GSI Commerce boosts conversions close to 7% for sporting goods clients

With a merchant client roster of more than 50 that spans The Sports Authority and Chanel, e-commerce service and technology provider GSI Commerce Inc. has the opportunity to collect a potential CRM gold mine of customer data on each client’s behalf: registration data, preference information, transaction information, survey information, clickstream data.

To better leverage the gigabytes of customer information in its data warehouse for its clients, GSI two years ago turned to technology provider SPSS Inc. and its Clementine data mining tool. That software application runs on top of CRM software from provider E.Piphany that encompasses call center applications and its own clickstream analysis tool among other functions. Though Atique Shah, vice president of CRM/marketing at GSI, doesn’t disclose results for individual GSI clients, the improved data mining and the marketing initiatives stemming from it is paying off, as aggregate results across several GSI-supported sporting goods sites show.

GSI’s marketing staff groups customers in four segments according to purchase history: bronze for customers who make a one-time purchase, silver for two purchases, gold for three and platinum for those making four or more purchases. Some of the online campaigns to those customers weren’t segmented, but when GSI saw in looking at reports from the database that the lifetime revenue value differed significantly among groups, it started targeting content and offers accordingly.

“You don’t treat the platinum customer the same as the bronze customer,” Shah says. “Some of the testing we did on our sporting goods sites was phenomenal. For example, the same e-mail campaign that used to deliver a good 1% click-through rate, an industry average, with a .5% conversion, is now delivering over 10% click through rate with a 6% conversion rate after we reworked the message and redelivered the content, working with the creative department. Across the sporting goods sites, we got a huge lift, from 1% to close to 7% conversion.”

At GSI Commerce, CRM is simply the ability to generate or increase the lifetime value of customers for the benefit of both the company and its customers, adds Shah. “All you have to do is take a step toward your customer base, recognize what their interests are, and treat them accordingly,” he says.