Customer Success Stories- Stockmann Delicatessen Marketing Analytics: How the premium grocery chain improved its Marketing ROI with Sellforte

Highlights

• Identified a +50% improvement potential in marketing ROI through media mix optimization, star product selection, and investing in seasons.
• Started measuring marketing performance on ad and week levels, providing actionable recommendations.
• Introduced agile testing and piloting capabilities.

Client Context

Stockmann Delicatessen is the top premium grocery chain in Finland and the Baltics.

• Delicatessen operates in six Stockmann department stores in Finland.
• Delicatessen provides customers with first-class service and a unique, broad, high-quality selection.
• Whether for celebration or everyday cooking, Delicatessen inspires and provides the right ingredients for success.

Delicatessen has relied on a HiLo promotional strategy, complemented by a strong loyalty program and advertising in daily newspapers.

• The majority of the media spend was allocated to promoting weekly ads in daily newspapers.
• Delicatessen had a small, yet growing, digital presence.
• The Delicatessen magazine, delivered to the homes of loyal customers, provided inspiration with new recipes and introduced novelty products.
• Coupons were utilized to reward loyal shoppers and activate them during holiday seasons.

Client Questions

• How many customers visited thanks to media?
• What else did they purchase, other than the promoted products?
• Which are the best-performing star promotions?
• What is the optimal marketing mix and investment level by media type?
• Which are the best-performing seasons and weekdays?

Challenges

The Finnish retail landscape had been extremely price-driven for many years, due to static consumer purchasing power and a tight competitive situation.

• As a result, marketing messages focusing on price and promotion had become the market standard.
• Delicatessen's media spend was focused on traffic-driving weekend price campaigns.
• However, there was a lack of proof regarding which categories were bringing in traffic and which were not.
• Consequently, all categories were promoted in the media, even though only a few performed well.

Delicatessen had a strong media performance as the starting point.

• There was a clearly positive margin ROI for media investments overall.
• They had a differentiated theme, featuring high quality and delicious pictures. However, they lacked analytical tools to provide actionable insights for continuously improving marketing performance.
• Marketing performance was analyzed too infrequently, with results only at the media type level.
• There was a lack of understanding regarding which messages, themes, media, seasons, and star products performed the best.

Objectives

The objective was to improve analytical capabilities to drive the effectiveness of marketing activities and media spend through the following actions:

• Identify traffic-driving categories and star products.
• Understand which messages work best in which media.
• Optimize the allocation of media investments to different media, vehicles, and seasons.
• Shift toward marketing messages that build brand value and customer loyalty in the long term.
• Improve the coordination of marketing and merchandising organizations in campaign planning.

Solution

Delicatessen and Sellforte compiled the data and stored it in Sellforte’s secure cloud.

• Anonymized receipt data.
• Store-SKU-date level financial data.
• Product hierarchies.
• Category marketing plans.
• Media spend and ad pictures. Sellforte then diagnosed the data:
• Store-SKU level analysis, including promo uplifts, cannibalization, stock-up, vendor funding, and other effects.
• Receipt-customer level analysis, covering traffic, shopping frequency, basket size and profitability, and customer loyalty.

Sellforte applied its proprietary analytics models:

• Sellforte's predictive and machine learning models were utilized to understand the causalities and provide insightful results.

Sellforte created recommendations and guidelines for marketing:

• Selected changes were piloted and tested before a full rollout.

Sellforte software was delivered to provide continuous support to Delicatessen’s marketing and buying teams:

• Ad-specific analysis, visualized in Sellforte’s easy-to-use Web UI.

Results

Identified a +50% points improvement potential in marketing ROI through media mix optimization, star product selection, and investing in seasons:

• Shift media spend to the best-performing newspapers by moving to a more frequent publishing schedule and optimal ad size.
• Invest even more in holidays and seasons, where media spend yields the best return on investment.
• Optimize each category’s media plan by rotating the best-performing products more often in the media.
• Optimize the overall media plan by giving more ad space to traffic-driving categories.
• Optimize ad layout by identifying the best ad slots, and allocating them to traffic-driving SKUs.

Sellforte analytics helped Delicatessen understand the role of different media types:

• Determine which messages and products to promote in which media.

Additionally, Sellforte’s analytics software added new capabilities to the marketing organization’s toolkit:

• Began measuring marketing performance at the ad and week level, providing actionable recommendations.
• Introduced agile testing and piloting capabilities.

Delicatessen concluded that promotional advertising can be an effective way to drive traffic to stores, provide positive marketing ROI, and enhance brand perception:

• Complement promotions with other reasons to visit (e.g., unique services, special events) and important messages (e.g., holiday opening hours, news).

Client Testimonials