The Entertainer selects Mapp to drive insight-led customer engagement

London, March 3, 2020 – Mapp Digital, the cloud-based digital marketing provider, has been appointed by The Entertainer to help it to enhance its online engagement strategy following its acquisition of Early Learning Centre.

The new partnership will allow The Entertainer to realign its online strategy and combine customer data from all touchpoints to develop a richer, more holistic view of its customers, and easily action insight-led engagement at scale. The new strategy will aim to reduce abandonment and churn, acquire more customers, and extract more revenue from the existing customer base.

The Entertainer, the fastest-growing family owned high street toy retailer in the UK, has been a leader in its space since 1981. In February 2019, The Entertainer acquired Early Learning Centre, with 520 franchise stores internationally.

With the ever-changing retail climate and a commanding rise in revenue opportunities from online, the company needed a partner that could future proof the business and enhance its online engagement strategy.

The Entertainer selected Mapp after reviewing other vendors in the market, including those in the Forrester and Gartner waves. Mapp was selected on the basis of Mapp Cloud’s powerful capabilities for customer acquisition and engagement, coupled with the company’s experience in executing successful online strategies for retail brands.

Mapp offered The Entertainer a powerful and intuitive platform, providing the capability to seamlessly collect, analyse and act on customer data. Mapp drives positive and relevant engagement to enable higher customer lifetime value and deliver increased revenue year on year.

In addition, Mapp offered campaign management services, providing The Entertainer with a Mapp consultant on hand at all times to execute campaigns. This meant that The Entertainer could avoid employing additional headcount while still gaining specific digital marketing expertise from day one.

The Entertainer and Early Learning Centre join other leading brands such as Homebase, Argos, Peacocks, Bathstore, and Freesat, that have selected Mapp.

Rob Wood, Head of Online at The Entertainer, comments: “We’re really excited to have partnered with Mapp as we begin the next phase of integrating the Early Learning Centre into The Entertainer’s ecommerce business. Customers can expect a seamless, personalised experience across all of The Entertainer and Early Learning Centre’s digital channels, including email, social and the websites.

“We need to provide a helping hand to our customers through product recommendations and expert advice. Mapp will enable us to do this by giving us a more detailed understanding of our customers and communicating the right information at the right time.”

Adam Kirkham, Digital Marketing Manager, The Entertainer, comments: “Mapp really stood out with their forensic response to our use cases paired with first-rate strategic services. Mapp enables The Entertainer to meet our customers’ multi-channel expectations with enriched data insights at its core, giving us the tools we need to nurture our customers from acquisition through to advocacy. We’re confident we’ve picked the right partner to support us through this exciting period of growth.”

Josh Beale, Principal Account Director, Global Retail and CPG at Mapp, adds: “The Entertainer and Early Learning Centre are iconic British brands that resonate with every parent in the country. Mapp are excited to be able to curate hyper-personalised journeys that will not only build revenue for the brand but also create a more tailored customer experience.

“Joining existing fragmented data in Mapp Cloud with Mapp Intelligence Insights will create a rich awareness of customers’ requirements for the brand and as a result increase repeat order rate, basket values and conversion rates. Coupling the technology with our campaign services and customer success teams will enable The Entertainer to make best use of the tools available and standardise the communication aesthetic to the customer.

“We are really looking forward to driving this strategy during 2020 and beyond.”

About The Entertainer
The Entertainer was founded in 1981 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire by husband and wife team, Gary and Catherine Grant who, now along with two of their sons, instil the driving force and mission – “To be the best-loved toyshop – one child, one community at a time”. Today, it continues to be the largest family-owned chain of toy shops in the UK with a total of 172 stores.

As well as a strong High Street presence, The Entertainer has a successful website (TheToyShop.com) which offers a 30-minute click and collect service and has over 29 million visits annually. The Entertainer is also recognised for its charitable giving. Each year it tithes 10% of its pre-tax annual profit to charity.  In addition to this, employees are encouraged to donate directly through Payroll Giving, with The Entertainer matching each donation pound for pound and raising over £1m to date. The Entertainer is also an active member of the Pennies scheme, the digital upgrade of the traditional charity collecting box, which enables customers to donate a few pence to charity at the point of sale when paying by card. On average, this generates £14,500 of customer donations to Children’s hospitals each week and has raised over £3m since it was introduced. The Entertainer currently employs over 1500 staff across the stores and a further 231 in the Head Office in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.

The Entertainer featured in the prestigious Sunday Times “100 Best Companies to work for” 2020.

In December 2018 The Entertainer acquired POLY, a chain of 54 toy shops in Spain.

In February 2019 the Early Learning Centre was also acquired, with 520 standalone franchise stores internationally.

About Mapp
Marketers and data specialists should be able to focus on what will make a difference for their business, instead of spending all their time taming the technology behind it. With the insight-led customer engagement platform Mapp Cloud, they can focus on what really counts – and the exciting insights that come with it. Thanks to customer intelligence and marketing analytics, companies can easily and effectively gain data-driven customer insights across all channels in order to trigger highly personalized marketing activities. Customers benefit from AI-supported forecasting models that enable targeted and self-optimizing cross-channel campaigns. Automated messages are sent via the most suitable marketing channel, at the right time, with the optimal contact frequency. Thanks to advanced one-to-one personalization, the highest levels of engagement and long-term customer loyalty are achieved.

Mapp has global offices in eight countries. Mapp’s digital marketing platform helps more than 2,500 companies break away from the pack by uncovering missed opportunities, including Xerox, PepsiCo, LG, Qantas, Infinity, and Lloyds Banking Group.

PR Agency: The PR Network
Matt Cartmell
+44 (0)7930 485 333
matt.cartmell@thepr.network
https://www.thepr.network

Mapp Digital Europe
Harald Oberhofer
+49 30 755 415 120
harald.oberhofer@mapp.com
www.mapp.com

Mapp Digital US
Christine Paulson
+1 415-705-9250
christine.paulson@mapp.com
www.mapp.com

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