Splio's CRM roadmap for successful summer sales

A must-attend event for the retail industry in France, but also in Europe, the sales are back again this year for the summer edition. And when brands talk about sales, they talk about mass mailings of all kinds, from traditional e-mailings and SMS messages to new channels such as WhatsApp and RCS
Your brand's overall objective from June 25, 2025 onwards is to clear stocks from previous collections. The objective of your CRM team is tohelp youachieve this while maintaining a strong and healthy relationship with your customers, by not forcing the marketing pressure.

Here's our CRM roadmap for CRM managers, with concrete actions to help you launch your campage des serenely and ensure the success of this promotional period!

1️⃣ Prepare and segment your customer database

Your database will be the cornerstone of your CRM strategy during the sales. If you take good care of it all year round, this step, 30 days before the start of the sales, should be a mere formality! Your objective? Prepare an exploitable, healthy and segmented database, so that you can concentrate on the strategic aspect of your missions and the messages you wish to convey.

✅ Identify contacts that have been inactive for more than 3 years and remove them from your database.

You may not like the idea, as you'll be deleting valuable, hard-earned prospect and/or customer data... but it'll certainly kill two birds with one stone.

- On the one hand, you'll remain within the rules of the RGPD, which states that "personal data must be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed" (article 5.1.e of the RGPD). The CNIL has moreover added a temporal precision to this deletion by recommending that it should be effective for prospects from the last contact with them (click, opening, response...) and from the last purchase for customers.
- On the other hand, you promote the deliverability of your emails. With a clean database, you can send your communications only to contacts who are active and/or want to hear from you. As a result, you boost your open and click-through rates, and MailBox Providers will be delighted!

✅ Make sure your key segments are up to date. The most classic and well-known segmentation is the RFM. As recommended by Bad Sender the lower the RFM value, the higher the rate of unsubscribing to e-mail campaigns. It's therefore important to group your customers and prospects into segments with similar profiles, so that you can think about paths dedicated to them, and thus maximize the impact of your CRM actions, whatever the profile of the contact. If we were to broadly group your contacts into bases, you would have :

• Contacts with a high RFM value (committed buyers): these profiles are more inclined to receive your communications very regularly, without taking unsubscribe action.
• Contacts with an average RFM value (moderate profiles): these profiles are fairly neutral towards your communications, but unsubscribe more easily than those with a high RFM value.
• Contacts with a low RFM value: these profiles are mainly inactive and tend to unsubscribe very quickly from your communications.

Obviously, in this article we're limiting the granularity of the RFM to 3 profiles, but the finer your granularity (without going overboard!), the more personalized and adapted to their profiles the itineraries you'll create for them.

✅ Create filters and targeting/exclusions dedicated to sales, based in particular on behavioral data. The idea being to find the best way to reach the customer to encourage conversion at sale time. Here are a few filter ideas you might find useful:

• Filter by preferred communication channel: while email marketing remains your preferred channel for sending messages about the sales, some of your customers will be more inclined to read your WhatsApp messages. This filter allows you to identify your contacts' preferred communication channel to ensure that your message is read.
• Filter by favorite product: with this filter, the idea is to group together all contacts who have put one of your star products on their wishlist. By identifying them, you'll be in a better position to send them a communication dedicated to their favorite product, to let them know that this same product is benefiting from a sale discount. This will guarantee a visit to your site, or even a purchase!
• Filter by purchase during last year's sales: some shoppers tend to buy from your brand only once a year, but always at the time of the sales. By identifying them in your database, you can offer them a more personalized communications path.

💡 CSM's word: clean up your database then create your filters and targeting well in advance of the sales period, so you can think with a clear head and a clear head about the CRM strategy you want to implement to achieve your objectives over the period.

2️⃣ Launch sales-dedicated customer paths

Sales are a campaign in their own right, lasting several weeks twice a year. All French retailers know the precise dates: start date, 2nd markdown date, 3rd markdown date, end date. This timing is designed to punctuate your communications over the period, but above all it enables you to anticipate the programming of your automatic scenarios and newsletters. Based on the segments you've created in advance:

✅ Think about one path per profile to maximize your chances of conversion. A multitude of other paths can be created, depending in particular on your business sectors, your brand, the segments of your base... it's up to you to find the paths that will most certainly help you achieve your objectives. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking:

• A path for your loyalty program members: the fact that they are members indicates their commitment to your brand. The least you can do to thank them is to offer them extra benefits compared with your occasional customers: early access to sales, free delivery, extra discount on the first day, double points accumulation during the period... be inventive, because your loyal customers are your customers with the most interesting ROI!
• A pathway for your biggest buyers (VIPs who are not program members): like your program members, your best buyers must be considered in your customer pathways as loyal and privileged customers.
• An itinerary for new customers (the first to buy in the year): the sales period is the time to start a new stage in their life cycle with you, that of loyalty. So think about an itinerary that might inspire them to buy again.
• A path for engaged prospects (high click-through rates and/or frequent visits to your e-commerce site): sales are the perfect time to convert prospects who haven't yet taken the step of buying, but who are showing strong interest in your brand. A little extra discount? An additional service? Make them want to take the plunge.

✅ Put your shipping schedules in perspective. You know the sales calendar like the back of your hand... just like every retailer in France. So you'll be hundreds of brands sending out your communications on the same days and often at the same time.

• Don't run all your campaigns at the same time- it's better to cascade them over the morning, or even the day.
• Give preference to sending your campaigns at a time other than the round hour. For example, opt for 7.55 or 8.10 a.m. rather than the 8.00 a.m. that many people are sure to choose (especially for the launch of sales!). In addition to creating an overload on your sending platform, you'll be drowning your communication in the mass of marketing emails received by customers on that day.
• Opt for A/B testing on sending times, but also on all the customizable elements of your campaigns.

✅ Launch a teaser scenario around the sales. As a key event on the French retail scene, and given the current purchasing power of the French, many of your customers are probably waiting until the end of June to make a few small "pleasure" purchases, or even prepare for the start of the new school year. The sales start on a Wednesday morning... and very often your customers are already at work. With a teaser scenario in advance of the launch, you can make life easier for your customers and increase your chances of conversion:

• D-5: invite your customers to add their favorite products to their wishlist to make it easier for them to find them on D-Day.
• D-1: propose an early opening of the sales the evening before so that Wednesday morning workers don't miss out on their favourite products.
• D-D: send sales reminders via SMS, WhatsApp or RCS to latecomers who may not have taken advantage of the early opening to diversify channels.

It's a scenario that doesn't cost you much, but should be greatly appreciated by your customers.

✅ Rethink your automatic scenarios so that they meet your balance-related objectives. You have automatic scenarios that run year-round in your marketing automation platform. The idea is to duplicate them to adapt them to sales:

• Abandoned basket scenario: sales can be a time to create a sense of urgency and scarcity among your customers. It might be a good idea to shorten the waiting time before communication between the abandoned cart and the email reminder, to opt for a more powerful email subject ("The items in your cart are very popular" or "The stocks of your products in your cart are running out") and to structure this scenario in two stages (a first email 2 hours after abandonment, then a second 24 hours later).
• Visiting a product on sale without making a purchase: sales are one of the best times to clear your stock. All browsing browsing data all the more valuable to help you achieve this. Setting up a reminder 48 hours after visiting a product on sale (your scenario's trigger) would be a clever automation to maximize your chances of conversion.
• Post-sale cross-sell scenario: a customer made an initial purchase a few days ago on your e-commerce site? Offer them an additional discount on a series of products complementary to the initial purchase.

Moreover, if the sales campaign is the top priority in your sales (and stock clearance) objectives, some of your "classic" automatic scenarios should be paused during the sales month to avoid too much marketing pressure on your base.

💡 CSM's word: Between communications dedicated to the promotional period and your "classic" collection and/or product launch newsletters... your communications are numerous during the sales period. So be sure to establish rules for marketing pressure by segment over the week (no more than X emails and X SMS per week) and to indicate an order of priority for all your communications over the period.

3️⃣ Test your automated sales systems

There's nothing new under the sun: to avoid making any mistakes, it's best to test everything you've put in place over the last few weeks to ensure that the launch of the sales goes like clockwork.

✅ Test all your automation paths on all channels. From targeting to sending to personalization, nothing should be left to chance. It would be a shame to have a rather inactive customer flooded with communications from you during the sales period, when everything in his profile indicates that high marketing pressure would lead to his permanent loss. Just as it would be annoying if an erroneous link had crept into one of your marketing emails.

✅ Coordinate your CRM actions with those of your traffic teams. During sales (and all year round, in fact), the traffic-CRM tandem needs to be strong. As a CRM, you have access not only to customer browsing data, but also to their purchase (or non-purchase) data. During the sales season, retargeting is more than ever a key ally in driving conversions. Provide some of your CRM audiences so that the team in charge of retargeting can activate them on another channel. The most obvious audiences would obviously be: adding a shopping cart without making a purchase, and visiting a page featuring a product on sale.

💡 CSM's word: a technical test isn't enough: also validate the experience perceived by different customer profiles. Send yourself your journeys as if you were a VIP customer, a new prospect, or an inactive customer. This 'persona' viewpoint can help you spot friction invisible to conventional technical testing.

4️⃣ Set up dedicated KPIs & dashboards

One of the keys for CRM managers remains the analysis of results. In anticipation of the busy sales season, you owe it to yourself to think up a dashboard for monitoring your key CRM indicators.

✅ Measure engagement with your campaign:

• rate of unique opens per email vs. your average to check that your segmentations are correct and that your email subject lines are appealing
• rate of unique clicks per email vs. your average to ensure that the content of your emailings is not disappointing
• average reactivity rate over the period vs. your average to alert you to the consistency of the promise in your communications (before clicking in the email marketing) and your offer (after clicking on the site)
• average churn rate over the period vs. your average to alert you to marketing pressure

✅ Measure the performance of your campaign :

• conversion rate per email vs. your average to give you an idea of the overall sales performance of your CRM actions during the sales period.
• repurchase rate for the campaign as a whole
• reactivation rate for the campaign as a whole, based on customers who have not made a purchase in over a year, to detect customers interested in the promotions
• activation rate for the campaign as a whole vs. your average for tracking the number of sales leads converted into customers on a daily basis

✅ Measure the profitability of your campaign :

• sales generated by the campaign
• Campaign ROI

💡 CSM's word: by opting for a platform that combines a Customer Data Platform tool and a marketing automation tool, you get access to a multitude of relevant KPIs at a glance, and activating this data can be done in minutes.

5️⃣ Adjust your strategy day by day

The big day has arrived! Wednesday June 25 at 8am, one of your biggest campaigns of the year is launched. You're on edge, and rightly so: your CRM sales targets for the sales period are high. Not everything can go 100% according to plan, but you're ahead of the game! By monitoring the dashboard specially set up for the sales period, your teams can take a step back and make the small adjustments that are needed .

✅ Adjust the products featured in your communications thanks to feedback on traffic from e-commerce teams.

• The e-commerce team warns you thata reference you had placed at the top of your flagship products is only registering a very limited number of visits to your e-commerce site. Brainstorm with your teams to determine the CRM strategy to adopt: review the product's prominence? modify the associated content in marketing emails? remove this reference from your communications in favor of a more attractive reference?
• One of the flagship products in your sales campaign is out of stock... but that's no problem. Your catalog contains dozens of other products on sale that can be promoted. Your teams need to remain vigilant for future out-of-stock situations, and quickly bounce back to correct emails where out-of-stock products are mentioned.

✅ Adapt your audiences in real time. Whether your projected audiences are too large or too small, it's time to go back over them to optimize the conversion of your communications. Here again, the dashboard you've set up will help you detect the right signals:

• churn is on the rise among contacts with a low RFM value: it's time to ease up on communications for the time being
• opening rates aren't up to scratch with your VIP customer segment: are you sure you're using the right filters?

✅ Rebalance channels and marketing pressure. A rising churn rate over the sales period would highlight that the marketing pressure exerted by your CRM strategy is too high for your audience and will need to be reviewed :

• the frequency of your communications
• communication channels

✅ Modify your sending timings. Following the logic of your A/B test mailings, after the first few mailings, the first trends tend to emerge.

• Do you notice that automatic emails perform better at 11am than at 8am? Review the associated scenario.
• Is waiting 5 hours for an abandoned cart too long? Reduce the time between two reminders.
• Are you noticing an overload of mailings from your customers? Think about maybe pausing some of your automatic emails or streamlining your scripts.

💡 CSM's word: once the sales are underway, the bulk of the work is done for CRM teams. But vigilance and agility must remain the order of the day, to be able to bounce back at the slightest hitch and thus ensure the success of their campaign.

6️⃣ Prepare for the post-sales phase now

Don't wait until the sales are over to think about the aftermath! As the saying goes, strike while the iron is hot. Yes, your prospects and customers were very busy during the sales, and a calmer period is called for. However, an end-to-end customer journey can work wonders when the sales are over!

✅ Analyze purchasing behavior and reactivity during the period. Your objective? Draw conclusions from the edition that has just ended, so you can adapt your strategy for future sales periods. Here are a few KPIs you might be interested in calculating:

• Rate of unique openers during sales 2025 vs. a period without promotions
• Rate of unique shoppers during the 2025 sales vs. the 2024 sales
• Unique click-through rate during sales 2025 vs. a period without promotions
• Rate of unique clicks during the 2025 sales vs. the 2024 sales
• Percentage of prospects converted into customers through the purchase of sale products
• Percentage of customers making a second purchase
• Percentage of contacts reached by an email from the sales campaign who have made at least one purchase
• Percentage of customers who made several purchases during the sales with at least one discounted product in their basket
• Share of customers who made at least one purchase during the 2025 sales AND during the 2024 sales
• Share of sales generated during the sales period attributed to CRM actions
• ROI for the 2025 sales campaign

✅ Segment your sale buyers to reactivate them later. It's up to you to define the "later" based on behaviors observed after analyzing buyer profiles.

• If your customers tend to be promophile customers (they open more of your promotional emails and buy mainly discounted products), lighten their marketing pressure outside promotional periods (sales, private sales, flash sales...), so that your discount communications have all the more impact in their eyes when the time comes.
• On the other hand, if the customer is rather insensitive to promotional periods (low open rates for campaigns linked to promotions, few purchases of discounted items...), limit communications linked to promotions in favor of weekly communications that interest them more (latest releases, new collections, stock returns...).

✅ Launch a post-sales nurturing campaign. Taking the temperature, highlighting the new collection, avoiding a drop in sales at the end of July... whatever your post-sale objectives, communication between your customers and your brand can't go from everything to nothing without a little transition. Here are a few ideas for nurturing campaigns that can easily be launched with customers who have made at least one purchase from sale products:

• Ask your customers for their opinion: sales put all your brand's teams to the test: from the retail team to the logistics team, from CRM to the sales force, no one is spared. The post-sales period can be an opportunity to ask your customers to rate their experience. Useful feedback for all teams, and a feeling of being listened to.
• Recommendations based on purchases made: the post-sale period is also an opportunity to propose cross-sell scenarios to encourage your customers to make complementary purchases to their discounted products.

💡 CSM's word: sales represent a major sales peak for retailers. The return to normality must be carefully maneuvered to ensure that the momentum built up during the campaign doesn't run out of steam and have positive effects on your sales in the long term!

You now have all the advice you need to ensure that this year's sales season goes off without a hitch. More than ever, customer data must be the driving force behind your CRM strategy!