Using controlled personalisation trials to prove and scale the commercial impact of tailored offers for JD Sports.

The company.

JD Sports is a global sports fashion and lifestyle retailer, offering footwear, apparel and accessories through thousands of stores and a rapidly growing digital presence.

The challenge.

JD Sports wanted to understand how personalised offers influence customer behaviour before investing in a long-term loyalty programme. They needed clarity on what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Historically, JD hadn’t tested different personalised offer mechanics at scale. They wanted to answer key questions, including:

• Which offer types drive the strongest response?
• How do active and inactive customers behave differently?
• Do certain incentives resonate more strongly with specific customer segments?
• What’s the commercial impact of rolling out the most effective offers more widely?

The solution.

We partnered with JD to develop a centralised personalisation engine, as part of a strategic loyalty framework for their UK business. To prove the value, we ran three controlled personalised offer trials. Each trial focused on a different question, giving JD a clear evidence base for decision-making.

• The first trial tested category-based ‘buy again’ offers to understand (a) how active customers respond and (b) to find out whether increasing the X (a spend multiplier) value drives more spend.
• The second trial analysed how high and low spenders respond to different offers. Do they prefer cash-based incentives? Or spend multipliers, like £5 off a £50 in the results we say spend? This trial aimed to give JD a clearer view of how to tailor incentives by spend behaviour.
• The third trial explored ‘cross sell’ offers aligned to customers’ previous purchases. This allowed us to test JD’s product affinity and understand which category follow-ons drive incremental spend.

We don’t believe in one-off projects. Alongside the analysis, we created practical assets so JD can continue testing personalisation activity, including measurement dashboards, customer segmentations, campaign templates, and insights into product seasonality and affinity.

The results.

Our work together made a massive material impact on JD Sports UK’s top line, proving the commercial value of our personalisation engine. The trials generated a 3.2% uplift on in-store loyalty sales across JD Sports UK.

On top of this, the trials gave JD a clear understanding of how personalised offers influence their customer base’s behaviour and, in turn, commercial performance:

1. Relevance matters far more than simply increasing an incentive.
2. Higher spenders respond better to spend multipliers, while lower spenders react similarly to both cash incentives and multipliers.
3. Category alignment is important for cross-sell activity, and campaigns can cause offer fatigue if the spacing between personalised communications isn’t also tailored to customer behaviour and preferences.

What’s next?

We’re continuing to work closely with JD Sports as they refine their personalisation strategy. The learnings and assets developed through the trial phase are now shaping how JD evolves its approach, ensuring future personalisation efforts are grounded in evidence, measurable performance and customer behaviour insights.

If you’re looking to explore how data and AI could help you understand customer behaviour and test personalisation within your retail business, we’d love to talk.