Dive Brief:
- Bed Bath & Beyond has entered a partnership with Bilt to bring the home renter rewards provider’s customer identity, loyalty, and engagement platforms into the Bed Bath & Beyond ecosystem, the company announced Monday.
- The retailer wants to offer its customers a simpler and more intuitive experience that enables continuity for consumers who shop across its growing array of brands, which includes The Container Store and BuyBuy Baby.
- Bilt members will receive unique benefits at participating Bed Bath & Beyond locations in their neighborhoods, and the companies plan to announce more details on the partnerships experiences and benefits in the summer.
Dive Insight:
The Bilt partnership could help Bed Bath & Beyond better present its complex constellation of brands to customers, but it’s up to the retailer to get the messaging and experience right.
Bed Bath & Beyond will use Bilt’s Guest Experience Platform across its brand ecosystem, according to the companies. The partnership is designed to help the retailer’s different brands offer consistent communication while retaining their own voices.
This is an opportunity to make its brand portfolio more coherent, according to Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. The Bilt platform can make it easier for customers to shop across the retailer’s swathe of brands and loyalty offers while offering the retailer greater insights into customer behavior.
However, if not handled carefully, the partnership could lead to further brand confusion for Bed Bath & Beyond, according to Saunders. It all comes down to execution.
“The problem with Bed Bath & Beyond at the moment is that the offer is very jumbled, and the vision, which is easy enough to understand, but has not really come to life,” Saunders said. “Bilt needs to help simplify things and not be another layer of complexity for customers.”
The retailer also has an opportunity to offer personalized communication to its different audience segments, according to Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner.
Not all Bilt members are familiar with Bed Bath & Beyond’s portfolio, and bringing them on board will require different messaging than what the company uses with its existing shoppers, Jashinsky said. Customers of recently acquired brands like The Container Store can benefit from targeted messaging as well.
“That sounds straightforward but is quite difficult as the company has acquired other retailers,” Jashinsky said in an email. “Those acquired retailers often result in customer databases that are siloed from the rest of the company’s MarTech systems.”
The Bilt partnership is just one step in Bed Bath & Beyond’s larger goal to drive growth, according to Saunders. The company needs to create a differentiated, coherent experience that appeals to customers, and while Bilt can help, the retailer still has some way to go.
