Buying your wedding dress is an important step, and one of the most exciting parts, when planning a wedding. Not that I know first-hand, but that’s what I’m told. The two most recent brides I know made their wedding dress purchase before any other purchases and built the wedding décor, flowers and theme around their dresses.
David’s Bridal knows this. They’ve been selling wedding dresses for years and with a 30 per cent market share, they know what they’re doing. To reach out even further to brides, David’s Bridal created an online community called My Event where brides discuss everything from dresses to wedding theme and even assign tasks to their bridal party.
Tools available on My Event include:
- Connect – brides can invite friends and family to their private online space and can all have fun communicating about the big day.
- News Feed – brides and their bridal parties can get real-time updates and host discussions on wedding planning details.
- Mood Boards – boards that represent a brides unique vision for her event can be posted and inspiration from others invited can be posted for the bride as well.
- Task Lists – to help the bride prioritize, assign and organize her wedding to-do’s.
- Shopping Lists – brides can create lists of wedding must-haves for them, their bridesmaids, and anyone else they choose and keep track of everyone’s purchases.
- Budget Planner – Brides can put in their budget and get a breakdown of recommendations, make adjustments and monitor their spending.
With bride’s entering all those details about their big day into My Event, David’s Bridal is able to use this data to their advantage. If brides in California all want princess dresses with sparkle, more of those can be kept in stock. If a lilac of bridesmaid’s dresses are gaining popularity in the southeast, stores there can stock more lilac dresses. If every mother-of-the-bride in the mid-west is wearing coral this summer, then accessories that match will be ordered and in stock in that region. They will be able to stock their stores to suit the brides and bridal parties they anticipate coming in.
This gives David’s Bridal an advantage in a market they already have a large share in. They know what their customers want in advance of their competitors. And since they know what customers want before they even walk in the store, they can order the right garments and accessories, the sales associates can show brides dresses they’ve already looked at and tagged online and the likelihood of purchase grows.
David’s Bridal has taken advantage of a few things here.
- Women love to talk about their weddings and if they’re using My Event, they will most likely be telling people about it. That means more people will hear about it and enter more data for them to use.
- With women so open to sharing details about their weddings, they can use all the data inputted to order coordinating pieces to increase the amount those brides spend in their stores.
- Weddings are seldom planned by one person and often bridesmaids are heavily involved. With an average of 3 out of 4 bridesmaids being single, they are constantly marketing to potential clients with every wedding party.
- With the recently released mobile app, women can now carry their accounts around with them, can use it more frequently and talk about it more (see point 1).
Lessons for others
David’s Bridal has taken advantage of their knowledge of their customers to gain even more knowledge on customers directly from the source. David’s Bridal went from a dress store, to a wedding planning go-to website. With many websites offering this same type of planning tool, the thing that makes My Event stand out is the connection to the product that women dream about most when planning their wedding, the dress.
Web resources
- David’s Bridal
- David’s Bridal – My Event
- Social Media Marries Big Data at Wedding Retailer
- David’s Bridal finds the perfect marriage with Manhattan Associates
- David’s Bridal launches a mobile planning tool for brides-to-be
- The Bride Isn’t the Only Customer: How David’s Bridal Broadened Its Loyalty Focus
- Social Media Is In Your Supply Chain Future
Submitted by: Katie Schrank – SMBP Student, University of Waterloo
To contact the author of this entry, please email katieschrank@gmail.com.
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