Business Systems, Audience Architecture & Commercial Growth
turning insight into brand storytelling & CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Client
Ruth Tomlinson Atelier
CONTEXT
Ruth Tomlinson is a luxury jewellery brand with an emotive, design-led product grounded in themes around nature, history, nostalgia and heirloom treasures. I worked in a hybrid role across brand storytelling, client experience, content and business development.
A significant part of my role involved shaping how the brand spoke to its audience and translating core brand values into social content, customer messaging and sales narratives.
HOW I CONTRIBUTED
I evolved the content approach to better reflect what the audience cared about. Like the process, meaning, craftsmanship, personal stories and the emotional value of jewellery.
Because I was close to the customers, sales conversations and brand world, I saw what the audience emotionally responded to, then used that insight to help evolve the brand’s content and positioning, strengthening audience engagement.
Over time, the brand’s organic audience grew significantly, and my work supported wider commercial growth.
───────────────
THE CRM STRATEGY
I identified six distinct buyer personas not based on demographics alone, but on purchase intent, channel behaviour and lifecycle stage.
Each persona had different emotional needs, different points of friction and different content requirements. The strategic opportunity was in shaping a customer lifecycle strategy to focus on client retention by marking life milestones and connecting with them over the full lifecycle.
───────────────
I designed a full CRM framework built around three principles:
1. Know the customer
Every touchpoint — visit, purchase, email, phone call, social media DM — needed to be logged to build a 360 profile of each client. Qualitative insight from direct interactions (which was one of the brand's genuine strengths) had to feed into the CRM system.
2. Anticipate
The goal was to move the brand from reactive client management to a proactive lifecycle strategy. Using a tag-based segmentation system, clients were grouped by purchase type, spend, location, events attended and life stage.
3. Build for the relationship
The communications that drove the highest value weren't automated sales emails. They were messages sent to a client three weeks before their first wedding anniversary, noting the piece they'd bought together and gently asking if they'd like to mark the occasion. They were the aftercare follow-ups checking that a bespoke piece had arrived safely and met expectations. They were the invitations to a show sent only to clients based in the right location who showed strong brand engagement.
4. Track
Tags included customer type (VIP, Loyal, High Spender, Brand Ambassador, Prospective), spend bracket, purchasing channel, and life events. As a client moved through a sequence, tags updated automatically shifting them from prospect to loyal customer, or flagging them for a milestone communication at the right time.
THE CHALLENGE
The audience needed more than product information. They responded to story, craft, symbolism, materials, romance, individuality and emotional purchase drivers. The challenge was to communicate the brand’s world in a way that felt intimate, distinctive and commercially effective across digital, retail and client touchpoints.
I helped define and develop the brand ethos book, created organic social content, shaped the client relations retention strategy, and used customer insight to develop the collections alongside the Creative Director.
IN PRACTICE
In the world of luxury, the client relationship means everything. A customer who feels genuinely known, who receives a message on their anniversary, who is remembered by name when they visit the atelier. They return but they also refer. They become the word-of-mouth engine that a brand like this relies on for the strongest client conversion
Prospect stage – email welcome sequences, inspiration mailers, abandoned basket recovery, website behaviour triggers.
Post-purchase – follow-up, aftercare guidance, maintenance reminders, stacking recommendations based on what the client already owned.
Loyalty and retention – milestone communications (anniversaries, birthdays, life events), trunk show and atelier event invitations by location, loyalty recognition for repeat purchasers.
Re-engagement – personal outreach designed to reconnect with clients who had gone quiet, calibrated by last order date, purchase frequency and total spend.