South Africa-based Massbuild, a home improvement, DIY and building materials retailer is rising to the challenge on how it can continue to engage with customers even when the country’s economy is under pressure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Retail companies face pressure from a constrained economy and a customer base that demands relevant, personal and engaging marketing communications at every step of the buyer’s journey.
For Massbuild, meeting these customer hurdles has meant a transformation on how the business connects with clients at scale using the latest SAP technologies.
As a subsidiary of the Massmart Group, Massbuild operates four complementary brands: Builders Warehouse, Builders Superstore, Builders Trade Depot and Builders Express.
To date, the company employs more than 8,000 people and has an annual turnover of US$ 820 million.
Wating to stay relevant and continue to serve customers even in these difficult times, Massbuild has selected SAP Marketing Cloud to enable its marketing team of five users to reach and engage up to 224,000 customers per day via measurable, trackable email campaigns.
Consequently, stated Massbuild, a strong business case for the project was developed upfront to ensure maximum return on investment. Buy-in was secured from key stakeholders, and a project sponsor drove the process from an executive management team to all levels of the organisation.
The company said the project team’s change management process and strong link to business value ensured that end-users recognised the value the project would bring. In addition, the team also utilised simple engagement and communication channels, such as demos and show-and-tell sessions, to engage important internal stakeholders ahead of the implementation.
“We wanted to improve the way we manage our customer communication and become more efficient, professional and reliable in our marketing engagements,” said Massbuild spokesperson. “In light of regulatory requirements, we also wanted to make sure we were compliant with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) by accurately tracking marketing permissions, especially the opt-out functionality that is required by law.”
According to the retail group, organisational readiness was a key priority and the company conducted stress-testing weeks prior to the go-live by uploading more than 70,000 customer records.
Massbuild also worked closely with implementation partner Consnet to ensure the team was properly skilled and provided the marketing team with access to the test environment so that they could familiarise themselves with how to navigate the solution ahead of the launch.
Considering the prevailing uncertain economic conditions, cost containment was a key focus for Massbuild. The company had a well-defined business case with a clear return on investment model and kept things simple by using standard SAP functionality to avoid costly custom development. The implementation team also focused on getting the basics in place before adding richer functionality.
Simplifying things paid off as the project was delivered within 90 days, with five users going live just ahead of Black Friday.
The company explained that the go-live date was achieved two weeks earlier than initially planned, allowing Massbuild to conduct proper segmentation of its customer databases and send out targeted campaigns ahead of the major shopping period.
With advanced tracking of campaign performance, the teams now have full visibility of how its campaigns are performing in real-time, which can inform its customer experience strategies and improve how Massbuild engages with its customers.
As part of cost containment measures and wanting to have in-house control, Massbuild also wanted to in-source campaign management functions that were previously managed by a third-party vendor. In one campaign period stretching from November 2019 to May 2020, Massbuild sent out more than 24 million emails via SAP Marketing Cloud. With its previous third-party provider, this would have cost the group well over one million rands (US$ 60,000), but in-sourcing the work and using the SAP Marketing Cloud enabled Massbuild to save nearly 90% of that cost without reducing the quality of its customer engagements.
Cameron Beveridge, Regional Director: Southern Africa, SAP Africa, said Massbuild has rapidly elevated its customer engagement capabilities with this latest implementation.
“By building its customer experience strategy on the latest technology, Massbuild has enabled smarter decision-making for its marketing teams while unlocking welcome cost-efficiencies despite difficult macro-economic conditions,” he said. “With the correct technology in place to deliver intelligence to marketing teams and with the support of a capable technology partner in Consnet, Massbuild is well-placed to build on its reputation as a market-leading brand in its industry.”
Following the successful implementation of the SAP Marketing Cloud, Massbuild is planning further integrations to support the marketing team and the retail chain is currently exploring the implementation of customer insights and integrating Facebook and Google Analytics to ensure its teams have the intelligence and insight to adjust marketing activities based on real-time customer feedback.
A future product roadmap said the company, also includes the integration of mobile payment functionality through a partnership with Zapper, a mobile payment app that lets users pay with their smartphone, collect loyalty points and redeem vouchers in just one tap.
