To spread out holiday shopping activity across channels, American Eagle Outfitters Inc. e-mails customers promotions that draws traffic online Thanksgiving Day and into stores the morning after. “Those campaigns are hugely successful,” Dave Brumback, director of operations for AE Direct, the retailer’s direct-to-consumer division, tells InternetRetailer.com.
A few days before Thanksgiving, American Eagle will e-mail customers with offers for, say, 15% off online orders all day on Thanksgiving Day, when stores are closed. The same promotion would also encourage shoppers to then follow up with store visits on the following Friday with a 15% in-store discount offered through noon.
The tactic not only drives across multiple channels, but also helps to broaden the peak curve of holiday shopping, Brumback says. “We spend a lot of time focusing on taking the curve and making it wider,” he says.
The effort also uses data on customer shopping histories to let American Eagle tailor marketing messages to segments of customers based on their channel preference. “We may tweak messages for store-only shoppers and for those who shop mostly online,” he says.
But the central focus is on promoting the American Eagle brand, he adds, so marketing messages that emphasize store promotions, for example, will also mention offers on AE.com. “The promotion for a store-only shopper will be geared more toward a Friday-after-Thanksgiving event, but it will also let them know they can shop on Thanksgiving on AE.com,” Brumback says.
American Eagle is No. 112 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites.
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