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 the Dotdigital 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

The project focused on H&T’s cart abandonment email strategy, using Dotdigital 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’s 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 the timing and frequency of when the email will 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 from those looking for lower value children’s jewellery, for example.”

Dotdigital’s 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.

Alicja Dela, Harvey & Thompson

Impressive sales growth and future expansion plans

Such has been the impact of the new personalized cart abandonment emails that 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. “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’s functionality is helping us to replicate the personal service for which H&T has built its reputation in-store for more than 120 years, in the digital world.”

Personalize communications to increase lifetime customer value

To ensure Snuggle Hunny had the ideal foundations in place to realize the huge potential of the brand, it migrated to the Shopify Plus ecommerce platform in 2024. In addition to providing a website that its consumer and wholesale business customers could depend upon, the company wanted to put a strategy in place to add greater levels of personalization to its email communications.

Providing timely, relevant and engaging content would enable the brand to nurture long-term loyalty and increase lifetime customer value. To achieve these goals, the Snuggle Hunny team turned to Dotdigital and its email and SMS marketing automation platform.

Ecommerce integration and multi-channel personalization

Using the Dotdigital platform, the team has taken its customer engagement to the next level, not only introducing innovative new ideas and personalization within its emails but also successfully expanding its communication channels to include SMS.

One of the first campaigns Snuggle Hunny embarked upon with Dotdigital was for its Easter Egg Hunt, setting up webpages, online registration forms online, and using the ability to geotarget customers. On the morning of the hunt, the team used the platform to email and SMS each participant, which achieved an impressive 78% open rate.

Snuggle Hunny has since run many successful campaigns which embrace the capabilities of the Dotdigital platform. Automations now include dynamic content featuring personalized subject lines, preheaders, as well as product recommendations based on each customers preferences and purchase history.

A major advantage of using the Dotdigital platform is its connector to Shopify Plus, which enables Snuggle Hunny to synchronize data from its consumer and wholesale websites. As a result, the team can easily clone automations and campaigns and benefits from more insightful and accurate reporting.

The company also operates its popular Snuggle Rewards loyalty scheme. It lets customers earn points when they shop, write a review, follow the company on social media and refer others. The Snuggle Hunny team explains: “We wanted to make it even easier for our customers to see how many Snuggle Points they have earned and how they can redeem them. So, we have introduced personalized loyalty headers within all our campaigns that display each customer’s points total.”

Recently, the team introduced product recommendations in its rewards reminder automation campaigns. Each email is automatically populated with information such as ‘New in store’, ‘Most viewed RRP’ and ‘Most viewed on Sale ‘.

The Dotdigital platform has affected our overall customer experience and encouraged long-term loyalty among our customers, aiming to increase lifetime value.

Julie Mathers, Owner

Increased engagement and conversion

Snuggle Hunny have seen some impressive results, such as the Snuggle Rewards reminder which achieved a 50% open rate and boosted over 80% of additional revenue.

Another example is the introduction of ‘Back in stock’ emails, which have driven high engagement and conversions, with the team reporting increased click engagement of 1100% in 2024, compared to standard sends during the same timeframe. Julie adds: “It is a powerful feature highlighting the impact of our tailored approach, enabling customers to reconnect with the products they previously expressed an interest in.”

“Snuggle Hunny is now able to craft highly engaging email campaigns that resonate with existing and potential customers and our use of SMS has proven to us the benefits of using multiple channels to create meaningful connections with our audience.” Julie concludes: “By continuing our creative customer-centred approach, we set the foundation for ongoing brand loyalty and sustainable business growth.”