This holiday was a bit different for luxury dinnerware retailer Lenox, long known for its name brand as well as Dansk, Marchessa, kate spade new york and other designer lines.
E-Commerce sales were up 26 percent over previous years with the help of Oracle Commerce. The company implemented new Oracle solutions earlier this year to boost sales with improved search results, recommendations, and targeted promotions.
The true test of the rollout came at the beginning of the holiday season when Oracle enabled Lenox to target promotions for customer segments and respond faster to market demand with more complex pricing strategies.
“Since Black Friday, we were able to implement a more robust and enhanced promotional strategy, and have achieved a dramatic lift just based on the fact that we can promote at the product level. Using Oracle, our peak period outpaced sales the last two years by 26 percent,” said Mario A. Castano, vice president, E-Commerce Implementation, Lenox.
Lenox re-launched its e-commerce site on Oracle Commerce earlier this year and has used it to tailor search results based on customer history and to suggest complementary items in a specific pattern or place setting. Oracle also helped Lenox shift to a pictorial format for dinnerware, since shoppers often rely on visuals rather than pattern names.
The deployment’s biggest success, however, was in promotions. In addition to its own brands, Lenox offers designer exclusives that aren’t eligible for discounts. With Oracle, Lenox can quickly and easily separate out the exclusive offerings, which allows them to preserve pricing on designer goods even during storewide sales. Previously, exempting designer items from sales required extensive, time-consuming manipulation of its e-commerce system requiring involvement of IT. The business is now empowered.
Lenox also took advantage of customer service console functionality in Oracle Commerce to transform its call center operations and provide its service representatives with a comprehensive view of customer purchase history, as well as catalog and online promotions. The Oracle solution enables Lenox to segment customers and provide them with coupon codes for the lines they love to shop. These codes work online and for the call center, helping customer service representatives to ensure they meet customer expectations, offering free shipping on orders over $29, for example, or 25-30 percent off holiday ornaments, regardless of channel.
“The consumer is digital, the household is ‘virtual’. Smarter consumers demand smarter retailers who are looking into multi-channel customer service. Oracle is committed to helping retailers create and innovate, to strengthen relationships with new and returning customers,” said Mike Webster, Senior Vice President and General Manager Retail & Hospitality, Oracle Retail. “We will continue to deliver the solutions that make this possible for retailers of all sizes and segments.”
