Home improvement retailer Wickes had a strong 2020, doubling its customer base under lockdown. But rather than resting on its laurels, the brand decided it needed to find a way to become relevant to more customers, more of the time.

To achieve this, Wickes teamed up with Team ITG and Emerald Thinking on the Mission Motivation Engine, a machine learning model incorporating online and in-store transactional, search, browsing, engagement and third-party data, with insight into how consumers click on social, display and website content.

Behaviour was broken into missions – what a consumer wants to achieve, and motivations – the reasons for the mission. The model identified 10 DIY/showroom missions, seven trade professional missions, seven motivational trade segments, 11 TradePro programmes and 10 DIY/showroom programmes.

Triggered when a purchase is ‘spotted’, the model enabled Wickes to deliver email, app, social and landing page content to support consumers throughout their DIY project, offering helpful tips. The trade audience received ‘The Week Ahead’, personalised comms offering practical insight designed to “cut the fluff”.

Wickes drove £7m in incremental revenue during the first six months following the implementation of the Mission Motivation Engine. Regarded as a “differentiating IP and a strategic growth lever” by CEO David Wood, Wickes chief marketing and digital officer, Gary Kibble, describes the machine learning model as having “shone a light in the darkest of corners”.

The approach not only ensured the retailer won the Marketing Week Awards for Retail and Ecommerce and Best Use of Segmentation, but crucially the honour of Grand Prix winner.