Success Story
Direct Wines’ Customer-Centric CRM Transformation
We’re helping Direct Wines to streamline processes, save time, and generate value by maturing from product-led campaigns to customer-centric experiences.
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 campaigns, powered by industry-leading workflow tech, and supported by 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 holding up 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.
- A hodgepodge of project/process management systems (Jira, Trello, Google Docs and Adobe martech) caused delays in campaign implementation.
- There were no campaign templates, which meant every idea needed to be built from scratch.
What We’ve Done
The first step was consulting with key stakeholders to map, contextualise, and prioritise pain points. That consultation informed a project to streamline processes spanning the marketing, creative and merchandising teams:
- Step-by-step processes for 9 commercial situations.
- More efficient and effective briefing processes (with templates).
- Fewer meetings, with a focus on decisions.
Following that, we moved into an Adobe Workfront implementation project. This is central to the company’s new experience-led marketing philosophy. One enabled by process efficiencies, collaboration, and best-in-class CRM transformation. It’s the first major step toward a fundamental shift in CXM strategy:
- Mostly always-on marketing (with some seasonal activity).
- CXM workflows centralised in Adobe Workfront and redundant platforms shut down.
- Decisions driven by customer value, aligned to KPIs, and delivered with purpose.
- Fewer errors, better customer experiences, and more internal 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: The 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 campaign workflows will eliminate several siloed platforms and improve proofing processes. It’ll provide a unified system of record and greater visibility, and enable time-saving automations.
The common thread? A renewed focus on customer outcomes. Whether it’s small improvements, major process overhauls, or a CRM transformation, every decision Direct Wines makes is based on delivering customer value.
