Forrester Groundswell Award Submission:
TJX’s “What’s In” Social Media Programs
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Approximately two years ago, TJX Cos. began working with social media marketing agency LiveWorld to explore what role online community may play in deepening relationships with extremely loyal customers. Out of this exploration the What’s In communities were born, launched as a “Beta” in March, 2008. The resulting WhatsIn.TJMaxx.com and WhatsIn.MarshallsOnline.com online communities include such “standard” web 2.0 features as discussion forums, blogs, photo albums, creation of member profiles and more. However, what makes this community especially unique is the incorporation of Store Alerts and of Fashion Finds including a mobile SMS component.
Store alerts enable T.J. Maxx’ and Marshalls’ passionate shoppers to share information on the items, and especially the brands, they are finding at their local stores. This sharing can even be done via their mobile phones, while they are in the stores, or through the online What’s In interface once they are back at their home computers. Information shared includes item description, brand name and price. They can also include a photo if desired.
Even more significantly, anyone who visits the site can easily view the latest alerts in their market area. However, they are encouraged to register to receive these alerts in real time, via their mobile phone or simply through email, if they prefer. Once they sign up, they will automatically receive alerts from the three stores closest to their zip code, but can override this through a site feature incorporating Google Maps. They can also register to receive alerts when specific brands in specific merchandise categories are discovered in their local stores.
In addition, participants in the What’s In communities can share their purchases through the Fashion Finds feature. Here they can provide a brief description and can upload images of up to four items, even inviting site visitors to vote through the accompanying poll. The prices of the items included are “revealed” when visitors mouse over the online price tag.
The What’s In Social Media Program Goals
The What’s In program is based upon building and leveraging strong, active communities (for T.J. Maxx and for Marshalls) that will in turn lead to increased offline activity in the form of more frequent store visits and increased purchasing.
Thus the goals for this community are not focused on online metrics (although these are of course being tracked) but rather on the impact this will have on the overall business.
Through What’s In social media tools, TJX intends to not only maintain but to increase the frequency of shopping at its stores by the most loyal T.J. Maxx and Marshalls shoppers. These shoppers are in turn being encouraged to take an active role by sending alerts and posting their fashion finds.
The idea for this program grew out of consumer research, direct observations of customer behavior in the stores (where customers actually call friends to let them know the items they are following) and discussions about finds at the stores occurring on facebook and in other online venues.
Along with the functionality included in the community itself, TJX is also committed to creating a community culture that projects the same sense of fun, anticipation, adventure and discovery that customers experience when actually shopping in the stores.
Accomplishing Business Goals
Once TJX decided to proceed with this program, the intent was to launch this community as rapidly as possible, but to do so as a beta. This provided an opportunity to gradually roll this out, through a phased e-mail communication program, to customers already within its database.
Resulting activity has shown the effectiveness of marketing to drive customers to the site, and to become engaged in it. Registrations have exceeded initial goals (driven especially by email campaigns to an existing database) and the number of alerts is on the increase. Projects underway to increase in-store visibility of this program are expected to further boost activity.
The fact that What’s In resonates with customers is also confirmed through the results of an online survey conducted with What’s In registered members just slightly over two months after the program’s soft launch. This confirmed the high level of interest customers have in knowing what brands are in their local stores (as well as in stores outside their trade area) and in browsing photos of what others are discovering.
As this program is still in beta phase, TJX has not yet conducted analysis of the actual impact on store sales but this is next in its plans.
Availability dae to users: March 2008 to present