With a strong Web presence established, apparel retailer J. Crew is delving into marketing and sales data analysis by deploying software from DigiMine, the companies have announced.
DigiMine’s analytic services are being used by J. Crew to collect information about the company’s online customer interactions and decision-making processes, with the ultimate goal of increasing customer satisfaction and sales, DigiMine said.
Steering Shoppers to Sales
The retailer also is making use of DigiMine’s productive data mining technology to offer product recommendations to its online customers, which can be accessed at the J. Crew Web site.
“The key for J. Crew is using predictive mining to create recommendations for customers on the site, in each of the company’s categories, by identifying what people are buying and showing affinity,” DigiMine spokesperson Joel Sider told CRMDaily.com. “They can collect data from across their businesses – catalog, retail outlet, Web – and act on those insights to develop preferred choices for customers.”
Web shoppers visiting Jcrew.com are directed to clothing, shoe or accessory suggestions based on their browsing and purchasing behavior, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty and ideally leading to larger orders, DigiMine said.
Web Activity Updates
Kirkland, Washington-based DigiMine builds and operates a secure, private data warehouse for its corporate customers. The company’s hosted services, which apply data mining and analytics at an aggregate level, are designed to help businesses uncover meaningful patterns and gain insight into online customer behavior and habits.
Clients receive daily Web-based reports customer interest, product sales and marketing campaign responses, which the company said go beyond basic Web traffic business metrics and decision-making support. Data in the reports includes product purchase trends, customer demographics and marketing campaign response.
Web Up, Catalog Down
- Crew, which does substantial catalog sales in addition to operating 140 retail and factory outlet stores and the Jcrew.com Web site, posted second-quarter revenue of US$21 million from Jcrew.com, up from $17.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Second-quarter catalog revenue fell to $24.2 million from $33.2 million a year ago, as the company upped its efforts to move more customers to its Web site.
For the first of fiscal half of fiscal 2001, Jcrew.com sales increased to $46.3 million from $36.9 million in the year-ago period. Catalog revenue dropped to $54.6 million from $74 million in the first half of 2000.
“J. Crew required a comprehensive solution to close the data management, mining and business intelligence loop for our online business,” said Jayson Kim, director of Web marketing applications at J. Crew Group. “Our goal was to use our business data for a better understanding of our customers, deliver the best possible online experience and grow revenues.”
No stranger to the apparel industry, DigiMine also has established a relationship with online retailer Nordstorm.com to deliver its integrated analysis of click-stream, product-catalog, promotion and transaction information.
By: Jay Wrolstad
Source: Customer Times