Stopping prospectus dissemination: the results of the Carrefour test

"Many customers like the paper catalog. It is expensive but is effective. We did not want to tackle the catalog but optimize its loss, ”warns immediately Frédéric Prestlot, Marketing Director Carrefour France, on the occasion of a morning organized by Bonial on the theme of the Prospectus.

The brand test started on June 28, in two hypermarkets and two supermarkets spread over the territory. For these 4 sales areas, finished the undeniable distribution of advertising prints. In order to compensate for this stop, customers could opt for four solutions: receive a paper medium by mail addressed, SMS, WhatsApp or Email. To do this, “we set up a launch device where 1 to 2 months before the start of the test: we communicated online, in PQR and in stores with trained crossroads. Because we absolutely had to keep the highest rate of "contactability" of customers ", explains the director.

Here are the results of these 4 months of tests:

a digital distribution - Very variable mail

First teaching of Carrefour, difficult to capture customers who are no longer affected by catalogs in mailbox. According to stores, between 10 and 20 % of this clientele only signed up for one of the 4 alternative solutions to receive promotional offers from the brand.

in detail, in the hypermarket of Lille to the typology of urban customers and rather young, on 8,086 registered customers, 88 % have chosen to receive the catalog via a dematerialized solution. In the Carrefour Market de Soyaux, in Charente, out of 2,640 registered, 66 % wanted to receive the paper prospectus by post, the remaining 34 % favoring a digital channel.

in addition, Carrefour worked with Facebook, YouTube, the regional daily press and the solutions of the Bonial company. Objective: pay to try to exhibit non -registered people on these channels and expose them to the offers of the brand.

Detail of push to exhibit these customers:

a figure 'Affairs maintained in 3 cases out of 4

"Our investigations via telephone calls and round tables have shown that customers were mostly delighted with this new device", specifies Frédéric Pay >

Unparalleled communication

"Turnover was maintained for 3 of the 4 pilot stores. In Soyaux, the number of irregular customers was higher than average. We therefore had trouble touching them and they were undoubtedly sensitive to other stores which continued to send them prospectuses in mail boiîe, "says the Marketing Director of Carrefour.

he specifies : "Soyaux's turnover has unscrewed from the start of the school year. We probably did not communicate as it did. We have exhibited these customers to promotions on PGCs, we should have communicated on more unique and strong offers on non-al ’.” This is one of the major lessons in this test "0 prospective mess" for Carrefour, the difficulty lies in targeting more volatile customers "Promovores are organized, the mutation to digital therefore has, in the end, little Impact on this target, "says Frédéric Prestl.

2,000 Carrefour stores without prospectus at the end of 2022

The director does not specify if this test is intended to last and be duplicated . However, we can suppose it. Elodie Perthuisot, the boss of data e-commerce and digital transformation at Carrefour, announced, on November 14 during the Digital Day in Carrefour, that "2000 stores out of 13,000 will have ended catalogs Paper at the end of 2022 to switch to digital prospectuses ".

Some stores, rather urban, like Monoprix and Franprix, have already stopped the distribution of advertising prints in mailboxes. On a case -by -case basis, shops are also launching. With the test of the “yes pub” to come in 2022 in several communities in France, the fruit of the climate and resilience law, these initiatives should be brought to multiply.