From mass messaging to meaningful moments: How personalized marketing drives sales and customer loyalty

Retailers that rely on broad, one-size-fits-all communication strategies often struggle to truly engage customers. Generic approaches often miss the mark, ignoring individual preferences, resulting in lower satisfaction and weakened brand loyalty. That’s why forward-thinking retailers are embracing personalized marketing to build deeper, more meaningful connections with their audiences.

Take Coppel, for example – a major Mexican retailer and financial services provider that’s using data and AI to engage customers in more intelligent, personal ways. According to David Benabib, Head of CRM at Coppel, personalization is central to the company’s strategy, as it focuses on creating loyalty through memorable, customer-centric experiences.

Growth prompts marketing reevaluation

As one of Mexico’s largest department store chains, Coppel offers a wide selection of consumer goods such as clothing, footwear, electronics and furniture. Coppel also has its own credit card, personal loans and insurance among other financial services for its customers.

From its humble beginnings in 1941, Coppel has grown into a retail giant, with its dual role as a store and a financial services provider, helping it expand its customer base to more than 25 million nationwide. However, with this rapid expansion came the challenge of effectively engaging with its vast customer base. Prior to using SAS, Coppel’s customer outreach relied on broad, labor-intensive processes, with IT manually pulling customer data and Marketing sending generic messages to the masses.

“Previously, our customer outreach wasn’t tailored or automated,” Benabib says. “We used to send broad messages to our entire customer base, which involved having someone from IT query the system to get the customer database, then sending that file to a channel, like SMS or email. Not only did this method lack segmentation and personalization, but it was also time-consuming. We only produced about 60 campaigns a year.”

The lack of personalization resulted in excessive costs, the risk of customer saturation and disengagement due to irrelevant messaging. Recognizing the need for a more tailored approach, Coppel turned to SAS to gain deeper insights into customer preferences.

Transforming insights into better marketing performance

Coppel adopted a customer-centric strategy powered by a modern engagement platform from SAS. The retailer initially used SAS Marketing Automation to streamline its processes and later transitioned to SAS Customer Intelligence 360. Now Coppel can unify data across departments, generate real-time insights using AI and analytics, and apply those insights through SAS Customer Intelligence 360.

Using its unique credit system – including origination data, long-term purchase history and customer transactions – along with behavioral data from its website and app, Coppel builds personalized recommendation models and highly targeted customer segments.

“SAS Customer Intelligence 360 took our marketing to the next level. We were able to create more sophisticated audiences and segmentations using a wider range of variables – all without depending on IT to pull the data. That shift led to huge growth in both the quality and quantity of messages we sent to customers.”

Instead of bombarding customers with offers that could be irrelevant, Coppel uses data to understand what each customer truly wants. For example, a customer likely interested in purchasing a mattress now receives relevant offers along with tailored messages highlighting the benefits of good sleep and advice on choosing the right mattress. “We want to ensure our communications are relevant and engaging,” Benabib says. “If someone is looking to purchase a mattress, why would we send them offers pertaining to laptops or motorcycles?”

By focusing on relevance, Coppel can maintain – and grow – meaningful connections with customers.

The results are in …

“At the beginning of our transformation, we conducted about 60 general campaigns a year. Now we are executing annually almost 3,000 targeted campaigns through at least two different channels each,” Benabib says. “We consider various attributes such as the stage of the customer journey, credit limit, social demographics and likelihood to purchase specific product categories. We are moving toward hyper-personalization, combining different views of the same customer to send the right message through the right channel with the right content.”

The results are impressive. Coppel gained detailed visibility into campaign performance through SAS, uncovering a 2% increase in retail sales and a 16% increase in personal loan transactions. The company also cut its timeline for analyzing campaign results from six months to just 15 days, allowing it to quickly identify what was working, adapt its strategies and make improvements.

Looking ahead

Plans are underway to create more personalized customer journeys tailored to key lifecycle moments. One example is guiding users step-by-step through the credit application process, offering customized onboarding benefits that drive engagement and foster long-term loyalty.

Personalization is also extending into physical stores. Using behavioral data, Coppel sales associates will deliver real-time, tailored recommendations, bridging the gap between online and in-person experiences.

Increasing app adoption is another strategic focus. By encouraging in-app purchases and usage, Coppel aims to streamline interactions, enhance convenience and strengthen engagement across every customer touchpoint.

“Our goal is to turn ideas into productive, tangible solutions that directly benefit our customers and strengthen relationships at every stage of their journey,” Benabib concludes. “With the support of SAS, we are able to create personalized experiences that not only meet but exceed our customers’ expectations.”