On 2nd October, we welcomed a packed room of marketers, analysts and data leaders to The Grand Central in Brighton for Enlighten 2025, a one-day summit dedicated to CRM excellence and data-driven marketing.

The day was filled with practical insights, honest reflections, and a healthy dose of challenge.

Here’s what was presented on the day:

• Goodwood: Tailoring Email Communications Through Customer Interests
• Enlighten Panel Discussion: How to Sell Data to the Boardroom
• Furness: Reconnecting with Purpose Through Data and Brand
• Fresh Egg and R-cubed share what Intelligent Digital Experiences look like

Goodwood: Tailoring Email Communications Through Customer Interests

One of the most compelling stories shared at Enlighten 2025 came from Goodwood, who faced a challenge familiar to many large organisations: how to deliver a consistent, relevant customer experience across a sprawling portfolio of brands.

With over 30 businesses under the Goodwood umbrella, marketing had become fragmented. Each team was emailing their own audiences, often with overlapping or irrelevant content. The result was over-communication, disengagement, and rising unsubscribe rates.

The solution was deceptively simple: consolidate communications into a single, dynamic “Estate Email” powered by a single customer view and pots of customer interest. This allowed Goodwood to tailor content to each individual based on their interests and behaviours, while reducing the overall email volume.

The results were impressive within the first year:

• 70,000 fewer emails were sent
• £4.5 million in attributed revenue 
• 16 hours saved per month on email builds
• 3% increase in engagement across a million-strong base

“We stood in front of senior leadership and said: we’ve sent fewer emails to fewer people. But we’ve driven more revenue.” – Natalie Fordham

The CRM team brought stakeholders from across the business on the journey, aligning them around a shared vision of customer experience and brand consistency.

This wasn’t just a technology project. It was a strategic shift in how Goodwood thinks about its customers, its data and its marketing.

Read the full case study to see how Goodwood delivered award-winning results with Apteco and R-cubed

Furness: Reconnecting with Purpose Through Data and Brand

Jon Cartlidge, from Furness Building Society, shared a refreshingly honest account of transformation in progress. While many organisations at Enlighten were showcasing mature CRM strategies, Furness offered a different perspective, one of a business at the beginning of its data journey, but with a clear sense of purpose.

Founded in 1865 to support shipbuilders in Barrow, the society is returning to its roots. That meant rethinking everything from brand identity and physical spaces to digital services and member communications.

The rebrand was more than cosmetic. It was grounded in local heritage, with a new colour palette inspired by the region and a renewed focus on community.

But the real challenge lay in the data. Despite being a member-owned organisation, Furness admitted it didn’t truly know its members. Data is fragmented, insight was limited, and communications were largely untargeted.

The turning point came with a Refocus, which revealed just how far behind the organisation was compared to peers.

With support from R-cubed, Furness is now on its way to building a Single Customer View and laying the foundations for personalised, data-driven journeys.

Looking to the future for Furness in their Data Strategy

The goal is to move from batch-and-blast to relevant, timely communications. Communications do not just go out to savers and borrowers, but also for mortgage brokers, who account for 97% of the society’s revenue.

This is a story of transformation with humility. It’s about recognising the gaps, securing internal buy-in, and building a future where every member interaction feels personal, purposeful, and valued.

Delivering Intelligent Customer Experiences

In an increasingly fast moving and competitive world, where customers have more choice than ever before, delivering powerful customer experiences has become increasingly important. But without the right data in place, or the tech to make it happen, most companies struggle to make this a reality, and instead continue to deliver a one-size-fits-all customer journey.

R-cubed teamed up with Fresh Egg at our Enlighten summit to talk about how you can now deliver intelligent customer experiences for every single visitor.

Maximising the customer experience

Fresh Egg’s approach can help you to optimise the online experience for your customers, through making it as simple as possible for your customer to get to the information they want.

This might be how you lay out your website or structure your emails. Are the key messages in the right place?  Are you adapting your layout for mobile, or are you just the same as the PC version?

Personalising the experience

But Fresh Egg have gone one step further than just adapting online content based on how customers use your site. The really exciting step is that they track how customers come to your website. Through following the individual on their online journeys, you can add a new invaluable source of data to enhance the customer experience based on their preferences.

So, for example, if a customer is coming to you from Tik Tok, then it might be more suitable for you to show them your content in short video format.  Or their online behaviour might indicate that they prefer written content. By using and linking all these touchpoints, you get closer and closer to designing and organising content that’s suited to them.

Enlighten Panel Discussion: How to Sell Data to the Boardroom

An Enlighten panel in Brighton 2025, (speakers left to right) James Alty, Andy Dellbridge, Iain Pringle, Jonathan Cartlidge

Our panel tackled a familiar challenge: how do you get the board to back your data strategy? Led by Craig Young; Jon Cartlidge, James Alty, Iain Pringle and Andy Dellbridge answered questions like:

• Where does marketing stand within the business and how much are we listened to?
• What does the board want to hear? What language should we be talking?
• Are we concentrating on the wrong KPIs?
• What do you do about those people who say things like “our customers don’t shop online” or “loyalty schemes don’t work” before you even get into the detail of your business case?
• How do you communicate that journey and how do you get them excited and on board when you’re basically saying, “guess what, your workload is going to go up”?

Marketing Has a Seat at the Table, But We Need to Use It Well

Our panel tackled a familiar challenge: How do you get the board to back your data strategy?

The consensus? Marketing and insight teams are in a stronger position than ever, but only if they speak the board’s language.

That means moving beyond reporting and into storytelling. It means understanding what matters to each stakeholder and tailoring your message accordingly.

Iain Pringle described it as building a “warehouse of goodwill” with the CFO and other stakeholders, so when the time comes to pitch something bold, you’ve already earned the trust. Gain yourself an ally in the boardroom and the challenge becomes a lot easier.

The Thread That Tied It All Together

Across all four sessions at Enlighten this year, one idea kept coming up: integration over innovation.

It’s not about chasing the next shiny tool. It’s about connecting what you already have. It means bringing your data, your teams and your channels to deliver better experiences, smarter decisions, and stronger results. And that starts with understanding where you are in your data journey to CRM Excellence. Learn more about the 8 data essentials in a Refocus session.

While data and AI are now firmly on the board’s agenda, that doesn’t automatically translate into trust or investment. The panel explored how marketing and insight teams can position themselves as strategic partners, not just operational support.

A key theme was the importance of stakeholder mapping. By regularly assessing who your allies are, where resistance lies, and which relationships need nurturing, teams can build the internal credibility needed to drive change.

The panel closed with a reminder that influence is not just about data or dashboards. It’s about relationships, timing, and persistence.

Whether you’re myth-busting with evidence, navigating internal politics, or simply repeating the same message until it sticks, the work of gaining buy-in is ongoing.

As one speaker put it, “Don’t get bored of telling the same story again and again.” Because when the story is clear, consistent, and backed by data, it becomes a catalyst for change.