PBSL Constructs Personalized Customer Experiences to Drive 80% Online Revenue Growth

The PBSL Group is an independent group supplying specialty building and drainage products to tradespeople and DIY professionals in the U.K. Composed of nine individual brands, PBSL has a complex business model. 

PBSL began to explore smarter ways of competing in the digital space, starting with smarter email marketing. Over the course of their market research, they formed a hypothesis: “If we can take quantifiable, actionable customer data beyond email marketing, we can apply that data cross-functionally—and create new channels for revenue.”

To achieve this, they’d need a way to integrate and unify multiple data sources. That’s when they turned to Mapp. 

“It’s not really only about email: it’s about insight-led marketing. This is all about data; what sort of data we can collect and how we can use it to understand our customers. Email is just one of the channels we can invest in,” Suzana Bulearca, CMO at PBSL Group.

By partnering with Mapp, PBSL could finally have the unified customer insights they needed to power their cross-channel personalization strategy and drive customer engagement. This enabled a higher productivity of 15% on multi-brand campaigns. Their email marketing results drastically improved, with average engagement rates soaring by 225%. In fact, this approach worked so well for PBSL that they now generate 45% of all email revenue through automated programs.

The result was an 80% increase in eCRM revenue.

PBSL’S MANUAL PROCESSES HELD THEM BACK

PBSL’s previous tech stack had legacy systems which limited their ability to extract the actionable customer insights they needed to win loyalty and reduce churn. And, they aren’t alone: only 34% of businesses are able to collect data on their customers effectively. While PBSL had plenty of customer data stored in siloed tools and systems, manual analysis was a time-consuming and inefficient process. This approach limited their options for personalization and loyalty programs. 

PBSL turned to Mapp Marketing Cloud to unify their data sources and eliminate manual customer data collection, management, and analysis. This reduced the strain on resources and yielded a 15% increase in productivity across brand campaigns.

ADOPTING MAPP CLOUD TO BUILD DATA-BACKED CAMPAIGNS

1. Online personalization: Used product recommendation carousels across the website to showcase bestsellers, trending products, and new items to help customers meet their needs
2. Upselling and cross-selling: Leveraged Mapp Marketing Cloud insights to understand the relationship between products that are commonly used by customers and how to sell them across brands with a unified message from the group
3. Email marketing: Conducted customer segmentation to send targeted emails with product recommendations and educational content that helps customers find what they’re looking for. For instance, by segmenting roofing, plumbing, and landscaping professionals, their emails can be personalized with relevant product recommendations for their projects
4. Loyalty: Mapp Intelligence’s analytical capabilities equipped PBSL’s account managers with the necessary KPIs using RFM insights for win-backs, retention, and repeat purchases, creating a symbiotic workflow between sales and marketing
5. Automation: Real-time automation flows helped them to create and manage cross-brand campaigns, such as last-browsed, abandoned cart, repeat purchases, in-moment (browse) campaigns, and more

This strategic approach is critical for PBSL as they face an economy under stress and increasingly budget-conscious consumers. Insight-led marketing enables them to meet customers on the right channel, at the right time, with the right messaging to improve conversions.

With the right capabilities and more efficient processes in place, PBSL also started to focus on creating educational content for merchants who may lack knowledge on certain supplies. This content uses PBSL’s subject matter expertise to provide extra value and support for customers, encouraging them to come in-store; coincidentally, it also drives additional conversions, information, and revenue for PBSL through its email channels. 

As their loyalty program grew, PBSL recognized that their insights had an impact outside of the marketing ecosystem. They use data to inform their business strategy, analyze stocks and locations for brand expansion, and optimize paid search spending. 

Having an insight-led, strategic approach to personalization has not only delivered exceptional results for the business, but also helped them learn more about and better serve their customers. 

While PBSL has achieved significant success, it is still building the blocks for complete digital transformation. An ongoing cost-of-living crisis has presented new challenges for acquisition and retention, but PBSL continues driving its insight-led approach to strategy and growth, maintaining that reaching customers at the right time and with the right incentive is critical in all channels. 

For PBSL, they’re collecting and learning about their customers more than ever – but data collection is only the beginning of their journey. The company hopes to further elevate its offline data applications, using Mapp Intelligence to create real-time RFM models for its account managers and link data initiatives with a customer’s lifetime journey. 

PBSL is a success story in the construction industry, which has been notoriously slow to respond to trends—especially where marketing is concerned. Despite working in an industry that is resistant to change, PBSL adopted a digital-first, future-focused mindset, breaking down its data silos and optimizing its online business for long-term success.