Success Story
Direct Wines’ Customer-Centric CRM Transformation
We’re enabling Direct Wines to cut unnecessary meetings by 90% and reduce campaign development time by 57%. All while maturing from product-led campaigns to customer-centric experiences. That’s the power of a strategic CRM transformation.
Industry
eCommerce
Date delivered
Ongoing
Length of project
Since 2023
Solution provided
Understanding Customers, Deliver Personalisation at Scale, Managing Efficient Operations
The Project
We’re helping the UK’s favourite wine retailer, Direct Wines (Laithwaites, WSJ Wine), enter a new era of customer centricity. This next chapter in the company’s 40-year history is enabled by personalised, always-on customer experiences. It’s powered by industry-leading CRM tech and supported by streamlined, value-focused processes.
The Challenge
Direct Wines has grown into a global phenomenon in direct-to-consumer wine retailing. As often happens, many CRM processes and martech systems didn’t scale as hoped. This put Direct Wines in a position of too much BAU and no time for improvement or innovation. What our head of strategic consulting Mark Clydesdale calls “running 100 miles an hour to stand still”.
- Inefficiencies like too many meetings, siloed process/project management systems, and unclear goals were impacting decision-making.
- CRM team activity was product-led instead of customer-centric; customers received same-y emails about the latest catalogue, not content tailored to their preferences or past purchases.
- Multiple project/process management systems (including Jira, Trello, Google Docs, and Adobe martech) delayed campaign implementation.
- Non-existent campaign templates meant every new communication needed to be built from scratch.
What We’ve Done
The first step was detailed consultation with key stakeholders in the CRM, marketing, creative, and merchandising teams. This produced a list of pain points which we contextualised and prioritised, ultimately kicking off a project to streamline marketing operations:
- Building new processes for 9 commercial scenarios step-by-step.
- Creating templates and documentation for more efficient briefing processes.
- Fewer meetings, with a focus on decisions.
Following that, we moved into an Adobe Workfront implementation project. This is central to the Direct Wines’ CRM transformation, and the first major step toward a fundamental shift in CXM strategy:
- Mostly always-on marketing (with some seasonal activity).
- Centralising CXM workflows in Adobe Workfront and shutting down redundant platforms.
- Decisions driven by customer value, aligned to KPIs, and delivered with purpose.
- Fewer campaign errors, better customer experiences, and more collaboration.
Tap have become a trusted partner across our business, supporting how we deliver experiences across marketing, merchandising, creative and technology teams. They have helped train and upskill many of our CRM team, allowing us to do more in-house. But they are not just an Adobe shop; their consulting team has worked across our departments to help us streamline our processes and drive the change away from event and catalogue-based marketing to a more always-on, customer-centric approach.
Jason Smith, MarTech Lead, Direct Wines
- 50-57% time savings: Our recommended process improvements have halved campaign development time and will save 70% on design time, for an overall 50-57% time saving.
- 14-hour cap on meetings: Restructured meeting processes mean 14 hours per month is the maximum possible time someone can spend in meetings. One CRM team member told us they’ve gone from ~90% of the month in meetings to <10%.
- Scoped Adobe Workfront: Centralising workflows will eliminate several siloed platforms and improve campaign processes. It’ll provide a unified system of record and greater visibility, and enable time-saving automations.
The common thread? Customer centricity. Whether it’s incremental improvements, major campaign process overhauls, or a CRM transformation, every decision Direct Wines makes is based on delivering customer value.
