El Corte Inglés Diagonal store is located close to Passeig de Gràcia, one of the main avenues in Barcelona. It’s a very important shopping district and there’s intense competition to attract the attention of potential customers with many other luxury and fashion brands to choose from close-by.

The challenge was how best to drive footfall, increase revenue and average spend by attracting shoppers in-store and then converting them into sales.

El Corte Inglés traditional print campaigns were proving difficult to track and measure, which meant they had limited visibility of the performance of its existing marketing programmes to these shoppers.

They wanted a better targeted and more measurable digital solution. This is when they turned to Planet to use its deep knowledge of luxury Retail combined with marketing consultancy service to help design and deliver a digital campaign.  

How Planet's data and insight helped El Corte Ingles define its audience

Planet’s payments data and insight service helps its Retail partners make better sense of their shoppers, meaning they can identify new opportunities to generate more revenue. 

El Corte Inglés had a strategic drive to increase sales, with a focus on its international shoppers, and turned to Planet’s data scientists to help them understand how they could do this more effectively. This analysis showed that sales to customers from the Middle East, Russia and Latin America were underperforming in comparison to the rest of the market.

As a result, shoppers from these three countries were prioritised for the campaign as they offered the greatest potential for sales growth.

Even then, knowing who the best customers are to target is one thing - getting them into the store to spend freely is quite another.

Driving footfall and increasing sales

Planet’s solution was a digital marketing campaign specifically targeting visitors from each of these nations to maximise footfall to the Barcelona store. The campaign aimed to increase and measure footfall to the store and increase sales in store by 10% from each source market.

It sounds simple, but to be successful, we needed to make sure we were hitting the right people at the right time through the right channels. Especially in such a competitive market.

After careful planning and analysis in partnership with El Cortes Ingles, we decided to roll-out the marketing campaign during the summer and over Eid, when our data told us that high numbers of Middle Eastern, Russian and Latin American tourists would be in Barcelona.

We then created a highly efficient programmatic mobile media strategy using Hyperlocal Display advertising. Hyperlocal Display Advertising involves the use of geo-location targeting to target the chosen segments with display advertising when they are within a certain radius of the store, selected tourist hotspots. In other words, when a shopper from a target market came within a 3km radius of the El Corte Inglés Diagonal store and were browsing their phone, they were served an ad. The call to action on the ad was “Find the Store”, which showed directions for how to get from their current location to the store.  We were also able to track how many people came in to that actual store as a result of the campaign.

As we were targeting three different nationalities, it was important that we created graphics specific to each nationality, in their local languages.

Exceeding all expectations with measurable results

The campaign was a great success, delivering 1,139 Store Visits from 1,080,713 Impressions and 5,434 clicks.

By working with Planet, sales in store increased by 49% to Middle Eastern customers, 61% to Russian shoppers and 39% to Latin American customers, far exceeding all expectations. 

“We partnered with Planet in 2017 to provide a value add Retail payments solution for VAT refunds. Their marketing consultancy service was a key factor when choosing a new partner. Over the past four years we have run numerous campaigns with Planet.

“The results speak for themselves, driving increased footfall into store and leading to increased sales in store. Planet are experts when it comes to understanding, attracting and converting luxury Retail shoppers; we trust their advice implicitly.

“Planet is a key marketing partner with truly rich payments data and analysis, and we are looking forward to continue working with them on future campaigns,” said Javier Fernández Andrino, Chief International Retail & Luxury Officer El Corte Inglés.

Financial Services – Marketing Awards Winner

As well as exceeding the customers' expectations, the campaign also won 2020’s Financial Services Forum award for ‘Marketing Learning’. The award recognised the impact and insights Planet’s digital marketing campaign delivered on behalf of El Corte Ingles. According to the judging panel, the campaign provided an, ‘excellent assessment of the customer journey and application of mobile technology with great results.’

Planet was also awarded a High Commendation for the effectiveness of the campaign with the judges noting the 'fantastic use of data, utilising analysis and digital channels effectively.'