Marketing to international customers through Internet search engines and affiliates, though popular among international e-retailers, can be far more effective once a retail site has localized its content for targeted foreign consumers, Tristan Money, vice president of marketing at AllPosters.com, tells Internet Retailer.
At AllPosters, which sells into more than 40 countries, a foreign marketing strategy came to life after the retailer deployed a language-translation tool from SDL Inc. “We had a fairly sizable international business from non-English-speaking countries,” Money says.
Last October, the retailer began using the SDL application to translate content into French, German and Spanish. The SDL tool recognizes a shopper’s IP address, then automatically translates site content in the native language of the shopper’s country. The shopper has the option to click back to English.
Surprisingly, the translation service itself didn’t have a direct impact on sales, Money says. “It had almost no direct impact on conversions,” he says, adding: “It was purely a foundation with which we could scale up our international business.”
By populating its site with words in native languages, the translation made it easier to build a marketing program through Internet search and affiliates. “We were able to build a marketing campaign to direct people to our site,” he says. “That brought a big lift in sales.”
SDL charges a translation fee based on the number of words on a web site and the number of languages, says Terry Lawlor, vice president of worldwide marketing. A large site with a few languages could cost $50,000 to $100,000 to translate, he says.
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