E-mail promotion plays a key role in Smartbargains’ customer retention
Smartbargains.com’s e-mail promotion program has a specific job in the discount soft goods retailer’s marketing strategy: customer retention. The online retailer communicates with an opt-in list of more than 1 million active subscribers a minimum of once a week, often more, via e-mails it calls Bargain Alerts that flag shoppers on new merchandise or especially good deals.
“Once a customer has come to the site, it’s important to have a vehicle to continue to communicate with the customer and work toward retention of the customer,” says CEO Carl Rosendorf. “For us, a key component of that strategy is the Bargain Alerts.”
Deeply discounted higher-end merchandise arrives at SmartBargins.com every day in limited quantities and sells out quickly, and shoppers who don’t move fast enough may find themselves left out. Bargain Alerts built its list on the idea that the e-mail promotions give shoppers who’ve signed up to receive them a heads-up on the newest merchandise to arrive, sometimes before it’s listed on the site.
It’s positioning that works for one of SmartBargain’s core customer types: the bargain hunter. “Many of our customers love a bargain and are less restricted to a particular product or category than they are to a good deal,” Rosendorf says. But other regular customers have more narrowly drawn interests; so weekly e-mails must strike a balance between the two audiences to drum up the biggest response. SmartBargains re-segments its list frequently according to a mix of factors including seasonality, world events, market opportunities and past customer behavior.
“Some of the alerts are not targeted but general, featuring new products or areas of interest to most people. Then another group of Bargain Alerts is based on previous purchases. For instance, if we got in a very hot new digital camera, we’d send an alert to people who we knew from past behavior are interested in electronics or digital cameras,” says Rosendorf. “Our team continuously evaluates the data. The goal is to make sure that what we are sending to the consumers is the most relevant offer we can make at the time.”
Back...
