Søstrene Grene
Sitting next to a roaring fire. Laughing with friends. Wrapping up warm in a knitted scarf. Some things are good for the soul, and that warm fuzzy feeling that touches your heart is known as hygge.
For fans of Danish retailer, Søstrene Grene, hygge is a way of life, not just a one-time purchase. And with 3.4 million followers on social media, and an NPS score of 71 for returning customers, the company is blazing a trail in the wellness industry and helping more people turn their homes into an oasis of calm in a chaotic world.
“We don’t just sell products, we sell a feeling,” revealed Rasmus Skjøtt, Chief Digital Officer at the company. “Salesforce has been instrumental in helping us take that feeling omnichannel, particularly when our stores were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Modernising a traditional company.
Founded in 1973, Søstrene Grene has 241 stores in 15 countries. It launched its first webshop in March 2020, and plans to have up to 10 webshops localised for different countries by the end of 2021. The company name translates as ‘Grene sisters’, and fictional sisters Anna and Clara represent the business and speak directly to customers with inspiring quotes on the website, for example.
The move to digital was part of a four-year transformation strategy to modernise a very traditional company in service of more customer value without compromising its USP – a cosy and intimate environment shopping experience for customers to find sustainable and affordable products that bring them joy and foster creativity.
“Our challenge was to replicate a very physical experience in the online sphere,” explained Morten Reiche, Team Lead for Media Planning and Performance. “To inspire and connect with customers we needed to get closer to them and understand their needs and preferences.”
Going social to connect with customers.
To achieve its digital ambitions, Søstrene Grene needed a platform to centralise company data and build a more personalised customer experience on. After going to market, the team selected Salesforce for its strong social media features and opportunities for continuous innovation.
“With Salesforce, we can connect multiple touchpoints to get a single view of the customer. Getting that right is key to giving customers a more seamless, personalised experience,” said Skjøtt.
To attract new customers to its online stores, Søstrene Grene leverages its strong social media presence. The retailer converts followers into regulars by engaging across multiple channels using Social Studio, and encouraging them to subscribe to its newsletters, known as ‘sister-letters’ to reflect the brand’s culture. “Salesforce helps us attract new subscribers by creating lookalike audiences,” explained Mikkel Skov, Marketing Automation Specialist. “We can reach people who might be interested in our offering by filtering out contacts we know aren’t the right fit.”
Subscribers receive inspiring content and news about products, but the company doesn’t monetise the channel by pushing sales and offering discounts. “Our ethos is to be a force for good. We want to send people relevant content that adds value to their life rather than driving one off purchases for discounted products,” added Skov.
Segmenting leads to send more personalised communications.
The team uses Marketing Cloud to segment leads and send more personalised marketing emails to different user groups. For example, customers in different countries receive updates on store openings depending on the COVID-19 restrictions in their region. The team can now customise one sister-letter (instead of creating 14 separate ones) and get campaigns ready to share in an hour instead of half a day.
Skov used Journey Builder to automate campaigns (such as the welcome journey) with dynamic content to quickly and easily tailor content for different languages. Next, he’s planning on rolling out new journeys (like a birthday journey) based on insights captured in Salesforce around customers’ interests and behaviour.
Richer data is already helping the team to optimise communications, for example AB testing on a sister-letter revealed customers were more interested in content and products related to keeping their homes tidy, so Søstrene Grene can now target this group with relevant products and hints and tips on organising.
While the retailer has grown from 140,000 to 360,000 subscribers, open rates have remained at a steady 38-40% with a click-through rate of 12%.
Offering multilingual, omnichannel support to customers.
The next step on the journey to Customer 360 was to implement Service Cloud. A team of 8-10 service reps handled approximately 39,000 cases in the first 10 months in Dutch, French, German, and English.
Service Cloud launched at the same time as the webshop to handle common cases (like product and delivery enquiries) and to open more channels of customer contact (currently email, Facebook, Instagram, or the company’s chatbot). The solution has also helped the team handle spikes in engagement from different regions during lockdowns
Users can track KPIs such as case resolution time or see the number of open cases from a central dashboard. They have a target to respond to customers in 24 hours, but thanks to Social Studio they can respond to an average of 56,000 Facebook and Instagram messages received in a 90-day period much faster, and even in just 14 hours in the Denmark region.
“Salesforce has helped us smooth out processes as we rollout webshops to more and more regions,” said Reiche. “We’ve defined scalable best practices and the platform gives us the agility to onboard more countries quickly and easily.”
As the company continues on its journey, it plans to build a loyalty programme in Marketing Cloud and to use Mobile Studio to expand its multi-channel capabilities. It also wants to use interactive forms and surveys to capture more feedback from customers to make sure it’s meeting their expectations, but with social media fans of Søstrene Grene already pushing for a webshop in more markets, the company is clearly achieving its goal of inspiring its customers and creating demand for hygge products.
“When lockdowns are over, we’ll use Salesforce to drive more traffic to our physical stores as we continue to onboard more regions to our webshop. Having that flexibility is key to thriving in an ever-changing world and to make sure we can always meet the next generation of customer expectations,” concluded Skjøtt.
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