Hershey whips up recipes for attracting shoppers to its web sites

Hershey Foods Corp. is generating 20% annual growth at its consumer e-commerce web site, HersheysGifts.com, with a lot of help from HersheysKitchens.com, where consumers find baking recipes and a link to HersheysGifts, Carey Eisenhauer, Internet marketing manager, tells InternetRetailer.com.

“We are seeing 20% annual growth over the past few years,” Eisenhauer says. Much of that growth is driven by users of Hershey’s print catalog, which advertises the web address for HersheysGifts.com, Eisenhauer says.

But the e-commerce site is also getting a boost of traffic from non-commerce sites, including HersheysKitchens.com and HersheysKisses.com, which offer recipes for baking with Hershey’s chocolate and image links to HersheysGifts. Consumers searching the web for chocolate often land at the main corporate site, Hersheys.com, then link to HersheysKitchens and other company sites for recipes or specific product information, Eisenhauer says.

The tie-in among the various sites and HersheyGifts produces not only an increase in traffic and sales at the e-commerce site, but also helps to attract different groups of consumers. Most customers who shop on HersheysGifts tend to be among higher-income professionals, but HersheysKitchens attracts more stay-at-home mothers who have more time for cooking but lower incomes, Eisenhauer says. “We’re working on finding ways to make these two sites work more closely together,” he adds.

Hershey has also directed traffic to HersheysGifts through e-mail promotions, including free gifts with minimum purchases. Hershey sends only permission-based marketing e-mails. It builds its e-mail subscriber list by displaying opt-in features at strategic points throughout HersheysGifts.com, including alongside its catalog-request feature and at the end of checkout.