Catalogues delivered shiny sales for Posh Totty designs

Background

Trading since 2004, Posh Totty Designs started from the humble beginnings of a tiny cupboard under the stairs in the founder, Alice Rivers Cripps’ house. Since then this handmade, personalised jewellery retailer has grown into a multi-channel business with 3 retail outlets and the largest jewellery workshop in the south, employing 50 (predominantly female) staff. Sales are generated through the Posh Totty Designs website, partner sites such as Not on the High Street and etsy, and the shops themselves.

The marketing team at Posh Totty Designs had been using a mix of email, social media and digital advertising to drive traffic to the website and footfall to the stores.  While the digital channels were successfully driving traffic to the site and generating sales, Posh Totty Designs hypothesised that exploring a new channel, a catalogue, would encourage people to browse the range and ultimately increase basket value.  Another benefit of the catalogue would be to grow their audience outside their traditional footprint of London and the South East.

“We’ve got some really good products and what we found with email and social is that people would buy the one thing that they were targeted with but they wouldn’t browse and buy multiple things. We have some really nice, decent pictures and great products and we thought maybe if they were seen together people would respond to that and buy more”. James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs.

Solution

In November 2016 Posh Totty Designs mailed a catalogue to prospects and customers on their database. As this was the first time the jewellery retailer had ever advertised using mail they were able to take advantage of Royal Mail’s First Time User Discount that gave them a 20% postage credit on their first three mailings.

“The First Time User Discount not only saved us a few thousand pounds on our first mailing, it allowed us to create a plan across the year for further mailings.” James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs.

Posh Totty Design’s starting point was to consult the media specialists at Marketreach to understand the best solution for them and how to go about it.  

“What we did find really helpful was the insight that Marketreach gave us gave us on what we were doing. And the way that the team there wanted it to work. They believed in our product and gave us the confidence that if we got a catalogue out to the right people we would get a response.” James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs.

Fitting with their ‘can do’ culture, Posh Totty Designs set out to design and create the catalogue in house.  

“We’re very much a ‘let’s do it ourselves and see what happens’ kind of company. We learn through making mistakes and if someone else had created the catalogue we wouldn’t feel that we had ownership of it.” James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs.

New to the process, Posh Totty Designs were grateful that the experts at Marketreach were on hand to support them in the creation of the catalogue and answer any questions they had.

“Marketreach gave us a lot of advice along the way - for free too - to help us get to the finial product. We had a lot of really dumb questions that probably most people, who have done it regularly, know the answers to. They would come back straight away and say ‘this is what you need to do and this is how you do it and we’ll help you get the best rates’.” James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs.

While Posh Totty Designs were confident that their creative skills could extend to the design of a beautiful catalogue, they recognised that they would need help in getting it into the hands of their core target audience: ABC1 females aged 25 – 45.

To drive prospecting, Marketreach introduced Posh Totty Design’s to Epsilon Abacus, who manage the Abacus Alliance transactional data cooperative. In order to provide a highly relevant audience, Epsilon Abacus analysed Posh Totty Design’s current customers. From this insight, an affinity model was built from across the Abacus Alliance. Based on previous purchasing behaviours, a target universe of prospects was identified. The buying habits of this audience indicated they all had a good fit with Posh Totty Design’s offering and would be more likely to purchase from them.

A test volume of 30,000 prospects was provided Epsilon Abacus. Should the campaign prove to be successful, Posh Totty Design knew it had the ability to roll out to a larger universe, confident it would perform in a similar manner.

The 25-page catalogue – with a 20% off offer - was mailed to 50k prospects and customers. Timed to land a few days before Black Friday the aim was that it would support online channels in driving sales for the Black Friday weekend, and continue to drive sales once the weekend event had finished.

Results

The November catalogue not only contributed to making Posh Totty’s Black Friday their most successful weekend to date, it continued to drive sales after the weekend event.

Conversion to sales on Posh Totty Designs’ website tripled over the Black Friday Weekend compared to normal weekends. This positive result could be attributed to the online communications, but as conversion was significantly higher than previous Black Friday weekends – when they hadn’t mailed a catalogue - Posh Totty Designs believe the catalogue played a big role in raising brand awareness and encouraging customers to purchase rather than just browse.

Sales continued to remain elevated for the week after Black Friday when there was no other media noise. Furthermore, AOV for customers who received the catalogue was 35% higher and customers were buying more gold – having seen it in the catalogue – than usual.

Analysis of customers who had been acquired through the catalogue showed that catalogue recruited a slightly older audience than social channels.

Buoyed by the success of the catalogue – and with the help of their First Time User discount – Posh Totty Designs have mailed a smaller catalogue to drive sales around Mother’s Day 2017. The catalogue helped deliver Posh Totty Designs’ best ever March.

Plans are in place to create a July catalogue, tailored around wedding gifts, to boost sales around a traditionally quiet period. Posh Totty Designs are also looking to replicate the November ‘Black Friday’ catalogue, increasing volumes to 100k.

Source: James Ginzler, Chief Operations Manager, Posh Totty Designs