434 CHAPTER 13 DIRECT MARKETINGNivea has more than 15 sub-brands, four of which are very important: Nivea Visage, Nivea Vital, Nivea Beauté and
Nivea Baby. Although the Nivea brand has a penetration of 60%, consumers typically use no more than one or two
sub-brands. The CRM programme needed to recruit Nivea consumers and turn them into real brand ambassadors
by giving them exclusive information tailored to their specific profiles. Further, medium/high users were recruited
and stimulated to use the other sub-brands of the Nivea brand.
In the first phase of the CRM strategy, an extensive user survey was conducted to make sure only consumers
with a real interest in Nivea would subscribe to the CRM programme. The interested consumers were then grouped
via a scoring model into nine segments, based upon the usage and the usage frequency of the Nivea brand. The
members received well-targeted mailings with specific offers according to their profiling in the scoring model.
New Nivea product launches were communicated in a consistent and recognisable look and feel (‘Natural Beauty’business insight
Ten-year Nivea CRM (1998–2008)CRM platform called ‘Lotus Friends’, based on tasting and sharing. This was quite a risky move and a huge challenge.
The aim was to merge the 300 000 offline fans with the 29 000 e-mails opt-ins into one big online family before
December 2011. Therefore a final paper mailing was sent to the offline fans with an invitation to join ‘Lotus Friends’
online. The incentive was an e-coupon for free tasting. The online family needed to start sharing. A conversation
about the ultimate cookie taboo ‘do you dunk your cookie in your coffee or not’ was started. Via a Facebook game,
the Lotus Friends needed to guess if their friends were dunking or not. The incentive was a trip to New York.
In all, 16 875 participants played the Facebook game immediately. The yearly target was achieved in April: 8500
registrations came directly via the Facebook game and 300 000 e-coupons were printed. The monthly e-newsletter
had an open rate of 2.75 times the IAB benchmark and a click-through rate of twice the IAB benchmark.^34Source: Lotus Bakeries.M13_PELS3221_05_SE_C13.indd 434 6/5/13 2:56 PM