Hat World boosts click-throughs and revenue with rebuilt e-mail database

Hat World tripled the size of its customer e-mail database after commissioning a data enhancement service in February, leading to a surge in revenue and click-throughs during the first four weeks after the project’s completion in mid-March, reports Karen Weber, director of e-commerce.

Hat World commissioned e-mail services provider Yesmail, a unit of InfoUSA, to update and cleanse its customer e-mail database. Yesmail processed Hat World’s loyalty club database with Yesmail’s Email Append Service, providing e-mail addresses for 30% of customers for whom Hat World had only postal addresses. Yesmail then used its Email Change of Address process to update Hat World’s database with its customers’ current e-mail addresses, then corrected any e-mail addresses with obvious format and syntax errors.

In the four weeks following the completion of the database enhancement services, Hat World more than doubled its e-mail click-through rate and generated more than a third of the revenue produced in all of 2003, Hat World says. Hat World, a division of Genesco Inc., operates three retail web sites, Lids.com, Hatworld.com and Lidscyo.com, and about 480 stores under the brands Lids, Hat World, Hat Zone and Cap Factory. It specializes in selling licensed athletic headwear as well as other apparel, including logos from college and professional sports teams.

Weber says Hat World expects to further leverage its relationship with Yesmail to personalize and segment e-mail campaigns. “As our database improves, we’ll be able to better leverage the segmenting and personalization features of the Yesmail professional platform to help drive revenue,” she says.