For most e-retailers, sales increases come from well-designed marketing campaigns built on shopping trends analysis. Replacements Ltd. learned about the potential of exposure on YouTube.com through a customer’s unnoticed video made during a company tour.
“Unbeknownst to us a customer came through on a tour we do every 30 minutes, made a video and put it on YouTube,” says Jack Whitley, senior vice president, e-commerce. “We got a significant amount of traffic from it, but there are a host of issues there. The web offers tremendous opportunities, but the other side of the equation has to be looked at.”
While the video wasn’t malicious, it led Replacements to review its tour policies, in addition to exploring the medium’s potential for future marketing efforts.
Replacements, No. 174 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, normally is meticulous about its market research. The niche retailer, which specializes in completing shoppers’ china, silverware and crystal sets and stocks 275,000 tableware patterns, relied on online advertising and focused e-mail marketing to help drive 19% growth in 2007.
Online advertising helped grow sales, Whitley says. “We placed well over 5 million ads. We treat each one as a discrete ad, so it’s a big maintenance challenge and we must continually reposition them,” he says. Replacements grew its ads by about 50% in the first half of 2007, which helped drive sales, Whitley says.
E-mail marketing also contributed to growth in 2007. Last year Replacements sent about 120 million e-mail pieces to its opt-in customer base, including product listings and newsletters. “The newsletters really are powerful tools,” Whitley says. “We share lots of history – there’s tons of design history around tableware. It’s part of the fabric of our culture.”
For 2008, Replacements plans to continue its online advertising and e-mail marketing, while also evaluating social networking. “We are definitely watching the social networks,” Whitley says. “They are a phenomenon, although demographically some are better than others.”
Facebook.com and MySpace.com both are looking for ways to make money via advertising on their sites, he notes, but their role isn’t yet clear.
And thanks to its unplanned YouTube pilot, Replacements will give that marketing avenue some thought. “The whole YouTube video phenomenon is going to get close scrutiny by us in 2008,” Whitley says. “We’re going to look at all facets of it.”
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