Shop Direct Group & Celebrus Win Marketing Week's 'Data-Driven Marketing' Award for Customer Data Hub Driven Campaigns

NEWBURY, England, May 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Shop Direct, the 1.7 ($2.7) billion pounds Sterling online retailing group, last night won the award for 'Data-Driven Marketing' at the 2011 Marketing Week Engage Awards. The group is the UK's 4th largest online retailer, with brands including Littlewoods, Very, isme, K&Co, Choice and Additions. The award highlights a highly successful project that has delivered an estimated 0.5% increase in total group sales in the first year.

Marketing Week reports that the judges were impressed by "the outstanding return on investment" produced in a short time.

By using detailed Browser data from Celebrus Technologies they have been able to deliver a step change in the relevancy of customer contacts. Shop Direct wanted to gather real-time customer data so that it could communicate with people on a one-to-one basis with messaging based on their current motivations rather than just on previous buying patterns. Shop Direct used Celebrus to capture and process real-time browsing data and combined this with customer profiles, order history and targeting models to trigger relevant, timely, personalised email contacts.

People were targeted via their preferred contact channel if they had abandoned their online shopping baskets or at other critical moments in their relationship and interaction with the brands.

Shop Direct has, so far, launched 15 campaigns based on Celebrus' data and this has also influenced offline activity.

By using Celebrus Technologies to build a 'Customer Data Hub' and combine real-time online information from Shop Direct's websites with offline information the project has allowed Shop Direct to gain a highly detailed understanding of their customers' behavior, permitting them to analyse existing customer profiles and order history with ease. The result is true, one-to-one customer communication based on individual activity and aspirations which is now transforming the performance of email, direct marketing and telemarketing campaigns.

Shop Direct Group faced stiff competition in its category from international brands that included British Airways, Cancer Research UK's Race for Life, Churchill, Dennis Publishing, Direct Line, MORE TH>N, Tesco Stores, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and Yell. Last night's ceremony was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London and photography is available of the directors and management of Shop Direct Group receiving their award.

A Shop Direct spokesperson comments, "We wanted Shop Direct to be at the leading edge in both the creation of this 360 degree customer view and the way this data is embedded in business processes, from email to telemarketing and direct mail campaigns. Indeed, this has not just been a data project: it is a new philosophy, a new way of working – and one that is delivering significant corporate value and competitive advantage. We are rather proud of what we have achieved and the ROI delivered."

"Winning this prestigious Marketing Week Engage Award on top being voted 'online retailer of the year by Retail Week' is making 2011 a fantastic year for us. Winning the award last night would not have been possible without great support from Celebrus."

About Celebrus www.Celebrus.com

Celebrus Technologies delivers complete, real-time data, on online visitors' behavior, environment and experience; data to power Customer Data Hubs, driving online and cross-channel behavioral targeting, real-time personalization & interaction management – complete online customer insight.

Celebrus Technologies captures and analyzes interaction at the user interface – whatever the device e.g. mobile, iPhone, PDA, gaming console, or technology deployed e.g. webpage, Adobe AIR, Silverlight, Flash, Flex, AJAX etc. – to deliver complete real-time data on every visitor and user of all your online applications.

Celebrus Technologies' systems have come to define a new approach to the integration of online applications into an enterprise's Information Architecture. The system's User Interface Capture functionality provides a definitive, flexible and reusable source of customer, behavioral, process and performance data from any internet, intranet or extranet application.

Celebrus Technologies' customers use their patented and tag-free Dynamic Collection™ solutions to drive applications as diverse as Fraud Detection, Marketing Automation, Campaign Measurement, Usability & Design, CRM systems and Web Analytics.

With options to directly populate Enterprise Data warehouses, it represents the leading edge of advanced online channel data capture, analysis and delivery systems.

Celebrus Technologies delivers its solutions directly and via a range of OEM, reseller and system integration partners around the world. Users include RBS, HSBC, MBNA, AXA, Belron (Autoglass), directgov, Rank Interactive, P&O Ferries and ghd. Celebrus's partners include the SAS Institute, Teradata Corporation, Merkle, FatWire, Netezza and Oracle.

SOURCE Celebrus