What Technology is Retail Prioritising in 2024?
We take a look at which technologies mid-market retail IT leaders are prioritising in 2024 and what they are focusing their investment on.
RedEye | Software | 51-200 employees
The Customer
Established in 1997, RedEye uses a unique combination of data, people and technology to help B2C brands uncover intelligence within their customer data and empower them to drive multi-channel strategies that attract, engage and convert.
The RedEye AI-driven marketing automation platform consolidates data from multiple sources and enables the marketer to gain richer insights about their customers and their behaviours, allowing them to build customer relationships through multi-channel personalisation, maximising the opportunities within the customer lifecycle and increasing the customer lifetime value. On average, RedEye clients see an increase of 38% in marketing automation revenue in just the first year.
“The peace of mind that comes with no dips in service, no unplanned outages and an outsourced team of experts with a depth of knowledge and experience is invaluable to us at RedEye.”
The Challenge
Modernising infrastructure was a top priority for RedEye, as it pushed to stay competitive in a highly digitally-driven landscape. It also needed to ensure minimal downtime, and with its previous solution, this simple upkeep required a lot of time and effort from its internal tech team.
With the retail industry a key sector for RedEye, and amidst the global pandemic of COVID-19 causing huge waves in this space, RedEye needed to have the infrastructure in place to help its clients compete in this increasingly online-first world. RedEye helps its retail clients deliver personalised experiences across a range of channels from email, push, SMS and social. Having the right foundations on which to build the technology and service models that support these activities has become more important than ever as retailers are required to modernise their marketing and customer service in the face of a global pandemic.
Never is this more pertinent than Black Friday and the Christmas shopping period. For example, one of RedEye’s retail clients last year saw a 25% year on year increase in revenue from emails on Black Friday and a 16% increase in revenue year on year throughout November. Another reduced the number of emails sent by 54% on Black Friday but saw a 69% increase in unique clicks and a 49% increase in revenue.
It’s no surprise that the ability to send personalised digital communications is now more important than ever for retailers, with bricks and mortar stores currently closed in the UK due to a second national lockdown.
RedEye was driven by a need to stay competitive and offer its clients across all sectors the latest in marketing automation solutions in order to thrive in today’s digital world.
The Solution
Node4 was selected by RedEye to host its key IT infrastructure and services, including servers, applications and databases, at two of Node4’s data centres in Wakefield and Northampton.
Having initially selected Node4 as its colocation partner in 2015, RedEye increased its investment to cover wider essential requirements, including disaster recovery and business continuity services.
RedEye’s telephony and conferencing solutions are also delivered as part of its partnership with Node4, providing the business with high-performance communication tools. As the company continues to grow, RedEye also plans to increase investment in public cloud services and virtualised infrastructure, enabling them to anticipate and respond to increased customer demand.
Node4 provides an extension to the internal technical expertise at RedEye. It offers a range of contingency, support and consultancy services, with on-demand access to experienced Database Administrators, 24/7 technical support and expert technical and strategic consultancy expertise.
The Result
RedEye clients benefit from a stable environment, allowing them to deliver sophisticated data-driven campaigns to
its customers and drive business growth. With reliability and uptime of particular importance, RedEye has reported 99.99998% system availability over the past 12 months, meaning its clients can plan and execute their multi-channel marketing campaigns with confidence. This has been especially important for the retail customers, as the industry as a whole moves to completely online inside lockdown parameters.
“During the pandemic, the service has been there – no dips or reductions,” said Paul Morris, Technical Services Director at RedEye. “We have been kept informed of Node4’s approach to Covid and this gave us the guarantee and confidence that they had the right processes and measures in place to keep going. Infrastructure from Node4 has coped amazingly despite the number of other customers that will have gone remote, just as we have done.
The consistently reliable and stable performance from Node4 made it feel as though Covid hasn’t happened from a service perspective.”
Node4 provides secure data centre infrastructure that offers peace of mind, so the company can deploy and house mission-critical services and applications. It’s high-performance connectivity services provide the flexibility to quickly provision additional performance and capacity, and RedEye’s mission-critical databases are fully supported by Node4’s database management service.
Paul commented: “Node4’s services provide us with the contingency, checks and expertise to call on whenever we need it, which has become an important reason for building a long-term partnership with them. We have strong IT capabilities in-house, but Node4 allow us to work with a more agile and scalable strategy because their experience and facilities are excellent. We have complete peace of mind working with Node4.
“The service from Node4 is excellent, we have had no issues at all with connectivity. The most important thing for us is that Node4 feels like an extension of our internal team, and they have always been on hand to help. The peace of mind that comes with no dips in service, no unplanned outages and an outsourced team of experts with a depth of knowledge and experience is invaluable to us at RedEye.”
Paul Morris, Technical Services Director at RedEye
Learn More About…
Node4 Cybersecurity News March 2024 – Organisations Need More For Protection Than Cyber Certifications
This month, we’re taking a look at why organisations need more than certifications and accreditations to ensure their cybersecurity strategy is effective.
What Technology is Transport & Logistics Prioritising in 2024?
We take a look at which technologies mid-market transport and logistics IT leaders are prioritising in 2024 and what they are focusing their investment on.