Recreating the in-person shopping experience has been a goal of retailers since the introduction of ecommerce. For the UK’s online pharmacy retailer, Chemist Direct, some industries, it’s imperative for success.

With the expansion of online sales, the UK health and beauty market is expected to grow 23.6% by 2021. And although the market is already valued at a staggering £35 billion, it has been traditionally driven in large part by local pharmacies. Enter ecommerce retailer: ChemistDirect, the UK’s No.1 Online Pharmacy retailer dispensing prescriptions, medicines, specialist skincare products, everyday essentials as well as vitamins and supplements.

Through the use of modern customer relationship management strategies and enabling technologies, Chemist Direct is working with Marigold Engage by Sailthru to disrupt the online health and beauty market while making the move to improve the traditional pharmacy experience in the digital world.

Chemist Direct + Sailthru

Chemist Direct ships over 2.1 million items a year, offers consumers an extensive range of Health and Beauty products and fulfills medical prescription needs. With 7000 products available online and a customer base of more than 1.2m, Chemist Direct’s marketing leadership recognized the opportunity to further increase profitable growth through data-driven customer retention programs.

By working with Marigold Engage by Sailthru, the team at Chemist Direct has been able to:

  • Create a single customer view, combining email and website click stream data to truly understand individual customer behaviours and Health & Beauty product interests
  • Focus on real-time trigger based activity, such as abandoned basket emails and a personalised welcome stream upon newsletter sign up to increase speed to conversion
  • Personalise product recommendations within email to drive long-term engagement and repeat purchase rates while decreasing churn
  • Streamline email newsletter templates to increase operational efficiency and optimise for mobile conversion

Maya Moufarek, CMO, Chemistdirect.co.uk, commented, “Our long-term success depends on our ability to build enduring and valuable relationships with existing clients, which is why we’ve placed customer retention at the heart of our strategy. Working with Marigold Engage by Sailthru has improved the way in which we engage with our customers longer-term. We look forward to improving our leading-class experience for our customers even further by increasing our use of personalization to manage marketing message cadence, deploy email communications at the ideal time for every individual customer, individualize website interfaces and predict customer behaviors to further optimize revenue.”

Success + ROI

Check out the full case study to discover more about how Chemist Direct has increased revenue from retained customers and seen a significant decrease in customer churn – including:

  • 106% increase in mobile email revenue
  • 44% increase in mobile conversion rate
  • 43% decrease in customer churn rates
  • 17% increase in total email revenue

—Elizabeth Trombino, Marketing and Communications Coordinator