In 1934, La Blancheporte published its first catalogue which presented the brand's products entirely designed. In 2020, the northern brand launched its connected and personalised catalogue. This Monday, 50?000 unique catalogues were sent to 50?000 customers. If this test is conclusive, the mail order company could generalize this catalogue "where personalization reinforces the bond of complicity." she has with her clients.
A personalization up to the articles presented
Printed by a Pas-de-Calais company, each of these 60-page catalogues is personalised according to its recipient, right from the cover. The customer's first name is written on the cover and is repeated on several inside pages.
The selection of products is also personalised: 18 pages of the catalogue present articles from the women's, lingerie and home collections chosen according to the customer's preferences.
"We analyzed, thanks to ATI, a year and a half's worth of history that includes what they bought from us, what they were looking at on our site and what interested them in the conversations they were having on our social networks, explains Véronique Rétaux from Blancheporte communication. This experimental catalog was sent to the clients for whom we had the most information available."
The editorial content has also been adapted. For example, the client can read her horoscope as well as a summary of the events of her year of birth.
A connected catalogue in phase with its customers
With this catalogue, Blancheporte also plays the connectivity card, with QR Codes printed on the pages, which allow access via a smartphone or a tablet to quizzes or to the brand's website.
And the average age of Blancheporte's customers, 57, is no obstacle to the use of these new technologies, for Blancheporte.
"They're actually very connected. We see it in our relationships with them on Facebook, Pinterest and our blog. In fact, we recently launched a call for a casting, online on the networks and our website and 10?000 customers responded, which is huge for this type of opération?! It just goes to show that this is a generation of highly connected quinquas."
From print to web and now from web to print
"Until then, the catalogue was thought in a mass market approach with the idea of driving traffic to the web. With this personalized catalogue, Blancheporte closes the loop, adds the sign. Digital feeds a one-to-one conversation initiated on paper and enriched with content published online for a seamless shopping and product consultation experience."
The technical side still to be taken into account
Blancheporte will carefully study the marketing performance of this new medium. "And we'll see what we can generalize."
Véronique Rétaux says: "But we'll keep the technical criteria in mind. Even though advances in digital printing and AI allow us to produce this catalogue, we had to generate 1.2 million different PDFs for these 50,000 copies, or 50 gigabytes of data, which is not insignificant.
Personalization, a "formidable complicity enhancer"
But for Salvatore Spatafora, associate director of Blancheporte.., "Beyond the technological prowess, this catalogue is above all a formidable activator of complicity."
"Today, AI and the technologies around the smartphone offer us the opportunity to innovate in order to always better converse with our customers, in total affinity, he adds. Personalized and connected, the catalogue here clearly moves from the era of mass market to the era of individual recommendation, from the era of fixed media to the era of multi-device interaction."
