This holiday season, Abebooks Inc. is stressing the breadth of its inventory of rare, used and out-of-print books, as well as unique offerings among them, to appeal to high-end buyers in an attempt to stand out from the online crowd.
A successful, and very seasonal, example of this strategy was a sale last month of a first edition of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” It fetched $7,500.
Overall the holiday season campaign is gaining interest: Since mid-November traffic is up and sales have increased 25% over last year, says Boris Wertz, COO.
“The Monday after Thanksgiving definitely kick-started the holiday shopping season for us. However, we expect today or tomorrow to be the days with the highest sales,” Wertz says. “We created a ‘Holiday Bookshop’ that is acting as our hub for shoppers browsing for gifts, and so far that is working really well. E-mail marketing, though, is not very effective right now. I believe this is industrywide because there simply are too many messages being sent during the holiday season.”
But the results of e-mail marketing have not dampened the holiday spirit at Abebooks, No. 67 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Executives have observed that North American online customers seem to be more cost-conscious this year—which is OK, because the pure-play e-retailer’s free shipping promotion has generated five times more sales compared with the same offer at this time last year.
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