MandM x Made With èƵ
MandM is one of the UK's biggest value fashion retailers, selling branded menswear, womenswear and sportswear at scale. They're not short of traffic or emails. But like many in the category, their team was feeling the pinch of saturated channels, diminishing returns and busy inboxes.
So they asked a bold question: how do we make every message more meaningful? And how fast could we prove it?
By adding intent data into how they segment and message customers offsite, MandM found new growth from an already strong email programme.
"èƵ has become a pillar of our customer strategy. It helps us be more human, more personal, and more effective."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
Jackie Barnett leads customer strategy and CRM at MandM. The team works closely with partners like Bloomreach and Voxwise to bring this to life, combining strong campaign execution with deeper behavioural insight. Alongside Insight Activation Manager Ollie Wilson, she's championed a new, intent-based approach to how and when customers are contacted. We sat down with them to unpack the journey.
MandM Without èƵ
MandM has always been a high-volume email business. Before adopting Made With èƵ, the team used a familiar setup: RFM segmentation and engagement scoring over a six-week window.
"We were layering RFM with engagement data from the last six weeks. But that's a long window when someone's intent can change in seconds."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
Even with this setup, it was not reactive enough. Segments refreshed slowly. Behaviour signals were not acted on in the moment. If someone visited the website, showed signs they were ready to buy, but did not convert, they could still be stuck in the same RFM segment. And in a value-driven category where consent is precious and loyalty is hard-won, improving the customer experience was a commercial priority, not a nice-to-have.
But for Jackie, it was also personal. She's an online shopper too, after all. She's been on the receiving end of clumsy, irrelevant marketing before, like we all have. She didn't want MandM's customers to feel the same. Instead, Jackie wanted the team to be more human in how they timed and tailored communication. The aim was to match messages to real behaviour in the moment, not just static segments.
"Email consent is a proxy for lifetime value. If we burn that with the wrong message at the wrong time, we lose more than the sale."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
Promotional emails, the kind often labelled by brands as newsletter sends, were already one of MandM’s biggest performance levers. They drive sessions, fuel digital remarketing, and deliver consistent revenue. But they come with a trade-off: how do you keep sending at scale without overwhelming inboxes, hurting engagement, or triggering unsubscribes?
Without èƵ, segmentation relied on a six-week rolling average of engagement. But behaviour changes faster than that. High-intent customers could be held back by a low engagement score, while frequent openers might show no current buying signals at all.
"Some customers may not have engaged with an email in over 6 months and be in a low frequency email segment. Should they then visit the site with high intent, we were missing the opportunity to keep up momentum and re-engage them off site."
Ollie Wilson, Insight Activation Manager, MandM
The team saw an opportunity to make these emails more reactive. To use smarter onsite signals to fine-tune who gets what, and when. To improve promotional segmentation, by balancing commercial volume with long-term customer respect.
And that's where intent came in.
MandM With èƵ
Smarter Email Segmentation
"èƵ gives us the context to act more appropriately. This gives us more opportunities to target, but also means we can send less yet get more."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
MandM built on their existing RFM strategy by overlaying real-time intent data onto their Bloomreach-powered customer profiles and campaigns. èƵ segmentation was synced directly into Bloomreach, meaning the team could activate and test without disrupting existing workflows. Campaigns were launched and tested using familiar tools. No new platforms. No long dev cycles.
The goal of the initial test was to prove whether they could use intent segmentation within promotional campaigns to do two things. One, reduce frequency at the top end, the 'highly engaged' but low intent customers, therefore reducing email fatigue and protecting consent. Two, balance this out by capturing and up-weighting frequency to the 'low engaged' but high intent customers MandM were missing out on previously.
“When we were introduced to Made With èƵ's data, we quickly realised how it could be incorporated into our current Customer strategy. The ease of the tool and support we received from the team meant we learned and saw value fast."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
Within two weeks, they'd measured the performance of intent-based segmentation against their existing audience strategy. By layering intent segmentation into their Bloomreach workflows, they made their campaigns more timely, more relevant, and more appropriate. A simple two-week test proved this.
The MandM team then progressed this into a more reactive model. It prioritised live behaviour over past activity. Rather than optimising for recency or broad segments, they pushed to double down on the audiences they had live intent data for.
"èƵ nudged us down a more customer-centric avenue. We really homed in on the customers whose onsite signals told us they were likely ready to buy."
Ollie Wilson, Insight Activation Manager, MandM
This meant adjusting message frequency and type based on whether a customer was in a high or low intent state, and whether intent was building or fading. Customers showing signs of building or maintaining intent received tailored nudges. Meanwhile, those with waning signals were protected from overexposure, helping preserve consent and long-term value.
Segmenting emails this way created £400k in annualised incremental revenue, plus an 8% drop in unsubscribes worth £1.5m in annual LTV attribution. But the bigger impact was cultural.
"We started sending fewer emails. But the ones we did send drove better AOV, better lines per order and better category mix. Because we were sending the right content at the right moment."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
To validate the full impact of this segmentation shift, the team worked with their long-standing analytics partner, Voxwise. While the segmentation strategy and execution were led entirely in-house, Voxwise helped MandM dig deeper into the results, sharpening how the data was analysed and where the next opportunities might lie.
“I see a lot of value in working with partners when analysing customer data. It helps unearth insights that might be missed internally, when you’re used to seeing the same dashboards every day. Voxwise are masters at this.”
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
The Impact
"Made With èƵ hasn’t just improved performance. It’s changed how we think."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
èƵ is now a core part of MandM’s customer strategy. In just 3 months from go-live, it added £1.9 in annualised incremental revenue and LTV, but it gave the team more than growth.
"I think it's given us a different way of thinking about the customer. I'm not just looking at recency or frequency. I'm looking at mindset. I actually feel more connected to the customer."
Ollie Wilson, Insight Activation Manager, MandM
What started as a better way to do email has grown into a company-wide mindset shift. Personal, contextual experiences are not just better for customers. They are more commercially effective too.
èƵ is now embedded in MandM’s thinking, but the next step is practical: keep making email feel timely and earned.
The CRM and eCommerce teams are now using intent to improve when they ask visitors to sign up onsite, and what they send after. The data science function is also exploring how intent signals can strengthen predictive models.
The long-term ambition is a customer lifecycle that prioritises relevance over reach. Not “more sends.” Better timing, better content, and a better experience.
"èƵ helps us visualise the customer again. We’re not just looking at pages or clicks. We’re feeling what they feel. That’s powerful."
Jackie Barnett, Head of Customer, MandM
Want to see what real-time intent could unlock for your email programme? Get a personal demo of Made With èƵ.
