REI to put its own spin on the company blog

REI Inc. is putting its own spin on a blog scheduled for a limited rollout this month. REI was looking for technology that would make it easier for local REI stores, which already have their own pages on REI.com, to post content about store news and events on those pages, and to distribute that content to local e-mail lists, says director of e-mail marketing Meg Reynolds. It also wanted to bring a more standardized look to the grassroots efforts some stores already had undertaken on their own. It found the solution in blogging technology, Reynolds says.

Blogging software developed by Seattle e-mail technology developer What Counts will, in effect, make bloggers out of store personnel who use the tool to post local events and schedules. While that content will reflect the personality of REI as a company to the extent that it supports company values and mission, it’s not, at this point, intended as an extended platform for the personal attitudes of the individual blogger.

“We’re using blogging technology, but it really will not be presented as a blog,” says Reynolds. “We are not educating the 50 or so users that they are going to be blogging. We’re simply creating a new user interface that makes it incredibly simple to post content.”

REI, the 66th largest online retailer in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, plans to blog-enable the web pages of 15 of its northern California stores this month; that content will also be sent to those stores’ local e-mail lists. If the rollout proceeds without glitches, Reynolds says the rest of REI’s stores will be added in August. Any needed adjustments that emerge would create a more phased rollout, which would extend the program to 15 to 30 additional stores in Phase II and bring the remaining stores online in a third phase, Reynolds says.

Reynolds said the blogs—essentially, content pages posted on the site by REI’s local stores—will be pushed out to the subscribed local e-mail list. REI will employ the same metrics on click-through and conversion for these e-mails as for its other marketing e-mail and it also will be able to track from the blogs to purchases by REI members in stores. But, success at this point is less about traditional online sales metrics. “We do have some opportunity to look at a dollars-per-e-mail kind of success mark, but we don’t have the same expectations that we do for our other marketing e-mail,” says Reynolds. “This is part of our education outreach, and what we are hoping to do is increase visibility and attendance at our store clinics and events.”