LensOnline

LensOnline is an international omnichannel retailer of contactlenses and eye care solutions with over 250 stores in the Benelux and Italy.

LensOnline stands for better vision. For supporting contactlens wearers in their daily endeavours, together with our eye care specialists. LensOnline breaks down the personal barriers of visual challenges by providing our customer with the best quality products and service; adapted to their lifestyle. 

LensOnline partnered with The Reference, to validate its choices and the preferred implementation partner. Once aligned on the best fit, Twilio Segment - the leading Customer Data Platform (CDP), was chosen as the right platform to collect, unify, and activate data across their disparate data sources with Google BigQuery as underlying data warehouse. 

Furthermore, as LensOnline was also planning to adopt a new Marketing Automation solution within their infrastructure, it was crucial to establish efficient and reliable data pipelines in oder to make this migration feasible. 

We developed a composable data eco-system that is highly flexible and scalable. To achieve this, we combined the power and capabilities of Segment as Customer Data Platform, BigQuery as data warehouse, and PowerBI as data intelligence solution.

Thanks to Segment, we seamlessly orchestrated the data pipelines in a low-code environment via their ETL and rETL solution (rETL enables you to activate warehouse data in downstream tools). The flexibility of this approach unlocked a series of new use cases that were previously not feasible to accomplish. 

Connecting online & offline data to deliver an omnichannel experience

From the datawarehouse, computed insights are injected back into the commerce platforms.

To connect this, we leveraged Segment’s rETL, and Identity Resolution, which allowed LensOnline to understand a user’s interaction across the web and the physical stores. This consolidated information was then used to build audiences based on both offline and online behavior. Further downstream in the data pipe, these audiences helped us generate more relevant and personalized campaigns.

E.g., we added information such as opening hours, and location of the preferred local shop to the email campaigns generated by Ortto. We can then use Twilio Segment to check the last appointment date and based on the time of a customer’s last visit to their optician, we can remind them to get a check-up or purchase another pack of contact lenses.  

RFM analysis and segmentation based on both online & offline shopping behavior

RFM segmentation is a powerful customer segmentation approach that leverages three key factors: Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value. With this technique, marketers can get a better understanding of their customers and it allows them to communicate with customers in a more effective manner. Thanks to Segment, LensOnline can build audiences based on different pieces of information including lifecycle stage (e.g., new, loyal, risk, ...), previous campaign interactions, online behavior, product preferences, etc.  

After the launch of the MVP, the goal is to connect more sources and destinations and do continuous optimization of the infrastructure. Once this is done, LensOnline wants to start focussing on journeys and scenarios that can be supported with all the data stored, and modules offered by Segment. 

1. Define needs: We started with a data audit of all their data sources and Azure environment. We mapped the as-is situation and the corresponding pitfalls. 
2. Specify capabilities: We proposed a roadmap to achieve the desired future state, taking into account LensOnline’s objectives, and the existing setup. In order to define this state, we conducted a ‘priority workshop’ where we established use case definitions and defined the technical requirements.
3. Solution architecture: The insights from step 1 and 2 allowed us to select a solution. For this project with LensOnline , Segment was selected as the right tool for the job.  
4. Implementation roadmap: After the selection of Segment, we designed a roadmap where we would work towards an MVP. In this MVP we focussed on the setup of the infrastructure, best practices, and user access.
5. Execute: We worked with multiple environments (testing and production). ETL-engineering and pre-processing was done via an agile methodology.