How GSI Commerce manages e-mail marketing with dozens of partners

To get more effective e-mail marketing at the more than 45 e-commerce web sites it operates, GSI Commerce Inc. is moving toward a new marketing strategy that combines site analytics and e-mail campaign management software, Jeff McCall, vice president of customer relationship management, tells Internet Retailer.

One of the marketing techniques GSI is trying is e-mailing special offers to shoppers after they abandon a shopping cart. "If someone puts a Sony DVD player in a shopping cart on Tweeter.com and then abandons it, we’ll automatically e-mail them an offer for free shipping for that product or a related one," McCall says.

It’s also experimenting with a way to lure back shoppers who abandoned a shopping cart after having browsed for a product that was out of stock. "We’ll automatically send them an e-mail telling them that the product will be in stock in two weeks, and that we’ll give them free shipping if they wait instead of going somewhere else," McCall says.

GSI is piloting Omniture Inc.’s Site Catalyst site analytics application integrated with e-mail campaign management from E.Piphany. After checking other analytics programs, GSI chose Omniture for its integration with a data warehouse and its visual presentation of analytics data, McCall says. "We can get five people in a room to see a graphical presentation, so they all see the same thing instead of getting different interpretations from everyone separately reading a report," he says.

The visual presentation uses different colors and varying thickness of lines connecting different sections of a web site. The lines could indicate, for example, the level of online customer traffic that purchased a particular product after clicking on an e-mail marketing message. But a review of the data could go even further: It could show, for instance, that the same e-mail may have targeted customers who had shopped for the same product in the recent past but had abandoned the shopping cart.

"The visualization helps to keep up a discussion of the data," McCall says. "It’s a great way to explain to non-technical people, ‘Here’s what people are doing on your web site.’"

Visualization is a crucial tool to GSI, as it strives to get more of its growing number of retail partners using integrated site analytics and e-mail marketing, McCall says, adding that GSI needs to move away from relying on its in-house IT staff to build analytics and marketing applications. "We’re reaching a threshold by adding retail partners, and our IT resources are reaching a saturation point, so we’re going with a fully dedicated team with Omniture," he says.