Case Study: The Bradford Group's Gold-Plated Marketing Efficiency

It took a year to organize and transfer the information, but Elixir’s tool now uses data gathered by The Bradford Group’s technology — which tracks customer history regarding recency, frequency and last purchase — and plugs it into the company’s more than 1,000 business rules to trigger dynamic messages for each customer, she says.

“We’re slowly dismantling the legacy system,” Ring says.

Eventually, she says the group will even add digital channels to its marketing automation options.

For now, though, The Bradford Group is rather happy with the 90 percent improvement in time-to-market with its campaigns, 75 percent reduction in campaign setup time, and millions saved with the ability to send information to an outside printer rather than having to inventory the in-house, specialized equipment. Business rules that used to require a full-time employee to manage, and designs that once took days to produce, now require just hours.

Plus, the company can now quickly change how it wants to communicate to each customer — whether it be all the way down to the product level, complete with inserts about other products, or back up to the product line and simply thanking the person for buying a doll. It’s one of the reasons “customer communications” is how The Bradford Group terms its various types of invoices — including dunning, shipping and reservations. The latter asks customers to subscribe and is the company’s chief revenue-generator.

Perhaps this direct mail improvement will join The Bradford Group’s history page for providing customers with “innovation, artistry and design of enduring value.”