The right gift for every occasion

1-800-FLOWERS.COM relies on marketing automation and data management from SAS to help customers find the perfect present

What’s more exciting than finding the ideal gift your friend or loved one will adore? 1-800-FLOWERS.COM helps customers do just that – find the perfect item for birthdays, anniversaries, baby showers and other significant events.

Delivering a beautiful floral arrangement or a one-of-a-kind keepsake requires anticipating a customer’s needs. That’s why 1-800-FLOWERS.COM relies on sophisticated analytics behind the scenes to provide the optimal customer experience.

The e-commerce retailer depends on SAS^® Marketing Automation and SAS^® Data Management to collect, manage and analyze in-depth data about customers. This insight allows 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to communicate with customers effectively throughout their customer journey, introducing them to the full breadth of gift experiences the company has to offer.

Meeting and exceeding customer expectations

“Customer experience is a pivotal focus for us,” says Tim Mummers, Chief Data Officer for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. “Customer expectations have risen as e-commerce has made competition broader and more direct. It’s much easier for customers to turn to alternatives if they feel a brand isn’t providing the best experience. The more we know about our customers, the better the experience we can deliver.”

As 1-800-FLOWERS.COM increasingly realized the value of data in delivering the experience customers expect – and the complexity involved in managing that data – it turned to SAS for a solution that allows it to manage data efficiently and effectively as a corporate asset.

The company uses analytics to help customers find the ideal products, from its core floral delivery through brands like Harry & David, Cheryl’s cookies, Fannie May chocolates and The Popcorn Factory. By centralizing customer data in a single location across brands, it can select the customers to target with a specific email or catalog campaigns. And 1-800-FLOWERS.COM can track customer interactions from beginning to end, learning more about the relationships between different actions.

“With SAS Marketing Automation, we can better determine the kind of offers the customer is interested in receiving and what offers they respond to,” Mummers explains. By analyzing the profile of the customer who starts in one brand and then migrates to another, marketers can better target customers with a propensity to shop with multiple brands.

“We’re able to provide a better experience so customers get more value from the relationship,” Mummers continues. “It’s also a win for our enterprise because it helps us decide the most efficient places to spend our money to improve retention and acquisition as well as more effectively introduce customers to new brands.”

Analytics powered by good data

For 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, it’s not just about being able to access and analyze customer data – it’s about feeling confident that the data is reliable. SAS Data Management supports the movement of data from source systems to the SAS reporting environment. When moving the data, data quality and data integration tasks improve the integrity of customer data. As a result, high-quality data allows marketers to know that the signals they receive about customers are correct – and that actions they take will give customers the best experience.

The solution also provides transparency, making data readily accessible to the right people. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM’s marketing, finance and operations teams use SAS reports to make smarter decisions on the things they do day to day based on data that would otherwise have been hard to get to.

“We’re able to dive deeper into the customer journey than we could in the past because our data scientists and marketing analysts can mine data more efficiently,” Mummers says. “We also deliver a greater level of transparency to the managers of the marketing team that they didn’t have before.”

Enhancing emerging channels

1-800-FLOWERS.COM has a history of growing through emerging channels. From a brick-and-mortar store to phone sales to e-commerce and acquisitions, it’s always looking for the next opportunity to expand business. The company is now exploring new channels, such as “conversational commerce,” where customers place orders by speaking to Amazon Alexa.

“We’re asking ourselves, ‘how do we better support our customers as we move into these emerging channels in a way that fosters loyalty and is cost-effective for the corporation?’” Mummers says. “It’s exciting to interact with data that comes from these channels and understand how it can be applied for an optimal customer experience.”