bespoke customised review solutions that have improved the dealer’s business in their local community, increasing leads and sales conversions. The positive reviews also increase confidence in the brand.”