Fenwick

 
1000 employees 
Salesforce customer since 2018

100%

increase in email click through rates in 12 months

 
 

Fenwick brings its unique shopping experience to a larger audience with Salesforce.

A lot has changed in the last century but one thing has remained constant: Fenwick’s passion to provide the best customer experience possible. And with Salesforce, Fenwick can make that experience even more special across multiple channels.

“Every Fenwick store is unique and so is every customer. From website content to in-store events, we want to provide a rich and relevant retail experience that meets the changing needs of our clientele,” said Kate Smyth, Digital Director at Fenwick. “With Salesforce, we can gain a better understanding of how people like to shop with us both in-store and online and personalise the experience for each customer.”

 

With Salesforce, we can extend the reach of Fenwick across the UK and provide customers with a choice of how they engage with our brand”

Samantha O'Neill, Head of Ecommerce at Fenwick

Fenwick combines luxury with value for shoppers

John James Fenwick opened his first store in 1882 with a commitment to luxury and an eye for quality. The retailer’s nine stores have stayed true to their founder’s original vision, striking the perfect balance between prestige and value.

As the largest family-owned group of department stores in the UK, Fenwick stocks fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands from around the world. But Fenwick does more than just sell luxury products: it arranges in-store events tailored to local clientele, offers stylish dining options, and provides treatment rooms and personal shopping services. Such diversification is essential as department stores come under increasing pressure from changes in shopping behaviour.

New website extends retailer’s reach

Fenwick has embarked on a three-year transformation programme that will further enrich the customer experience. “Two years into our transformation, we are making great progress in expanding our business across new channels,” said Smyth. “We are investing in the digital customer experience as we can see great potential.”

With help from Salesforce, Fenwick has already started to unlock this potential. In May 2018, it went live with a new website, followed by a transactional version in February 2019, which has opened up Fenwick to a much bigger audience beyond its stores. “With Salesforce, we can extend the reach of Fenwick across the UK and provide customers with a choice of how they engage with our brand,” said Samantha O'Neill, Head of Ecommerce at Fenwick.  

And that choice is already driving new visitors to the website, which runs on Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Fenwick’s Christmas event in 2019 was a key event for the newly multichannel retailer, with the site handling a 1,500% increase in transactions. “We provided customers with a seamless multichannel experience - from pre-registering for the event on our website and receiving an invite on their mobile phone to shopping online and in-store,” explained O'Neill. “We used Salesforce Commerce Cloud to track performance and engagement across different marketing channels, which will enable us enrich the event experience even more in the future.” 

Making the most of product inventory with effective order management

To meet growing ecommerce demand, Fenwick needs to be able to orchestrate its stock and customer orders at scale and at speed. Unlike other retailers, Fenwick doesn’t have centralised warehouse or distribution facilities - all orders are shipped from three of its stores. “With Commerce Cloud, we can turn our stores into highly efficient mini distribution centres,” commented O'Neill. “The solution's order management features ensure that product availability remains up to date on the website and that orders are assigned to the most appropriate store. This enables us to offer a wide selection of products and brands and improves the productivity of both our stock and our stores.”

Fenwick can also maximise its investment in the stores’ existing product inventory by providing an instore stock check on the website. This empowers customers to check if the item they are looking for is available in their local store. 

Integrations ensure a seamless ecommerce experience

Fenwick worked with Salesforce partners Emark and Astound Commerce to accelerate its ecommerce roadmap and the implementation and integration of the platform. To ensure it can provide a seamless online experience, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is integrated with Fenwick’s systems for product information and inventory as well as Amplience for website content management, Agility PIM for product enrichment, and Tejas for warehouse management.

“The Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration with Amplience improves our efficiency and agility. It enables us to ingest raw content elements and dynamically utilise them as required across the site in assets, such as advertising banners and articles, as well as email campaigns,” explained O’Neill.

The Fenwick team also use Trailhead and Salesforce Accelerators and Bootcamps to ensure they get the most out of the platform. “Trailhead is a great way to learn about Salesforce: it enables you to tap into that last 20% of functionality and extract maximum value,” said Mark Irving, Head of Digital Marketing at Fenwick. “It helps to shape our roadmap.”

Personalised customer emails increase open and click through rates

An efficient and compelling ecommerce offering is just one element of Fenwick’s digital strategy; the retailer also uses Marketing Cloud to create dynamic content and personalised customer journeys. “When a customer opens an email, they immediately see content tailored to their department preferences and local store, such as upcoming events and services,” explained Irving. “With Marketing Cloud, we can personalise at scale and at speed: our team can now create three times as many emails, with content ready to send in minutes instead of hours.”

As a result of this personalised approach, email click through rates doubled and open rates increased by 50% in the space of 12 months.

Fenwick helps shoppers find the right products faster with AI

Fenwick has taken personalisation one step further by using AI to make product recommendations on its website, which is critical for department stores stocking thousands of items across a wide range of brands. “With Einstein, we can prioritise product listings based on a customer’s browsing history and searches, which helps them find what they are looking for more quickly and easily,” said O'Neill. “This is really important for mobile shoppers, who drive 70% of our ecommerce activity.”

Customers can also get a faster response to general queries. In 2018, Fenwick launched a new centralised customer service department to provide seamless support to its online and in-store customers. The five-strong team use Service Cloud to respond to thousands of customer cases per month across multiple channels, including telephone, email, web forms, and chat.

“With Service Cloud, the team has a single view of the customer - from online orders and in-store digital receipts to the marketing emails they’ve received and read,” explained Smyth. “We can now categorise cases by store and subject, which helps us prioritise any recurring customer issues.” 

Richer data brings retailer closer to its customers

Greater centralisation and richer insights will be key to Fenwick’s ongoing transformation. Prior to implementing Salesforce, key processes, such as managing marketing activities and customer records, were controlled separately by individual stores. 

With Salesforce, Fenwick has a single version of the truth - and it’s discovering new insights all the time. For example, the retailer has discovered that a multichannel customer spends four times as much as a shopper that uses just one channel. 

“From digital receipts and in-store WiFi usage, to online orders and social media posts, we can bring together a range of disparate data sets in Salesforce to build a better picture of our customers,” explained Smyth. “This will help us put the right product in front of the right customer and offer a more tailored online experience - just like we do in store with our personal shoppers.”

Making a unique shopping experience even better

Although Fenwick was a late entrant to ecommerce, it has made the most of the latest technology developments to create a future-proofed digital platform, which will help the retailer continue to enrich the customer experience. 

“We implemented a multichannel offering from the get-go to support our stores, enable a single customer view, and simplify content creation,” said Smyth. “With Salesforce, we can focus on what we do best: providing customers with a unique shopping experience founded on luxury, customer service, product knowledge, and Fenwick’s great heritage.”

 

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