Godiva Chocolatier, New York, said yesterday that the Wheaton Group, Chapel Hill, NC, will handle all of its customer relationship management services.
For three years, Wheaton has handled CRM services for Godiva's direct-to-consumer division. Now it will manage “our database and CRM efforts with regard to our retail boutiques,” said Kimberly Land, vice president of Godiva's DTC division. “We are expanding Wheaton Group's role to cover all of Godiva's channels and all of our company-wide CRM initiatives.”
Founded in Brussels by Joseph Draps in 1926, Godiva introduced its fine chocolates to Americans 40 years later. Godiva today owns and operates 250 boutiques in North America as well as a catalog and e-commerce site.
Wheaton will expand its role to include construction and maintenance of a marketing database of business-to-consumer and business-to-business customers and inquirers. It also will provide overall project management across all of Godiva's CRM initiatives, including supervision of third-party vendors such as service bureaus and data entry firms.
“Years of experience have convinced us that data-leveraging experts are also the experts to rely on for the ongoing quality of data, information, decisions and marketing execution,” Land said. “Effective database marketing derives not from a slick IT infrastructure but from prioritizing business and marketing expertise over information technology.”
