SUCCESS STORY: TOYS “R” US

UP TO 45% INCREASED
CONVERSION RATE USING
AUTOMATED CAMPAIGNS

Toys “R” Us stores are known worldwide as the “ultimate destination for kids, big
and small!” Using the advanced customer segmentation, customizable email design,
and real-time marketing automation of the Emarsys B2C Marketing Cloud, Toys “R”
Us brought the success and renown of their brick-and-mortar stores to their online
experience.

45% 4x 40%
Increased Team productivity Increased average order value
conversion rate and efficiency for repeat purchases

THE CHALLENGE
The Toys “R” Us brick-and-mortar
store model has made them a hugely
profitable brand. Toys “R” Us employs
friendly staff who are always there to
welcome customers, get to know them
personally, and help them find and try
out new products every time they visit.
and kept them limited to generic
emails, distributed in bulk and only
optimized for desktop users. Customer
intelligence was limited to monitoring
email clicks and opens, with only one
automated campaign that wished
loyalty card holders a happy birthday.

This personal touch is the hallmark To increase customer engagement,

of Toys “R” Us’ success, but seemed
impossible to replicate online and
at scale. Keeping online customers
engaged required constant manual
input from the small e-commerce team.
Their emailing system was unwieldy
the e-commerce team knew they
needed tools that would give them
more information about customers
and allow them to create engaging,
accessible, and targeted campaigns.
THE SOLUTION
AUTOMATION + CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE + RESPONSIVE DESIGN

“Our goal is to connect with our guest in a more personalized manner. Emarsys
enables us to execute highly effective, automated marketing campaigns
in order to achieve this goal. Thanks to Smart Insight, we are able to
intelligently and strategically communicate with our customer base.”
Todd McElmurray, European e-Commerce Marketing Director

Toys “R” Us reassessed their e-commerce strategy, and
recognized that to succeed online they needed a solution
that would enable both campaign creation and automation,
while also delivering deep customer intelligence. They
identified the Emarsys B2C Marketing Cloud as a unified
platform that delivered on all of their business needs, while
providing their team with a single dashboard covering every
aspect of managing customer engagement.
Emarsys paired Toys “R” Us with a dedicated Client Success
team, and together they created a roadmap to drive online
purchases and encourage customers to become repeat
buyers, while decreasing team workload. The plan included
creating actionable customer segments, designing engaging
and personalized emails, and deploying a series of campaigns
using real-time marketing automation.

ADVANCED CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION

Toys “R” Us used Smart Insight to segment their consideration each customer’s CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
customers based on behavior. Customers received and position in the Customer Lifecycle (Leads, First-Time
different emails depending on their: Buyers, Active Customers, Defecting Customers).

• Level of online engagement.
• Recency of their last purchase.
• Frequency of visits to the online store.
• Amount of money spent online.
Personalization is important, but not all customers are equal.
To increase revenue, it’s critical to know more than just who
you’re messaging. You have to be able to identify where your
customer is in their purchasing cycle, what the right offer is to
keep them engaged or get them to convert, and balance that
cost against their lifetime value. For instance:

Splitting customers into these segments allowed Toys “R” Us to

create real-time triggers based on ERFM insights (Engagement,
Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value), taking into

REAL-TIME AUTOMATION
Toys “R” Us had previously sent batch emails to all the
contacts in their database. It didn’t matter if they were loyal
customers, or had just signed up without ever making a
purchase. Everyone – even top spending customers on the
verge of defecting – got the same email.

The Emarsys Client Success team advised that shifting to

automated email distribution, based on interaction triggers,
would significantly increase not only open and click rates,
but also conversion to purchase.

The Toys “R” Us e-commerce team built a series of campaigns, The Automation Center, part of the Emarsys B2C Marketing
each triggered by a different customer interaction and with Cloud, with a real-time automated marketing program built
offers tailored to the customer segment. using the drag-and-drop components.
ENGAGEMENT

Loyalty card holders receive a

discount incentive on special
occasions like birthdays and
anniversaries.

Customers receive a welcome email with a

printable incentive voucher when they sign up for
a loyalty card instore. This email bridges the gap
between the online and in-store experience.

Customers who purchased online, or

used their loyalty card in-store, were
sent a post-purchase “Thank You”
email. Paired with a survey asking
for feedback on their experience, this
shifted online communication from
being purely transactional into a
relationship building channel.
RECENCY

The Customer Lifecycle dashboard shows both those customers who have purchased
recently, and those who are at risk of defecting.

FREQUENCY MONETARY VALUE

Regular customers Toys “R” Us

receive seasonal sale automatically offers
notifications and free delivery to
information about the customers whose
latest toys hitting the purchases are above
shelves. a specific price
threshold.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
The emails Toys “R” Us were sending to their customers
weren’t optimized for mobile or tablet view. It was impossible
to tell if customers weren’t clicking through because they
weren’t interested in the offer, or because of the device they
were using.

Using Emarsys’ drag-and-drop widgets, the e-commerce

team was able to create fully responsive email designs. Now,
Toys “R” Us can communicate with their customers whenever
and wherever, regardless of screen size.

With customizable designs, the e-commerce team was Every email optimized
also able to create the same personalized and immersive for the customer, ready
experience customers were used to having in-store. The new to be opened on any
email campaigns weren’t just easy to read, they were fun, screen.
and completely embodied the Toys “R” Us brand.

THE RESULTS
Toys “R” Us now employs the above strategy in six European
countries. According to the Toys “R” Us Commerce
Director, using the automated lifecycle email campaigns
has decreased production time and increased the in-house
team’s efficiency fourfold.
Since switching to the Emarsys platform, the automated
programs have significantly increased engagement: open
rates have nearly tripled, and click-through rates have
increased 5.5 times over. The Welcome Program, created for
in-store loyalty program signups, generated a 41.6% open
rate and 9.6% click-through rate.
Better yet, the average order value from defecting buyers
increased by 23%, and repeat buyers by 39.7%.
The data proved the success that implementing automation
and customer intelligence could deliver, even with a small
team. With a strong lift in revenue enabled by their first
campaigns, Toys “R” Us have decided to increase their use
of the Emarsys B2C Marketing Cloud to cover the entire
customer lifecycle.