Harvey & Thompson Achieves £150k New Sales Revenue in First 10 Weeks with Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance

Harvey & Thompson (H&T) is the UK’s largest pawnbroker and one of the largest retailers of high-quality pre-owned and new jewellery and watches. The company has built and maintained its reputation over more than 120 years, continuously evolving to meet the needs of its customers both on the high street (where it has been a constant presence since 1897) and online.

Personalizing Customer Engagement to Boost Sales

The importance of having an effective digital strategy is highlighted in a recent report that online sales were responsible for 30% of jewellery sales in the UK in 2023.

Buying any piece of jewellery or timepiece is a highly personal decision. H&T wanted to replace its ‘linear’ approach to reaching out to customers via email, with personalized content that would reflect each customer’s area of interest. In taking this new approach, with the help of Dotdigital and its Fresh Relevance personalization platform, H&T was able to attribute an impressive £151,843 in new sales, within just 10 weeks of implementation.

Alicja Dela, at H&T, explains: “Some people visit our website looking for a specific premium brand or model of watch, whilst others are looking for a specific item of jewellery, gold or coins. We wanted to be able to personalize the messages we send to them, to improve how they experience our brand and increase their propensity to buy.” Alicja adds: “The results have exceeded our expectations, and we are working on plans to expand how we use the platform.”

Optimizing Cart Abandonment Strategy with Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance

The project focused on H&T’s cart abandonment email strategy, using Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance to automatically send a personalized email to every customer who places items in their shopping basket but leaves before completing the transaction.

Working with Dotdigital’s Professional Services team, H&T has optimized every element of the strategy, from the design of each email to controlling the timing and frequency of customer engagement, based on their pre-defined criteria. The Professional Services experts built on-brand email templates for each product category – watches, jewellery, coins and gold bars.

Alicja commented: “With Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance’s combined capability we were able to personalize each email with banner imagery and details of products still in the customer’s shopping basket. What’s more, we also have total control over timing and frequency of when the email would be sent.”

The timeliness of abandonment emails is vital as items such as watches and jewellery are often purchased for birthdays, anniversaries, engagements etc.

H&T wanted to ensure that they engaged proactively, in a way that would be received positively by the customer, without sending disproportionate volumes of emails to a customer. To avoid this H&T can manage the frequency of emails by setting rules within the Dotdigital platform. Alicja explains: “We tailor the number of emails a customer is sent based on product value, so someone interested in a premium watch will receive a multi-stage campaign, which differs to those looking for lower value children’s jewellery for example.”

Impressive Sales Growth and Future Expansion Plans

Such has been the impact of the new personalized cart abandonment emails, H&T not only recorded impressive sales growth that it can directly attribute to the new strategy, but the company is also achieving higher conversion rates, almost double the typical performance in the UK retail sector.

Motivated by the impressive revenue growth and conversions, H&T is exploring opportunities to expand its use of Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance. “The next step is to extend the programme to connect with our online window shoppers. We want to send them timely and relevant emails about the products they expressed an interest in, as well as notify them when items are back in stock.” Alicja concludes: “Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance’s combined functionality is helping us to replicate the personal service for which H&T has built its reputation on in-store for more than 120 years, in the digital world.”