LLOYD Shoes: Into the Future with First Party Data and New Branding

The traditional brand is focusing on expanding its self-sufficient customer data hub. The focus is on target group segmentation, increasing sales and strengthening the brand core across all sales channels.       

LLOYD SHOES. LOYALTY, NEWSLETTER CAMPAIGNS, MARKETING AUTOMATION AND COMPETITIONS ON ONE CENTRAL PLATFORM.

The shoe business has always taken place in stationary retail, that's not insider knowledge.

For the LLOYD brand, this means 28 concept stores in Germany and 51 worldwide. In addition, there are eleven factory outlets in Europe and over 2,000 specialist retail customers.

Driven by the pandemic, the industry experienced a challenging period of upheaval in which consumer attitudes and shopping behavior changed radically.

In the Corona year 2020, footwear retail sales plummeted 17 percent, while online share rose to 38 percent. A change that took place so quickly that specialty stores, which represented the most important sales channel for LLOYD Shoes, could hardly adjust to it. This is the observation of Jörg Wetzel, Managing Director of LLOYD Shoes GmbH. As a manufacturer, he saw and sees it as his duty to work with retailers to develop concepts that appeal to customers and better compensate for the low frequency of foot traffic in stores and the lack of sales space.

These concepts pursue not least the goal of increasing awareness and desirability of the brand.

Project

The goal is to place the consumer at the center of the digital brand strategy by providing comprehensive support in the area of brand loyalty through loyalty and newsletters.

To control the individualized communication, LLOYD Shoes uses ProCampaign^® to map central 360-degree consumer profiles including the necessary and DSGVO-compliant permission management (Customer Data Platform).

The basis of the communication is the RED STRIPE CLUB.
Here, ProCampaign^® takes over the management of the club, the membership cards and the promotion campaigns.

Every club and newsletter subscription and every purchase at the POS or online is thus stored accordingly in a central consumer profile. Necessary consent texts and conditions of participation are created and stored in ProCampaign^® and played out on the websites.

The connection of the POS system and webshop via REST-API is obligo for collecting points for purchases and distributing vouchers. No matter at which touchpoint, thanks to ProCampaign^® consumers can collect omnichannel points, redeem their coupons and benefit from discounts and promotions.

Newsletter forms on the website and campaign websites are directly connected to ProCampaign^®, or are created and made live via the ProCampaign^® Landigpage Editor. 

In a sweepstakes scenario, participant information is automatically sent by email, eligible entries are validated and winners are automatically determined by ProCampaign^®, including notification of winners by email.

Case

• Customer Data Platform / 360° Loyalty Profiles
• Permission Management
• Kampagnen Management
• Loyalty System (Omnichannel)
• Omnichannel Promotion System
• Marketing Automation
• Newsletter Marketing
• POS System Integration
• Online Shop Integration
• Facebook(R) LeadAd Connector
• Zendesk Integration
• Professional Service

Customer
LLOYD Shoes GmbH

Contact
https://www.lloyd.com

Dynamic online business

Until 2018, LLOYD's online business was in the hands of an external partner.

This was followed by the strategic corporate decision to set up all stores autonomously under LLOYD.com and operate them in-house. Today, the e-commerce arm supplies the DACH region plus Luxembourg, and a Europe-wide expansion is in the planning stage.

"It was important to us to manage our e-commerce activities independently in order to play the brand in all facets on all channels in a self-determined manner," recalls Jörg Wetzel. "This is the only way we can dynamically drive our online business forward." For the managing director, dynamic online business doesn't just mean a good store and appropriate marketing. He is also concerned with goods availability, pricing policy, logistics.

"With our own store, we have also completely repositioned ourselves in logistics. In 95 percent of cases, we manage to deliver orders received by 3 p.m. the next day."

Growing with its own reach

After taking over the eCommerce stores four years ago, LLOYD had no customer profiles of its own beyond the Red Stripe Club.

With the primary goal in mind to change just that and engage with customers online, the manufacturer quickly succeeded in achieving double-digit million sales in the start-up phase.

"We would have achieved high growth even without the pandemic, I'm sure of it," says Wetzel. There are now over 300,000 active profiles and permissions in the central marketing hub.

Welcome to the Red Stripe Club 

At LLOYD Shoes, the way to becoming a loyal customer is through membership in the RED STRIPE CLUB, which the manufacturer will map via ProCampaign^® at the turn of the year 21/22. Communication is hybrid: After registration in the store, data is recorded in central profiles in the Marketing Hub. Depending on reactions, approvals and buying behavior, ProCampaign^® serves different routes, plays out newsletters and sends out mail for the start of the season and sales campaigns in addition to the glossy customer magazine. "We are building the customer journey right now and are in the midst of development," Schaller reveals. Wetzel sees the club as his main tool, which is being continuously developed to understand via user behavior what customers need and what purchase incentives the brand must create.

As of today, there are significantly more men than women in the Club. "We have significantly expanded the club over the last four years. At that time, we didn`t have a central customer data hub and were still at the very beginning with women`s shoes and thus with addressing female customers," says Wetzel. "We've only built up momentum in the women's shoe segment in the last two years, and we're nowhere near a 50/50 situation."

The LLOYD Shoes team is saying goodbye to gender-differentiated tone in content creation. For marketers at the company, it's no longer about what appeals to men and what appeals to women, but about leitmotifs for email campaigns, inspiration and security in the fashion sense: "With LLOYD Shoes, I know I have modern, high-quality, stylish shoes. The brand is not avant-garde, but takes trends and transfers them to a premium level."

ProCampaign^® - The tool for customer data and loyalty management

This strategy is based on centered, data protection-compliant data enrichment, customer loyalty focus, and agile campaign planning. Automation as well as customer profile transparency through the ProCampaign marketing tool enable individual content and dispatch - according to DSGVO-compliant standards. Segmentation options, diverse orchestration, and multivariate analysis and optimization functions have a lasting effect on customer loyalty. The drag-and-drop email editor in particular facilitates the work of the Digital Team Brand by filling intuitively designed templates with text and images, animated GIFs, videos, product data, and reviews as they see fit.

"We want to qualify our digital clones," Wetzel explains. "That means we want to know: Who is interested in us? Who buys our products? Who gives feedback, who looks at our content? In this way, we want to adapt our digital profiles as closely as possible to the real customer. All of this, of course, in the context of the GDPR." Jörg Wetzel, Sales and Marketing Director at LLOYD Shoes

Leading brands worldwide already use ProCampaign^® to manage over 150 million customer profiles from campaigns in more than 50 countries.

New gold

Even though the consumer mood in the world is currently restrained due to multiple crises, the shoe industry is experiencing a significant revival of shopping venues. LLOYD Shoes is gearing up to leave behind the old division of stationary versus online and is talking about holistic shopping experiences. "It doesn't matter where the customer buys. He has to feel the same brand experience everywhere, and that's why we have to aim our strategy at merging the channels," reports Andreas Schaller, management spokesman at LLOYD Shoes GmbH.

Omnichannel is the magic word and gives CRM and central 360-degree consumer profiles in marketing a different weight: If customers are met everywhere in the same way, but in a way that suits the channel, they gain the impression that the brand is clearly positioned in the market. At the same time, they rightly expect to be addressed individually. A uniform appearance plus an individualized approach results in a trust bonus, from which the consent to data use results. "Permission, which leads to the storage of customer data in our CRM, represents the new gold of digital currencies," says Schaller. 

LLOYD Shoes professes fidelity to data protection, "The fact that their servers are located in a bunker that runs on green electricity from geothermal energy fits super with the philosophy of LLOYD Shoes. This also reflects the common goals of ProCampaign^® and LLYOD Shoes."

Transformation to D2C business

At the heart of LLOYD's digital strategy is direct-to-consumer marketing, in which the company enters into direct contact and exchange with consumers much more closely and rewards purchases. Content plays a special role in the approach, because communication now only works effectively via the digital, social media, via interaction. The bonus point program in loyalty must be flexible enough to allow the connection of all POS systems and online stores and, above all, to provide marketing with a flexible set of rules for awarding points.

When the Ara Group, which includes LLOYD Shoes, invited ProCampaign to pitch for the CRM, email marketing, loyalty and service package, the group focused on the technology providers it already had in place.

It wanted all IT marketing systems to be harmonized. In the decision-making phase, only ProCampaign and a listed U.S. company were up for debate, and the choice fell on the medium-sized company from Bremen.

"Large manufacturers naturally reveal gigantic worlds, however, we missed the communication at eye level there," Jörg Wetzel explains his decision. "It was precisely this cooperation that tipped the scales in favor of ProCampaign^®, because we have been working with the tool for several years in newsletter marketing and permission management. We have always had a lot of understanding for each other's processes on both sides, and so it was logical to use the platform for the implementation of a future-oriented omnichannel customer loyalty platform throughout the entire group. LLOYD Shoes has taken the lead here and set the standard."

"The ProCampaign team has the claim not only to provide a technology, but also to be an implementation partner and to accompany us on the way to omnichannel," adds Andreas Schaller. "And we talked to the same colleagues in the tender phase who are now also doing the implementation. That's different with the competition. There's a sales team, you fall in love with that, and it's no longer by their side in the implementation phase." The goal in dialog marketing is to find an increasingly differentiated customer approach and grow the community.

Where the journey is headed

The women's shoe business is experiencing rapid growth at LLOYD. "Our goal in the medium term is to have a balance between women's and men's shoes through our own channels. In seven to eight years after that, we'd like to be balanced with both divisions in stationary and in the non-owned marketplaces as well," Schaller said. A plan that, according to the company, can succeed if the individual and target group-specific approach is sharpened with ProCampaign Dynamic Targeting via intensive target group segmentation, thus increasing the company's own reach.

Parallel to the expansion of brand awareness in women's shoes, the traditional brand is breaking new ground in the expansion of its product range: With its cycling collection for cyclists and e-bike riders, LLOYD is primarily targeting urban bike commuters, existing and new customers. "Cycling is a huge trend, which our regular customers also follow. In addition, we also want to appeal to customers who may not know us yet and get to know us through the innovative Cycling approach," Schaller explains.

The company plans to significantly expand its Cycling range and communicate it more intensively. In the course of this, new sales channels and communication fields will be added. "For the first time, we will also address bicycle and sports retailers in addition to our specialized trade. We haven't done that before and promise ourselves that we will pick up customers at completely different touchpoints," says Schaller. "We are sure that the innovative power of Cycling Shoes will radiate to the overall brand."

Loyalty is created at the product, not in the channel

Whether men's or women's shoes, traditional or for cycling - all dialog marketing and loyalty measures are aimed at building up the company's own reach and allowing the data to flow into ProCampaign. This also includes integrating social media channels and integrating the audience from there into the database via engagement campaigns and landing pages.

TikTok and the like are no more than satellites orbiting around the Customer Engagement Hub, the CRM.

Above all, customer consent is the new currency in the digital economy. "It is important for companies in our industry to actively shape the future. Successful digitization and the ongoing development of the business model in line with the changing expectations of consumers are crucial to their existence," summarizes Jörg Wetzel.

ProCampaign^®  - Module overview

Status 01/2022

SUCCESSFUL 1:1 CAMPAIGNS AND MARKETING AUTOMATION ON A CENTRAL PLATFORM

INTEGRATED TO THE MAXIMUM

• Centralized customer profiles across all channels
• DSGVO permission management
• Connects all transaction data (e.g. POS and store) with customer profile in real time
• Personalized and individualized email and SMS campaigns (push for logon areas)
• Logon management SSO (OAuth2.0)
• Loyalty campaigns (e.g. sweepstakes, bonus, cashback)

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