How Bouwmaat makes a personalized shopping experience omnichannel

Personalized search engine

Two months after that, a new app with a personalized search engine followed. "We wanted to put brand preference directly into the search engine," Vieberink explains. "For example, every tiler usually has a preferred brand of glue, so you want to show those. Our maxim is that commercial activities should never influence the search process. We don't look at the margin, but at convenience for our customers. Therefore, we only recommend items with a preference or quality items with which the customer can build smarter."

Sending 80,000 personalized newsletters in an instant

In the third phase, personalization went live in early October. "We send about 80,000 newsletters. During a big promotion like our tool weeks, we have some form of discount or promotion for more than 100 items. However, you can only show three or six of them in a newsletter. So these have to be as relevant as possible," says Vieberink. During the mailing sending process within Ternair Marketing Cloud, the customer number is submitted to SPARQUE via an API that determines and returns the most relevant items in real time for processing within each email. As the fourth and final step in the omnichannel project, website search was personalized. "That immediately gave an increase in searches and customer satisfaction, including from the branches."

Satisfied Customers

Sales are of secondary importance, Vieberink says. "We are not doing this because we are ROI-driven, revenue is not the business form for e-commerce. In our e-commerce department we have no revenue goals, all online revenue is allocated to the branches. What matters to us is the customer relationship, which is why we look at customer satisfaction." After checkout, customers rate the entire journey at 8.7. After delivery, the customer still gives an 8. "That's the customer appreciation we do it for."

"The fact that the share of online orders grows by 30% every year is of course interesting, but we look integrally at the mutual effect of the channels. What contribution does online have to total sales? What is the ratio of online viewing to offline buying? We see that 80% of customers use Bouwmaat.nl in their daily work. You can compare Bouwmaat more to a supermarket in that respect: daily groceries you get physically, a big order you prepare."

Personalized print

The next step Vieberink sees is personalizing the action leaflet. "We send out quite a lot of paper, so we want to look at circulation management first. Customers who always open the newsletter don't need to receive a paper leaflet, we feel. Personalizing print is then quickly set up with Ternair Marketing Cloud and SPARQUE's API, and there are plenty of printers who can help with this. The challenge is in collecting high-resolution product images, for which we are now approaching the first suppliers."

Best practices

Real learning moments Vieberink finds difficult to name. "It's a continuous process of learning. It's not a one-time project, it's work. You have to get the back end right first, then make sure you have good access, only then can you accelerate at the front end and start personalizing the customer experience. That's what we did at Bouwmaat five years ago. As a result, we can now accelerate well without losing focus on the customer."

About Bouwmaat

Bouwmaat is a national chain of wholesalers of building materials for professionals in the construction industry. With customers active in repair, renovation and maintenance, Bouwmaat is built on one fundamental idea: everything for smarter building. Bouwmaat offers the professional everything in the field of construction, wood, plumbing, electrical, tools, hardware, paint and kitchens.