Lojas Lebes improves customer engagement across multiple channels with Oracle Responsys

Brazilian retailer Lojas Lebes started in 1956 as a family business selling food products. The company changed course over time and has since grown into one of the largest retail chains in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, now selling furniture, appliances, electronics, and clothing in 190 retail outlets and online.

Lojas Lebes is known for offering customers a terrific shopping experience. However, when the pandemic hit Brazil and physical stores closed, the company increased its commitment to embracing digital transformation and investing in technology to strengthen the relationship between customers and employees.

Lojas Lebes was searching for a campaign management system that could support a multichannel retail model and offer a targeted sales approach to make up for the loss in revenue due to the pandemic. The solution also needed to focus on customer experience and conversion through text, email, and WhatsApp messages sent from store employees.

The closing of physical stores affected customer data collection as well, since registering customer information and shopping preferences was dependent on conventional in-store service. Thus, Lojas Lebes also required a digital data collection process to better understand customers’ purchasing behavior in both the online and offline environment. This would let the company optimize the purchase journey as well as increase conversion and retention rates.

Lojas Lebes opted for Oracle Responsys, part of Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience, because of the solution’s advanced marketing intelligence features. These let the company handle mass audience targeting and deploy cross-channel marketing automation campaigns at scale. Lojas Lebes needed a campaign management solution to help the company properly target and address its customers across a vast portfolio of products and services while continuing to deliver high quality customer service.

Using Oracle Responsys, Lojas Lebes developed a segmented approach for addressing its target audience and created personalized offers according to individual customer preferences, browsing history, and purchasing history. The company improved conversion rates with targeted email and text message campaigns, increased key metrics such as purchase frequency, and activated leads that would previously have been lost, such as recovering customers who were inactive or had abandoned their carts.

With the same number of campaigns as the previous year, Lojas Lebes grew customer contacts through WhatsApp communications nearly 13X, while achieving a 10X jump in the customer conversion rate, from 2.25% to 24.13%.

With Oracle Responsys, Lojas Lebes increased purchase frequency among omnichannel customers by 131%, boosted customer engagement rates by 107%, grew its customer base by 85%, and augmented revenue by 130%.

The last quarter of 2020 brought particularly significant progress for Lojas Lebes. Year over year, targeted email campaigns resulted in 3% higher ecommerce sales, while physical stores sold 26% more products than before the pandemic. In November 2020, Lojas Lebes generated 37% more revenue than in November 2019, when all stores were open.

Using Oracle Responsys’ automatic rules, all critical data about customer preferences—such as the most browsed and purchased products—are collected, mapped, and integrated with Pmweb’s 360/Oto application. Lojas Lebes’ sales teams can now quickly access customer profiles, including purchase histories and RFV (recency, frequency, value) classifications, to create offers for products with the highest traffic.

Lojas Lebes also streamlined communication between sales representatives and customers with Oracle Responsys. The company made customer communication more direct, personal, and efficient now that store employees can easily get in touch with customers to help them make informed purchasing decisions. It also allows customers to benefit from the personalized service they would receive if shopping at a physical store.

Another highlight for Lojas Lebes is the alignment of the digital and offline shopping experience for customers. This resulted from more targeted communication and product offers. During lockdowns, it enabled a safe and easy purchase experience for customers and allowed salespeople to spend more time with individual customers. The Responsys system also helps during the return of goods to physical stores, since salespeople have all customer data available for consultation when customers return to a store.

Since 2016, Oracle Certified Partner Pmweb has been a systems integrator for Lojas Lebes, supporting the company throughout its digital transformation and, more recently, the challenge of retail lockdowns. In November 2020, for example, they implemented campaign activations and optimizations together for Black Friday sales. Pmweb and Lojas Lebes also created a process to train key Responsys users.