Fleetwood Paints

Building brand love with personalized color consultations, in-store and online, with a +60 NPS improvement from pre- to post- brand experience.

Introduction

Founded in 1950, Fleetwood Paints is a leading manufacturer and distributor of paints and painting accessories in the UK and Ireland. The company headquarters is located in Virginia, Co. Cavan, and their products are sold through a network of 250 retail partners as well as to wholesale and trade customers.

Since 2010, Fleetwood has been partnering with celebrity brand ambassadors and interior designers to educate customers and retail partners on how to choose colors for interior decorating projects. These ambassadors offer in-store consultations as well as online guidance via Instagram Live. 

While these consultations have been well received, the operational side of creating, marketing, and registering were laborious tasks, and the Fleetwood team had limited insight into how much of an impact they made on customers. That’s why Fleetwood partnered with AnyRoad in 2021 to streamline the appointment process, scale their omnichannel presence, and glean more insights. These insights in turn were used to create more competitive and impactful experiences, aimed to increase sales and foot traffic into their retail partners’ stores.

Objectives

The Fleetwood team knew they had a strong brand presence in Ireland and had extensive market reach via their retail partners. However, they struggled to compete with other vendors that offered online registration and classes, and struggled to learn more about their overall customer and their purchase behavior. 

Fleetwood had four key objectives that needed to be addressed:

1. Ability to contend with competitors in the online space.
   Fleetwood Paints was only able to host in-store consultations at their retail partners, losing a competitive edge to brands providing online consultations for the convenience of their guests.
2. Better customer experience in consultation discovery, registration, and communication with designers.
   Fleetwood Paints would schedule appointments through direct messages on their Instagram page, then would contact their designers to secure availability, and finally confirm timing with both parties — a very tedious and manual process for the Fleetwood team, and an unconventional system for most guests. 
3. Stronger personalization throughout the consultation journey.
   Although they were confirming appointments and getting designers and customers into their store locations, there was no reporting process in place to collect customer data, abruptly ending the customer journey at the end of an appointment. 
4. Create meaningful and impactful consultations for customers
   The data Fleetwood Paints collected from their customers was minimal and insufficient to paint an accurate picture of who they were and what drove them to the brand. The company could only rely on designers’ insights, which left a lot unsaid about key trends in customer behavior, such as age or demographic breakdowns.

The solution: Experiences

AnyRoad and Fleetwood worked together quickly to deploy AnyRoad Experience Manager and AnyRoad AtHome. Implementation was easy and only required a web developer to add the AnyRoad plugin to the site, while business users were able to make additional configurations without IT support. Within two weeks, Fleetwood was already able to:

• Partner with five brand ambassadors on the platform, including Aileen Hogan of Shabby Chic.
• Provide online consultations, including a redeemable voucher as an incentive to visit in-store retailers.
• Enable pop-up consultations at retail partners across the country by utilizing QR codes to link to the booking page on guests’ personal devices, allowing quick sign-ups on the spot.

A dedicated account manager and AnyRoad’s 24/7 support team ensured the experiences went smoothly, while the two omnichannel approaches maximized the reach of the program and the team’s ability to generate meaningful consumer insights.

Results

Fleetwood Paints’ new online and in-person approach had an immediate impact on team efficiency, customer engagement, and ROI. By eliminating unnecessary communication between Fleetwood and the guest, a booking that once took 30 minutes to schedule and confirm now takes less than two minutes to secure. The feedback received post-experience allowed Fleetwood to optimize and refine the experiences for maximum impressions.

Fleetwood Paints was able to learn over 60% of their customers prefer consultation bookings to be in the morning, allowing Fleetwood to adjust their consultation schedules accordingly. Through feedback analysis, Fleetwood learned that their designers are their #1 driver of brand conversion, proving ROI and validating increased budget for designers to lead more consultations. Fleetwood continues to grow their community with their streamlined consultation process. They are also able to surface insights from their brand experiences and iterate to create impactful and competitive experiences for their customers.

Notably, the program saw:

• 50 hours saved per month by the marketing team
• 40% increase in online consultation bookings 
• A post-experience NPS of 100 after piloting the program (best in class compared to other brands)
• 90% conversion rate from online color consultations to in-store sales (measure via voucher redemption)
• 95% intention to spend increased pre- to post-consultation for all guests 
• 100% increased satisfaction from designers when working with Fleetwood due to their ‘professional and easy-to-use platform.’

“We were impressed with how quickly the AnyRoad team got the consultations up and running. Within two weeks, we started receiving bookings and generating insights from the program.”

Derek Byrne, Head of Marketing, Fleetwood Paints