Award-winning first-party data strategy for Søstrene Grene

Christmas is Søstrene Grene’s most important sales period of the year. It is a time of high demand, high customer engagement and significant commercial opportunity.

Together with IMPACT, Søstrene Grene used this peak season to do more than drive sales. The ambition was to strengthen the retailer’s first-party data foundation by building direct customer relationships that could create value long after Christmas was over.

The result was 447,327 new leads, a CRM database of 1.5 million subscribers and the strongest Q4 in Søstrene Grene’s history. The case also secured the retailer Gold in Best in Digital Media and Marketing at the Danish Digital Award for the third year in a row.

Retailers are facing a growing challenge. Reaching customers is becoming more expensive, while access to those customers is increasingly controlled by global platforms. With digital media costs rising year after year, businesses are paying more simply to maintain the same level of visibility.

For Søstrene Grene, this became a strategic turning point. Instead of increasing investment in paid media, the retailer chose to focus on something it could own: customer data and direct customer relationships.

Christmas represented the ideal opportunity to accelerate that ambition. Historically, customers acquired during the festive season convert faster, spend more and create greater value than customers acquired during the rest of the year.

The ambition was twofold:

• Drive record-breaking revenue during Q4
• Build a significantly larger and more valuable first-party data foundation

To achieve this, Søstrene Grene made a bold decision. Rather than optimising solely for short-term sales, the retailer invested heavily in lead generation and customer acquisition during its most important trading period.

To bring the strategy to life, Søstrene Grene and IMPACT built a connected data-driven model where collection, activation and optimisation were tightly integrated. The model was enabled by a scalable martech setup developed in close collaboration with IMPACT, ensuring that data could be collected, activated and used across channels in real time.

The solution was based on one central customer insight: many Søstrene Grene customers know that popular seasonal products can sell out quickly, which means early access represents genuine value.

This insight became the foundation for the campaign. Customers were invited to sign up for exclusive early access to the Christmas collection, creating a compelling reason to share their information and engage with the brand.

The solution was executed through three connected workstreams: data collection, data-driven optimisation and continuous activation.

1. Data collection at scale
Lead generation began in September to maximise volume, quality and learning before peak season. Leads were collected through several high-intent touchpoints, including early access to the Christmas collection, a live shopping event, website pop-ups and physical Christmas cards included in 30,000 orders.

2. Data-driven optimisation
More than 200 creative variations across owned content, influencer content and user-generated content were activated and continuously optimised based on performance data. Instead of relying only on traditional audience targeting, decisions were guided by which messages, formats and timings delivered the strongest results.

3. Continuous data activation

New customer relationships were activated throughout Q4 through weekly pre-access campaigns, CRM journeys and a digital Christmas calendar designed to maintain engagement throughout the season.

Together, these activities created a continuous feedback loop where paid media generated data, owned channels converted customers and CRM maximised the value of each relationship.

The campaign exceeded its target of 400,000 leads and generated 447,327 new leads, increasing Søstrene Grene’s CRM database by 42%.

By the beginning of 2026, the retailer had built a community of 1.5 million subscribers that it could engage directly across markets. The quality of the data was clearly reflected in the results:

• 20% of new leads converted into customers during Q4
• Lead-to-purchase time was 2–3 times faster than normal
• Christmas leads generated 30% higher revenue per user than regular leads
• Cost per lead remained between 2–4 DKK despite rising media costs

The direct commercial impact was equally significant:

• 50,400 orders and more than 19 million DKK in revenue from Christmas leads
• 128,071 orders and more than 55 million DKK in revenue from CRM activation
• 37x return on marketing investment during Q4

Most importantly, the impact goes beyond one peak season. With direct access to 1.5 million customers, Søstrene Grene can now work more precisely with segmentation, relevance and customer activation across markets, while reducing dependency on paid platforms.

The case won Best in Digital Media and Marketing at Danish Digital Award, recognising Søstrene Grene’s digital maturity and first-party data strategy.