JD Sports has identified a multi-million-pound opportunity for growth through personalising its customer offering after teaming up with AI-powered actionable intelligence company HyperFinity.
The British sports retailer wanted to ascertain the commercial value of personalisation, and how to implement it to drive growth. HyperFinity designed the personalisation engine and trialled it to build a personalisation framework for JD Sport.
How the trials worked
The trials looked at user behaviour, specifically in terms of how users respond to ‘buy again’ prompts and incentives, what incentive mix works best for higher and lower spenders, and how aligning cross-sell offers with the previous purchase history can increase basket spend.
The results clearly showed that relevance is more important to driving higher spend than simply increasing incentive value, particularly for higher spenders. Campaign spacing must also be tailored to individual behaviour to avoid offer fatigue.
This aligns with wider industry data indicating that relevance drives engagement and conversion far more strongly than simply increasing the size of a discount. Research by Wunderkind found that almost half (49%) of UK consumers are more likely to buy when offered personalised, product-specific discounts for items they have already viewed, compared to just 26% who consider buying after receiving general, brand-wide promotions.
What this means for JD
As a result of the trials, JD Sports identified a multi-million-pound opportunity to grow in-store loyalty sales within the first year of scaling the programme.
HyperFinity also delivered a suite of practical assets, including measurement dashboards, customer segmentations, campaign templates, and product seasonality and affinity insights, to enable JD Sports to continue building on the programme.
Chris Hope, global head of insight & analytics (customer/loyalty) at JD Sports, said: “HyperFinity quickly understood what we were trying to do and helped us run the trials in a clear and structured way. The insight we gained into customer behaviour has been really useful for shaping how we approach personalised offers going forward.”
Thomas Hill, co-founder of HyperFinity, added: “JD Sports is one of the most recognisable retailers, and the challenge the brand brought to us is one we hear often – how do you build genuine confidence in personalisation to enable the execution at scale? By running structured, evidence-led trials, we were able to give JD a clear picture of what works, why it works, and what the commercial opportunity looks like. That kind of actionable intelligence is exactly what we’re built to deliver.”
The results of the personalisation trial follow last month’s announcement that JD Sports is lowering profit expectations for FY27 after a weak second quarter, with sales in North America particularly hard-hit. The company said it remains focused on improving customer engagement and driving higher spend from its existing customer base, making more effective use of personalisation and loyalty initiatives as it looks to support growth in a more challenging trading environment.
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