Campari Group personalizes customer experiences and builds brand awareness with Dynamics 365

Camparistas, the 4,000 passionate employees of Campari Group, share a common motto: toasting life together. Offering more than 50 premium and super premium spirits brands in 190 countries, the company honors tradition with a twist of innovation. Building exclusive, quality consumer relationships that last well beyond the first sip, the company accelerated its digital journey to rise to the challenge of portfolio expansion, industry fluctuations, and consumer consumption shifts.

Campari Group created its toolbox of emerging capabilities—agility, consistency, cultural shift to data-centric insights, marketer trust and confidence—by scaling usage of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and newer capabilities such as customer journey orchestration.

“We want to engage and grow consumer experiences with our brands. Doing that at scale with the right balance and permission, while learning as the organization matures, is the advantage we have had from day one with Dynamics 365.”

Chad Niemuth, Vice President Global IT, Campari Group

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In Belgium, an Aperol enthusiast, aka a member of the Spritz Squad, purchases a bright-orange backpack from the Aperol fan shop. A traveler books a reservation at Milan’s Camparino in Galleria to enjoy a Negroni while traveling on business from the United Kingdom. Friends convene in Switzerland at an event to sip Lallier Champagne and the highest expressions of Campari Group’s premium brands.

These types of personalized possibilities originated 162 years ago, when liquorist Gaspare Campari invented the striking red aperitif that became the namesake of both the spirit and the company. Over the past 20 years, Campari Group has doubled in size, topping USD$2 billion in revenue in 2021 as the sixth-largest premium spirits provider.

Eleven signature brand houses, including the Wild Turkey Distillery in the U.S., the Grand Marnier Chateau in France, and the Forty Creek Distillery in Canada, immerse patrons in the unique legacy and culture of specific brands with opportunities to try, buy, and learn about their favorite spirits. Campari cultivates its valued bartender relationships with education, connection, and inspiration at multiple Campari Academies.

Each of Campari Group’s 50-plus brands has a loyal consumer base on a global, regional, or local level— depending on brand penetration in 22 leading geographies.

Image of Terrazza Aperol brand house.

Just as a mixologist discovers a patron’s preferences before creating a beverage, Campari wants to discover its customers’ preferences to build enjoyment, connection, and advocacy at every moment spent interacting with its brands.

“We want to bring consumers’ experience with our liquids to life with technology and make that journey hopefully as enjoyable as the drink they just had.” explains Chad Niemuth, Vice President Global IT at Campari Group. Niemuth and his team are doing just that by activating Campari’s chosen platform, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing for CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights as their Customer Data Platform (CDP), Azure for database capabilities, and Power Platform to create front-end and back-end applications.

Building the appetite for adoption

Niemuth brought on Liam Barnes, Global IT Director of Marketing Technologies at Campari Group, to develop and lead the CRM IT effort. Barnes built a CRM center of excellence (CoE) to help facilitate marketer trust and confidence in how systems can allow them to be more creative and efficient in their marketing. Barnes works side by side with the newly created Global CRM Manager role filled by Martina Navarra.

Barnes and Navarra facilitate bi-directional communication with a growing group of CRM champions. “It’s sparked healthy competition that allows us to push the boundaries in what we do, including my favorite area of innovating in the platform,” shares Barnes. “The US was particularly focused on bartenders and the trade. Australia zeroed in on analytics, whereas the UK was all about personalization, orchestration, and communications.”

The CoE meets each country and brand with ready-to-activate, consumer-led omnichannel journeys, front-end applications, templates, dashboards, and more. Says Barnes, “We’re creating a toolbox, letting each geography determine how they can use it, while also highlighting what tools have been highly successful.”

Adds Barnes, “For example, Espolon is one of our fastest-growing brands in the world, but Europe is unfamiliar with it.” Now, a global brand manager can activate an Espolon Day of the Dead campaign created in the Americas for the European market and beyond. “We can push a single campaign out to multi-market Espolon subscribers in a single journey with the click of a button,” says Barnes.

Navarra adds, “Undeveloped regions with limited budgets can activate a campaign with little to no investment by leveraging globally designed campaigns.” Any brand in the Campari portfolio can scale with Dynamics 365 Marketing—and all the journeys, campaigns, etc., accompanying the brand.

Barnes, Navarra, and their team are enabling marketers to increase the depth, breadth, quality, and value of their consumer database. They facilitate higher-quality acquisition by providing tools to nurture more mutually valuable and longer-lasting consumer relationships.

Navarra highlights how marketers are receiving the CoE’s efforts, “In the last six months, we have more than doubled adoption.” As 2022 got underway, the Global Marketing Capabilities & IT team doubled staffing to collaborate on and create more data-centric solutions.

A taste of what’s working

“Our company sees what data can do in terms of activation, insights, and personalization,” shares Barnes. “We have momentum and investment. If you’re ready to do event management, we’ll enable you with best-in-class hosting capabilities, virtual and in person, with mobile app technology behind it.” The team bridges the in-person and digital gap applying AI to accelerate and predict consumer impact and value.

RARE—Creating events that cultivate stronger relationships with consumers by activating personalized, customer-led journeys on the spot

Campari Switzerland hosted a VIP RARE event inviting guests to enjoy an evening of sampling exclusive expressions—The Glen Grant 60, Grand Marnier Quintessence, Lallier Champagne, and more.

These events are time and resource intensive. Campari leveraged the real-time customer journey orchestration capability in Dynamics 365 Marketing to dually increase return on investment and enact “uber” CRM to build the quality and depth of its subscriber base.

Camparistas mingle with guests to learn more about consumers’ preferences, often obtaining nuanced, elusive nuggets of information. They have handheld tablets loaded with a front-end app built with Power Apps to enable in-the-moment data collection. In line with Swiss requirements, Camparistas can record answers in German, French, and Italian, and obtain consent permissions. Depending on consumer responses, next best action capability powered by Customer Insights is activated, with each supported by customized scripts.

Navarra shares, “The platform’s ability to be flexible and customizable enough to add sections and categories helps a lot, making it easy to identify targets and create more personalization.” Please see attached download for screenshots of the application.

With minor modifications, Campari Switzerland’s real-time journeys have been redeployed to additional geographies. Campari is also partnering with customers (distributors, retailers, restaurants/bars, and more) to align on trends and insights from consumer profiles and then develop joint campaigns.

Campari Group RARE event.

Brand houses—Capturing insights from Campari Group-owned institutions to inform campaigns and customer journeys

Campari Group brand houses provide unique experiences for brand aficionados and newcomers alike with opportunities for VIP events, special evenings out, and impromptu visits.

Image from Camparino, known worldwide as The Home of Aperitivo and iconic brand house of Campari Group.

With permission, when a consumer logs into universal WiFi while at a brand house, Campari Group can launch a journey based on consumer actions. “It helps us create a database, but more so an opportunity for engagement and recency analysis,” shares Barnes. Campari can provide a purchase incentive via SMS, or a follow-up experience survey via email, or a mailed invitation to an upcoming VIP event.

“Real-time customer journey orchestration starts to bring to light the right questions for the marketers to be asking. This really wasn’t a conversation that was occurring until we enabled the capability,” shared Niemuth.

Barnes explains where things can start, “What are the objectives of the journey, what do you want to be able to do, what’s your value proposition at the end? De-risk an experience, learn about preferences, incent people who register for events but do not attend?”

Campari has the capability to orchestrate multi-channel marketing from within one infinite, outcome-based journey. Please see download attachment for a sample Campari Event/Tour journey. In the near future, Campari Group would like to start sentiment analysis—see who’s a brand advocate, who’s not, and nurture the relationship accordingly.

While maintaining exclusivity, Campari wants to create consistency for borderless consumers and selectively introduce aficionados of one brand to another in the Group’s portfolio. Brand houses are fertile ground for learning and reapplication.

Aperol—Inviting ‘Spritz Squad’ and new fans on customized journeys

Campari Group launched the campaign “Aperol Together Again” in the United Kingdom, then replicated it in Australia. Aperol gave away 100,000 Aperol Spritzes to help the brand provide a premium aperitivo to bring people together as COVID-19 restrictions were lifting.

The campaign was completely orchestrated on the Microsoft platform, communicated through a newsletter campaign and supported with media. Aperol fans would go to a bar, purchase an Aperol Spritz, and upload receipts as proof of purchase. AI Builder scanned the receipt to ensure compliance.

The “Spritz Squad” is a highly engaged group of consumers overall—this campaign helped build brand affinity and additional learnings enabled social media opportunities. Consumers new to the squad received content and moments such as birthday incentives on a customer journey orchestrated to their personal preferences.

Additionally, if other beverages, such as gin- or rum-based cocktails, are on the receipt, Campari can use this information to further enrich its 360-degree consumer profiles. Behavioral and transactional customer data can inform next best actions. Customer Insights uses Machine Learning and AI-powered prediction models to suggest sets of predictive product recommendations based on previous purchase behavior and customers with similar purchase patterns. For Campari, these recommendations can help guide choices to showcase applicable brands such as Bulldog and Appleton Estate and the promotion of these products in future campaigns. Please see attached download for details on the solution.

Campari has built knowledge on the Spritz Squad through CRM to plan Aperol takeovers. Imagine a sea of orange—trees, slides, chairs, umbrellas—for loyal fans to experience. These events have large personnel and financial commitments. Barnes confirms, “We understand the effectiveness of our efforts. We are data-centric. We can make decisions and investments based on facts and insight rather than interpretation or assumption.”

Campari—Leveraging CRM to maximize the brand’s longstanding ties to the arts

Campari’s commitment to the arts is evident in films produced with legendary directors and actors, in arts prominence in campaigns, and in brand houses such as Camparino in Galleria in Milan. Sponsoring premiere film festivals, Campari creates premier experiences such as beautiful gazebos illuminated in Campari’s signature red.

Campari talks with patrons and maximizes data capture on tablets and phones with a front-end app built with Power Apps. Based on cinemas’ association with the brand, Campari provides meaningful content for consumers’ future journeys—moments such as sharing video content or exploring a brand’s connection to cinema.

Toasting a cultural revolution

“We’ve created a huge cultural shift by sharing the story of what data can do,” shares Barnes. Campari is seeing the value of owning and controlling data. “We’re not just managing the platform to meet the needs of countries and brands; we’re accelerating the visibility of consumer insights and business intelligence,” Niemuth highlights. Frontline marketers to the C-suite have taken notice and are eager for more.

“With a lot of worthwhile hard work, we’re starting to experience measurable results with the Microsoft Platform.” Upward movement on CTR, data availability, purchase recency and frequency, impact on direct-to-consumer sales, and communication effectiveness are all in varying states of being able to see direct impact.

“We’re moving consumers through the funnel from disengaged to super-fan brand advocates. We can see the impact of triggered campaigns and more personalized real-time journeys powered by richer customer profiles in Customer Insights. This has led to higher engagement scores.” The team expects to see cost of acquisition to decrease and lifetime consumer value to increase. “Advocacy breeds influence and advertising, which, in the end, impacts our P&L.”

Campari Group believes it’s at the tip of true potential. The company can take greater risks and quickly learn effective strategies, enabling brands the quickest route to market.

“We are starting critical mass of being able to visualize what data means. What is the potential whitespace that we’re not focusing on that the data is starting to show? How do we open the opportunities to those segments that we may not be thinking about?” The CoE is using Power BI to fill visualization gaps, to drive information capture and, in turn, to use insights from additional data to inform campaign strategies.

Bartenders are potential advocates for Campari. “We commit to our bartenders like no other. We invest a lot and want to see if our investment is effective,” shares Barnes. Campari uses data collected, plus Power BI, to do things such as geolocation analysis to understand bartender ambassador concentration and gaps, to identify bartenders with TV experience for future campaigns, and to support the trade. Concurrently, Campari invested heavily in supporting the trade throughout COVID-19.

Overall, Campari envisions more output with less effort, with more consistency, and reiteration of the premium experience.

Savoring the future

“We’ve done amazing things in a short time, showing us the possibilities of doing so much more,” says Navarra. “The intuitive nature of Dynamics 365 and the ability to seamlessly connect with the Microsoft ecosystem and third-party applications give us an advantage.” Immediate plans to amplify this advantage include consolidating all previously siloed customer journeys into Dynamics 365 Marketing and using Customer Insights to get a 360-degree view of additional bartenders and consumer audiences.

While not compromising the rich heritage of brands in specific geographies, Campari Group looks to scale successful strategies and campaigns globally. Desires range from testing storytelling impact with A/B testing to deepen brand affinity by building curiosity, to connecting internal and external data for demand planning, to exploring partnerships wherever and however Campari brands are purchased or consumed.

“Our team of developers and IT professionals can work with the Microsoft platform—whether it be Power Platform, Dynamics, Customer Insights—to meet every need. There has not been one single need we haven’t been able to satisfy. We provide solutions rather than problems.” The company plans to explore out-of-the-box AI, predictive modeling, analytics, sentiment analysis, Power BI visualization, and more.

“We’ve built a foundation that bodes well for our growth as we move forward. We have a toolkit of capabilities to leverage,” shares Niemuth. He pauses, reflects on how the world has changed since Campari Group’s digital transformation began, and adds, “I’m excited about people being together again.”

As the definition of “together” expands, one thing is certain: Campari Group will be using its technology investments to create meaningful human connections, enabling us all to toast the moments we share together.

Beginning September 1, 2023, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will merge into a single offering under Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Learn more about the evolution of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

“We’re not just managing the platform to meet the needs of countries and brands; we’re accelerating the visibility of consumer insights and business intelligence.”

Chad Niemuth, Vice President Global IT, Campari Group