Holland & Barrett: Treating Customers to Healthy Relationships?

Welcome to PostFunnel’s 26th episode in the Seven CRM Commandments series.

Today, we will analyze Holland & Barrett, the health and wellness brand specializing in natural remedies, supplements, and healthy foods.

Let’s find out if their CRM tactics are as healthy.

1. Be Transparent 9/10

According to a Retail Gazette article, Holland & Barrett UK’s employees will be eligible to receive instant access to their wages whenever they need them through a new scheme that they have launched.

“At Holland & Barrett, we believe in the importance of making wellness accessible to all, and this includes focussing on the impact of financial stability on our colleagues’ mental health,” Holland & Barrett head of pay Tricia Foster said.

“Earned Wage Access is relatively new and hugely exciting for us and all our colleagues. It was easy to implement and gives our colleagues so much more protection from the financial pain of meeting unexpected expenses.”

Also, since the second lockdown in the U.K. has come into effect on November 5th and will continue until December 2nd, an article by Daily Express detailed whether the alternative health shop has been classified as an essential retailer to remain open.

The article states that the retailer has been granted access to remaining open in the second lockdown – however – some employees weren’t so happy with this news due to health and safety concerns.

H&B staff noted that the natural remedies and health foods shop isn’t the same as a supermarket, while others complained that the space itself is too small to abide by social distancing measures.

“It is almost practically impossible to maintain social distancing, as the miles are very short width, and when we have to deal with customer queries, they do not respect the boundaries,” a Holland & Barrett staff member said.

The company has approved the above announcements published in the press.

2. Incentives and Perks 10/10

When entering the company’s homepage, the Singles’ Day promotional offer below (with a countdown) was presented to us in a popup:

One scroll down the homepage, the following discounted offers were also presented to us:

Finally, the health & wellness brand also has a Sales and Offers page for customers to browse through and shop if they’re interested.
This, by any standard, is a wide range of special offers.

3. Be Relevant 10/10

The top of H&B’s homepage includes information on how their product offering has changed due to the virus. Click-and-collect, as well as other delivery and return offers, have been added to the brand’s offering. And an entirely new webpage has been created and dedicated to this.

Also, H&B has dedicated an entire webpage to Keeping Safe in Stores – which has a personal note from the brand that reads:

“We know that it’s more important than ever that you’re able to access the healthy food, vitamins, and supplements for special dietary needs to help keep you and your family well.

The health of our colleagues and customers is our biggest priority, so our stores have social distancing measures in place so you can feel safe when shopping with us. We’ve provided protective wear and face masks for all our colleagues and would like to remind our customers to wear a face-covering when you visit our stores unless an exemption applies.

You can check the opening hours of your local store using our Store Locator.

We look forward to seeing you soon.”

As for seasonal relevancy – so yes, seasonal marketing campaigns are also evident on the brand’s website. H&B created a Christmas ideas page for customers to browse through.

Finally, as previously mentioned, they also had that Singles’ Day offer.

4. Be Helpful 8/10

H&B supports several charities as detailed on their website. The only one we could find on this page was Healthy Hope, a foundation that helps to break the cycle of poverty for women and children by providing healthcare.

Also, on the brand’s website – H&B details its brand ethos in a timeline format going all the way back to 2007 – which mentions green initiatives, SLS and paraben bans, plastic bag bans, local sourcing commitment, wet wipes discontinuation and so much more. The last one we could find on this page was a Mental Health Programme in 2019 to support their colleagues.

Also, H&B launched a sustainability initiative by starting a process that discontinues the sale of plastic bottles.

Overall, an impressive, inspiring, well-rounded, and holistic effort by the brand to support wellness all around. However, we deducted two points here as other brands we have analyzed to date did a tiny bit more as far as being helpful, mostly by being more active specifically around the coronavirus, including significant monetary donations.

5. Realtime Personalization 3/10

Though we could not find any cross-selling techniques – the following upselling techniques were implemented by the brand when adding sunscreen to our cart, with the “customers also bought” recommendation appearing below:

However, when going back to the HP – our experience wasn’t further personalized to our products of choice, i.e. no sunscreens were promoted to us in various ways – or any other “related” items for that matter.

Also, when exiting the website and hopping onto our social media accounts, we were not retargeted by the brand in realtime. Which is a CRM promotional tactic that’s basic, well-known, and easy to do.

6. Master UX 7/10

Our overall experience with the brand was good. It was delightful to interact with the categories on offer and browse through them.

However, every time we entered a different category of products – the same (annoying) promotional popup with the countdown timer kept appearing:

When adding items to our cart, the following delivery options, with tooltips providing more info on each method, were great for the UX:

7. Leverage Social Media 10/10

H&B’s Facebook account boasts over 435K followers and has a very active and engaged social community. The brand posts in high-frequency content that not only promotes their products in a lovely and unique way, but also uploads videos on food recipes as well as provides vitamin recommendations, vouchers and giveaways, motivational poems, tips from experts, and more.

Their Instagram account boasts over 139k Followers. They post in high-frequency (every day!) and use the Instastory feature – well done. Their account obviously promotes their products, but there’s more to it than that. They post inspirational self-love tips, videos on relaxation techniques, and more. All great for these uneasy times!

Their Twitter account boasts over 42.K Followers. H&B tweets the same type of content as in the two social media channels mentioned above – which is fine as the brand caters to the same type of audience – that’s simply more active on their social media channel of choice.

**

Overall, H&B is getting a 57/70 here (81%) placing them in 8^th place.

With a few touch ups on the brand’s realtime personalization efforts (which can easily be implemented to its product offering) and being more relevant as far as “helpful” goes amid COVID times – they could sit atop of this table.

Here are the full rankings of all the brands we analyzed to date:

1. Pets at Home 91%
2. Lowe’s 90%
3. Petco 90%
4. Target 87%
5. Uniqlo 86%
6. West Elm 81%
7. The North Face 81%
8. Holland and Barret 81%
9. Brooks Running 79%
10. Best Buy 78%
11. Etsy 76%
12. The Body Shop 74%
13. Gymshark 73%
14. William Hill 73%
15. Iceland Foods 71%
16. Total Wine & More 70%
17. Tommy Hilfiger 70%
18. Walgreens 70%
19. Kohl’s 70%
20. Buy Buy Baby 68%
21. Fiverr 67%
22. Next 63%
23. Patagonia 61%
24. Burberry 60%
25. COS 57%
26. Dream11 53%

We publish a new analysis every week, so watch this space for more brand analyses coming your way!