Southern Coop

The client

Southern Co-op is an independent, regional co-operative owned by its 127,000+ members. Operating across 11 counties in the south of England, their main business is food, they have a network of over 200 convenience stores including a successful franchise arm. Southern Co-op also have a successful franchise coffee business with 50 Starbucks coffee shops, and an end-of-life services business which comprises funeral homes, crematoria, and a natural burial ground. 

Edit have worked with Southern Co-op since 2019 supporting their membership proposition, customer journeys, and strategies used around their digital transformation programme in their food business. 

The challenge

Southern Co-op approached Edit to help them better understand their customer base, to embrace digital transformation and to enable them to become more customer centric. They  embarked on a programme of investment; investing in marketing automation software, a CDP, and a CRM Manager and data analysis capability. Their existing marketing vehicle for non-members was a customer email programme called ‘All Yours,’ that Southern Co-op used to gather data about their customers to improve their proposition.  

But they needed help to embed the technology within the organisation and ensure that All Yours generated maximum value for the business. All Yours started as a standalone programme,​ separate to their membership scheme, however Southern Co-op soon identified that to improve value to both members and the organisation, All Yours needed to be embedded as an integral part of their membership proposition. By baking the email marketing and special offers that All Yours provides to the Southern Co-op members into the membership scheme, shoppers were encouraged and incentivised to become a member which in turn supports the organisation in their ambition to become more customer centric.  

Edit worked with Southern Co-op to help solidify their customer-first strategy, increase engagement and advocacy of members.  

The challenge was for Edit to increase data capture, CRM conversion, member insight, loyalty, and advocacy and to deliver personalised experiences to members. 

The approach

Since 2019, Edit and Southern Co-op have worked very closely together and have built the foundations of Southern Co-op’s CRM strategy for their entire membership base, and in addition, have embarked on a test and learn programme which is already producing some great results. 

Firstly, we identified our mission, vision and goals which were underpinned by measurable KPIs. As a member benefit, All Yours offers a programme of product, offer and recipe information via email with a long-term goal of delivering frequent, personalised, and valuable touchpoints. For Southern Co-op, the All Yours programme can actively influence and measure member behaviour and spend, whilst delivering demonstrable ROI for the business.  

To gain a deeper understanding of current member behaviour, Edit developed two methods of customer segmentation: 

RFM analysis to understand transactional behaviour
Cluster analysis to develop shopper member personas based on demographic behaviour

Using the evolved audience segmentation, we developed a framework to deliver actionable customer experience and tailored customer journeys, leading with a ‘get in store’ or ‘engage more’ message. With a defined strategy, Edit and Southern Co-op worked on hypothesis to turn strategy into tangible actions. From here, we created a roadmap of projects to achieve the outlined KPIs.  

Edit provided support to Southern Co-op across Data Science, CRM Strategy, and Technical Consultancy, working with their other partners to deliver a customer centric membership programme.  

Plans for the future

Following a successful year, Edit and Southern Co-op are continuing to evolve the All Yours proposition, using the data and insight generated from the initial hypothesis. The roadmap for 2022 will cover: 

Testing – How to reduce churn
Email engagement – looking at reducing the number of emails being sent from weekly to fortnightly – incorporating best practice
Product triggered emails – using transactions to prompt a product specific email to see if customers are influenced by specific communication
Southern Co-op enablement – specialised training for the Southern Co-op marketing team to upskill

The results

We have increased the number of emailable members by 88% over a 12-month period, and saw a reduction of lapsed members by 16%, and the higher spend customers increased their visits by 0.5 times on average per month.