Customer Success Stories - Tokmanni leaflet optimization: How the biggest discounter in Finland improved its leaflet ROI with Sellforte

Highlights

• Tokmanni discovered new ways to improve the already well-performing leaflets with the following insights provided by Sellforte:
  • Incremental sales and margin uplift for each leaflet promotion.
  • Ad space allocation (front and back page).
  • Optimized leaflet size.
• Finding the most effective and interesting promotions for the cover pages raised Tokmanni’s like-for-like visits growth to 7%.
• Comprehensive promotion effectiveness analysis helped Tokmanni reach 5% growth in like-for-like sales.

Client Context

Tokmanni is the biggest discounter in Finland, where customers can find everything for their everyday needs and special occasions:

• In 2018, Tokmanni's turnover was 870.4 M€.
• Tokmanni has almost 200 physical stores around Finland, plus a webstore.
• Tokmanni offers a comprehensive variety of local and international brands, as well as other quality products at reasonable prices.

Tokmanni's marketing is highly price- and promotion-driven. Weekly leaflets drive sales and margin uplifts, while TV campaigns build Tokmanni’s brand.

• The leaflet is the main media channel, supported by TV, print, online, and radio ads.
• Tokmanni’s brand has a strong reputation for cost-efficiency.
• Campaigns aim to drive store traffic, which would lead to a high shopping basket value.

Client Objectives

Tokmanni wanted to gain a better understanding of which products and product groups perform well in leaflets, what the star promotions that should be on the front and back pages are, and how to optimize ad space and its allocation.

• The main objective of the collaboration was to improve Tokmanni’s leaflets' sales and margin ROI by product- and media channel-level promotion effectiveness analytics.
• In addition to sales and margin improvements, Tokmanni wanted to understand more in-depth which promotions have a better impact than others, and especially why.
• The goal was to attract more customers to the stores with traffic-driving front and back page promotions (growth in like-for-like visits) that also support the sales of normal-priced products (growth in like-for-like sales).

Solution Outputs

Sellforte provided an easy-to-use software that displays how each leaflet has performed.

• Users can view the publishing date, number of pages, media investment, incremental sales and margin, and media ROI for each leaflet in an intuitive list format.
• With the list view, users were able to check which leaflets have performed well with desired metrics and obtain more granular insights by clicking on the row.

Clicking on the row displayed the leaflet in digital form on the left side, with product-level sales and margin (both absolute and incremental) on the right side.

• Users can inspect at the product or product category level, for example, which promotions delivered the most incremental margin.
• The leaflet’s creative output helps to interpret how ad size and placement might correlate with the sales uplift.
• Additionally, the ad view revealed the number of shopping baskets in which each promotion was included.

The software also revealed promotions' incremental sales and margin uplifts, helping the user see what the main drivers behind promotion effectiveness were.

• The sales and margin waterfall charts show the uplift when a product is promoted in a leaflet and in other media, how much it cannibalizes sales and margin within the same product category, and how much of the future's normal-priced sales are lost due to stock-up.
• Lastly, the waterfall charts reveal the promotions' halo effect (other products customers bought with the promotion), which is often the leading indicator of positive incremental sales/margin.

Results

• Tokmanni decided to implement new changes to the leaflet strategy at the end of 2018.
• In 2019, Tokmanni's current like-for-like visits growth is +7.3% (2019 YTD) and like-for-like sales growth sits at 4.8% (2019 YTD).
• Tokmanni’s share price is close to its all-time high (+42% increase from 12/2018).