The Magic Behind Staples Canada's Marketing

How Automated Personalization Supplies Staples Canada with Extra Bandwidth

Challenge

Since its inception in 1991, Staples Canada’s marketing team has made it a mission to help people work smarter, not harder. With this mission they provide customers with the office supplies and equipment to get the job done.

Then came a time for Staples Canada to get that same “work smart, not hard” opportunity in return. Enter Movable Ink. The two teams work together to build powerful, 1:1 moments that create ease and efficiency while increasing customer-centric experiences.

In this case study, discover the staples needed to build a best-in-class personalization strategy without the manual lift.

Automate Existing Programs: Web Crop

Why manually create an email when you don’t need to? Staples Canada asked themselves the same question and set their sights on automatically cropping the most up-to-date promotions from their website into their weekly flyer emails. The purpose of these emails is to showcase the week’s featured deals.

Web cropping allows the email, flyer, and creative teams to sit back, relax, and let the tech do the hard work. Each week brings new promotions and with the help of web cropping, it becomes simple to showcase the most relevant experience possible.

Web cropping is a great win because we can eliminate the work for the email team, use what the website team is doing, and have that creative consistency for the consumer.

Megan Blackburn

Senior Director of Digital Marketing, Staples CA

Improve Segmentation and Engagement: Polling

To communicate effectively with your customers, you must truly understand them. This begins with building a strong customer-brand relationship.

Staples Canada captured valuable zero-party data through a poll by asking customers about their job roles. This allows the marketing team to target the information that matters most to their customers, which in return provides more opportunity for engagement. Tailoring communications proves time and again to be one of the most efficient ways to capture your audience’s attention.

The initial touchpoint begins with the poll pinpointing why it will be valuable for the customer to participate (i.e. to receive more relevant messaging in future emails).

Based on their initial poll response, the customer will receive follow-up messaging that fits their unique needs. As a bonus, each variation of the follow-up communication uses automation, making this functionality an easy lift for Staples Canada’s marketers.

This captured data goes beyond a trigger response by influencing brand communications the individual customer receives moving forward.

Reignite Interest: Abandon Cart and Browse Banners

Your customers lead busy lives. So it’s not surprising that many online customers shop, get distracted, and abandon their items. That’s why a little reminder can help spark that original intention, get them back on track and ready to complete their purchase.

Staples Canada includes banners in their emails for all of those customers who recently abandoned or browsed items on the website, giving them the extra push they need to return to their carts.

The dynamic abandon and browse banners have been working very well for us and we now add them to every email because the impact on revenue is so good. With Movable Ink, we’ve included targeted value props to specific audiences.

Ariana Biagi

Email Marketing Manager, Staples CA

Meet Customers Where They Are: Store Locator

Keep customers in the know about store hours, locations, and contact information to get them one step closer to shopping.

Staples Canada makes their emails a one-stop shop for all store details, while visually displaying the nearest location to the customer via Google maps. This makes it easy for shoppers to get directions to their preferred location and pick up items in store.

Additionally, the banner includes the promotions and products each store offers, making it a completely dynamic customer experience.

Recently, Staples Canada has introduced coworking and event spaces at specific locations that have also been promoted through the store locator module.

Conclusion

In a world where there are so many options customers can choose from, it’s critical to stand out from the pack. This being said, it’s also crucial that marketers give themselves the necessary time and energy to create the most exceptional marketing experiences possible.

Staples Canada has found this perfect balance by providing unique, 1:1 communications to their customers while also easing their own workflow.

The Movable Ink and Staples Canada partnership is just getting started— we’re eager to see where it goes next!