A major player in home furnishings in France with 165 million visits per year (31 million in-store and 134 million online),
Conforama is the omnichannel multi-specialist in home furnishings and decoration. A trendsetter, Conforama offers, through its network of 178 shops in France and its website, a wide selection of products at the best prices to equip your home from top to bottom: from furniture and decoration to household appliances and leisure electronics.
Conforama is a brand and a company with a nationwide presence that is familiar to everyone in France. Nearly a third of French households have already bought something from Conforama and have a Conforama shop within 25 minutes of their home. Its positioning is that of an accessible discounter, with a varied offer and style for as many people as possible.
Conforama in numbers:
With the introduction of ‘OUI pub’- a law that prohibits the unaddressed distribution of promotional leaflets through letterboxes without express consent in a group of test regions, French retailers need to speed up the digitisation of their promotional communications, which has already begun. According to a study carried out in September 2022, 92% of households in the areas concerned could no longer be contacted using paper leaflets after the law came into force (Olivier Dauvers, le Web Grande Conso).
For a company like Conforama, this promotional communication is essential. On the one hand, significant sales are directly linked to promotions and the traffic generated in-store; on the other hand, as purchases of household equipment are less frequent than purchases of mass-market consumer goods, catalogues and promotional leaflets are one of the primary tools for working on the price image on an ongoing basis.
But how can we replace these mass paper distributions? What format(s) should be offered to customers used to “their catalogue”?
How can we ensure the continuity of distribution and prepare for the imminent disappearance of contactable addresses from most households – the law’s timetable indicates a possible generalisation from spring 2025?
times higher CTR than emails
average CSAT score given by subscribers
customers ask for more promotions
“We have been working hand in hand with the Alcméon teams for several years to be able to stay at the forefront of conversational, offer our customers the choice of the channel that suits them best, and a seamless experience between bots and human responses.”
Florence Gentil — Head of CRM, Conforama
Existing digital channels such as email and SMS are not enough to compensate for the gradual disappearance of paper. Email is poorly adapted to mobile devices, click-through rates in retail are very low on average, and the younger generation is much less likely to use it to keep up to date with news about a brand or chain. The SMS can be seen as intrusive and does not allow rich content to be sent.
Applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are used massively by consumers daily. In France, 73% of the population used Facebook every month in 2023, and 60% WhatsApp! (source Médiamétrie) The potential for contact via these channels is thus enormous.
Conforama turned to Alcméon, a pioneer in messaging-based marketing and already the leading solution for distribution of promotional catalogues for large retailers via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct. A test system was set up in record time. The idea was to benefit from a technology that had already been tried and tested, and from the experience of a team with a proven track record in this use case.
This began with a series of ‘click-to-Messenger’ or ‘click-to-WhatsApp’ Facebook advertising campaigns to enrol the first subscribers, who would then receive new catalogues or specific promotions every week. Next, the web site featured banners encouraging visitors to subscribe to receive catalogues and special offers on WhatsApp or Messenger. Finally, QR Codes were placed in shops at the beginning of 2024 to encourage visitors to subscribe to the Conforama messaging list.
On a conversational channel like WhatsApp, it’s much easier and more natural to regularly ask customers about the perceived quality of what they receive or their interest in changes to the format.
All the more so given that the surveys are natively integrated into the Alcméon solution and can be customised as required. Conforama seized this opportunity to start “co-constructing” its messaging promotional communication with its customers.
The 1st survey carried out after 4 months of activity, confirmed the interest and effectiveness of the format and this conversational approach.
There were 3 parts to this first survey: a satisfaction score out of 10, a question about the frequency of mailings, and an opportunity to give a free opinion or suggestion – all this without having to leave WhatsApp or Messenger.
A powerful survey channel: 10% response rate, 72% CSAT completion rate, and above all 30% of respondents leaving a comment or suggestion. A remarkable level of engagement and a goldmine for fine-tuning the system and the format later on!
In terms of content, customers gave Conforama a very good score of 8.6/10. And there was a surprise: over 30% of respondents asked to receive even more promotional messages from Conforama!
In addition, some free verbatims provide a clear understanding of the main reasons for these good results: practicality, environmental awareness and a good alternative to the traditional paper catalogue.
“Very good initiative, it doesn’t take long to read and it avoids paper, I think it’s very good”
“I’m satisfied because there’s no advertising in the letterboxes and less paper waste”
“As I don’t receive advertising by post, I appreciate receiving it this way”
“Super practical rather than email. Direct access”
Conforama has an excellent average catalogue viewing time of almost 4 minutes (September 2023 to January 2024). This is all the more important here as the catalogue is also used to continuously build the brand’s price image.
The click-through-rate(CTR) of catalogues in messaging is 20x higher than that observed by Conforama in its promotional emails! This makes the opt-ins collected on WhatsApp and Messenger all the more valuable.
The first advertising and organic campaigns have resulted in a 7-fold increase in the number of WhatsApp & Messenger opt-ins in 4 months (Oct 2023 to Feb 2024). And there’s still plenty of room for growth, with the optimisation of advertising campaigns and the multiplication of online and offline organic entry points.
95% of survey respondents said they were in favor of weekly frequency of messages, with around 31% asking for more promotions and catalogues from Conforama via its WhatsApp and Messenger accounts! This is undoubtedly the clearest proof of the potential of the channel and of the format to rapidly become an essential part of Conforama’s promotional communications, replacing the traditional paper catalogue, which we can now see disappearing as early as 2025.
Channels Used:
- Messenger