Ok, I had to keep the word relevance out of the title of this post, as I didn’t want to stereotype myself and be YAEMOAS (yet another email marketer on a soapbox). However, after having recently returned from Boston and spending a few days 100% immersed in the world of retailers at the Internet Retailer Conference, I must say it reinforces a few things.
No arguing, times are tough for retailers — just ask Eddie Bauer. I heard a quote floating around last week that “even is the new growth.” While you may or may not agree with that, and that would most likely depend on your business model and industry, we can all agree times have been easier. But as with any change, there is opportunity hidden in the shifting landscape. The silver-lining theme of this year’s conference was “Rising Above — Not Just Surviving the Economic Storm.”
Prior to my presentation at the workshops, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of different attendees, exhibitors, and sit in on some other presentations. There was an obvious focus on relevance with people exploring and asking about how to improve results and get much needed lifts in email metrics that would directly correlate to dollars. I can’t say I’ve been to a conference in a long time where all of the attendees seemed as legitimately interested in the show’s content as they were in getting out of the office for a few days.
In his presentation, Jack Love of Internet Retailer, shared some revealing metrics regarding the growth of e-retail channels over the past two years. And while the rate of growth has declined, overall, there is still growth in the e-retail channel. However, most of the growth came from the top 50 companies. And within the top 5 e-retail growth were two very familiar names: Amazon and Apple.
Love pointed out that these are two companies that heavily invest in technology. The interesting thing about both of these companies from my perspective is that is that they are two companies that don’t merely invest in technology, but they invest in the tech that allows them more latitude to innovate, play new angles, and yes, be even more relevant to their loyal customers.
In fact, I find both Amazon and Apple to be prime examples of utilizing email marketing in ways that provides timely, personally tailored email marketing messages in an ongoing, customer life-cycle manner. These don’t just create lifts in email-to-purchase conversions, but it’s also great for the customer relationship with those strong brands.
Apple notes what I browse and buy via the itunes store, they know which products I have purchased in the past, and then they always send me “you might also like X” emails. I think they might have even laughed at some of my music purchases behind my back — but I might be reaching.
Amazon remembers not only what I bought, but where I live. They knew I have browsed home improvement products in the past (insert laugh from my wife here). They knew I lived near Chicago. Earlier this year, I received a very relevant and timely message a few weeks into the blustery cold of winter promoting items such as weather stripping and insulating products for my doors and windows.
This level of savvy in combining marketing and technology to improve relevant offers was no small win. According to Jack Love, while overall the growth of e-retail had increased 4.6% this year (compared to 25% the year before), as he dug into his numbers, it was evident that Apple and Amazon were much farther ahead of the pack with 35% and 30% growth over their previous years, respectively.
What is perhaps an even bigger statement is the gap between these two leading marketers, and the rest of the e-retail world. Many companies were not fortunate enough to even see the baseline 4.6% growth that the retail industry averaged. I can tell you anecdotally, as I had the opportunity to speak with a number of different people at the conference, that many of them were doing little to no segmenting. They were sitting on mounds of purchase history and marketing intelligence that was basically collecting dust and being used for nothing more than order fulfillment. I also noticed a lot of dilated pupils and perked up ears as we would discuss the multitude of options they had for sending better targeted messages.
I will share here what I shared with those individuals at the time: start simple.
It’s too easy to over-engineer something your first pass in an effort to make up for lost time. But the beauty of email is that it’s inexpensive and immediate to test your ideas. It doesn’t take much to grab a targeted segment of your list who last purchased product X and send them a message saying “you might also be interested in Y.” Lean economic times are ripe with opportunity for the agile. The unparalleled agility offered by combining even simple marketing intel with email offers a powerful springboard to help you better serve your customers, and gain a competitive edge when every advantage counts.
