Attractive e-mails entice customer to shop, Egghead.com says
As e-mail becomes more sophisticated and interesting, with HTML content and color graphics, customer response rates go up, Jeffrey Sheahan, CEO of Egghead.com, told the eTail 2001 conference. Egghead experiences such rates near 40%, he said. "You’ve got to know the target," he said. "You’ve got to get a lot of customer information and make sure you bring all that information to a single data base." Once a company has that customer knowledge, e-mail can be an effective marketing tool. At Egghead, 33% of revenue is generated by e-mails, the average order of an active e-mail recipient rises 15% and e-mail is responsible for 12% of Egghead’s repeat business. "This is less about offering discounts and more about being in front of your customers often enough," Sheahan said. "You have to be there frequently enough so that you’re there when they are in a buying mode."
Sheahan cautioned, however, that although e-mail is easy and inexpensive, retailers can’t let that stop them from measuring e-mail’s return on investment, "Measure the results of e-mail marketing," Sheahan said. "Use control groups and test discounts, coupons and various offers."
Back...
