Welcome back to PostFunnel’s 44th episode of the 7 CRM Commandment Series. Today, we get to The Home Depot – the largest home improvement retailer in the U.S.
Let’s see if the guys who’s been selling you everything you need to build things, are also good at building strong and sturdy customer relationships.
1. Be Transparent 9/10
In a recent Penn Live article, The Home Depot announced that it plans to hire:
- 300 people in Harrisburg, Lancaster areas
- 1,500+ associates across its 100 distribution centers in 80 markets (the exact locations were not mentioned)
The Home Depot also announced that it currently employs 35,000 veteran and military spouse associates and that it offers these employees special benefits like coaching, networking, and transitional programs.
“Being transparent” is all about showing the human and humane side of your company. And that’s what these kinds of press releases do.
We deducted 1 point for not mentioning the distribution centers and exact markets they spoke of.
2. Incentives and Perks 10/10
To promote Mother’s Day, the brand is offering customers various deals like mom’s day savings with up to 30% and 40% off on select items.
In addition, on The Home Depot’s website, we noticed special deals on a list of items.
When signing up to receive The Home Depot Consumer Credit Card, customers are offered a number of incentives and perks, too.
The Home Depot also presents all its savings offers in one place on the site: Specials & Offers.
All that is certainly enough to give The Home Depot a perfect score here.
3. Be Relevant 10/10
The Home Depot has altered its product offering so that shoppers have safer ways to purchase items online: free delivery, curbside pickups, search for products by image or voice, free instore pickup, and more.
Digiday recently reported that The Home Depot has brought live streaming to its customers with the shows Homeowner 101 and DIY. Though it was in its plans to do so before the pandemic hit, this past year accelerated the process – and with hundreds of participants, customers clearly love it!
The Home Depot hosts about 40 live streaming shows each month – from just 5 instore workshops per month beforehand. Therefore, not only is this a smart way to gain new customers and cater to existing ones, but The Home Depot further incentivizes them by providing them with coupons on the show.
These stay-at-home times are calling for many such fun and relevant CRM marketing initiatives. Therefore, The Home Depot got this one just right, too!
4. Be Helpful 10/10
Customers want to support brands they relate to and ones that care about the things that are important to them.
In order to guide customers in creating a home project, The Home Depot offers experts from more than 400 home improvement services, including bath, doors and windows, exterior home, painting, and so much more.
Also, and perhaps more to do with the UX commandment below, the brand is helping customers receive the best and most convenient experience with them through the following shopping methods.
It’s clear that the Home Depot is making “being helpul” a priority.
5. Realtime Personalization 4/10
When adding an item to our cart, a floor lamp, we were prompted with upselling options that included “frequently bought together” product suggestions. No cross-selling practices were used, though.
When going back to the brand’s HP, nothing changed to further personalize our experience. Also, when exiting the website and hopping onto social media, we weren’t targeted with sponsored ads by the brand in realtime.
Brands that adopt a truly personalized, customer-centric approach attribute 33% of their revenue to CRM marketing.
But personalization goes beyond knowing the customer’s gender or making product recommendations. The Home Depot is still somewhat far from accommodating the personalization of hundreds or thousands of customer experiences.
6. Master UX 10/10
As expected, our experience with the brand was positive. The “Shop by Category” menu shown at the bottom of the brand’s HP is clear, easy to find, and convenient for the shopper to use.
The Home Depot has a lot more than just household products to make the user’s experience a positive one. For instance, customers can also find:
- News about promotional events
- Information related to service
- A live chat option!
- How-to and instructional content
- Home inspiration video
7. Leverage Social Media 8/10
On Facebook, The Home Depot has 5.2M likes; on Instagram, they have 1.1M followers, and on Twitter, they have 408K followers.
On all three channels, the brand provides customers with inspirational photos and videos for home décor and renovation – and it frequently posts lots of engaging content.
We also liked that the brand acknowledges top of mind issues that can specifically relate to its image:
They can, though, do a little better when it comes to using the different channels differently, to accommodate the different audiences.
**
Overall, The Home Depot is getting a 61/70 here (87%), placing them in 4th place – tied with Target! That indeed is a fantastic ranking to hold among such powerful, leading brands – and is thanks to a perfect score on 4/7 commandments.
There is one shortfall that The Home Depot must acknowledge to push them up three spots: Personalization. And to realize the full potential of personalized CRM marketing, there’s still some progress that needs to be made within The Home Depot’s marketing organization.
Here are the full rankings of all the brands we analyzed to date:
- Pets at Home 91%
- Lowe’s 90%
- Petco 90%
- The Home Depot 87%
- Target 87%
- Uniqlo 86%
- Paul Smith 84%
- Vrbo 83%
- N Brown Group 81%
- West Elm 81%
- The North Face 81%
- Holland and Barret 80%
- lululemon 80%
- Morrisons 80%
- JD Sports 79%
- Brooks Running 79%
- Best Buy 78%
- Angie’s List 77%
- Gap 77%
- Etsy 76%
- Nando’s 75%
- The Body Shop 74%
- Gymshark 73%
- William Hill 73%
- Essence 72%
- Inditex 71%
- Iceland Foods 71%
- Total Wine & More 70%
- Tommy Hilfiger 70%
- Walgreens 70%
- Kohl’s 70%
- United Colors of Benetton 69%
- Buy Buy Baby 68%
- Fiverr 67%
- The White Company 66%
- Next 63%
- Babbel 63%
- Patagonia 61%
- Express 60%
- Burberry 60%
- Zara 59%
- Treatwell 58%
- COS 57%
- Dream11 53%
We publish a new analysis every other week, so watch this space for more brand analyses coming your way!
