Best Practices & List Growth: Retail is Random

August 9th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

Here at Sitebrand, we work with a ton of e-retailers. For those using our web personalization tool (affectionately called the Retail Marketing Suite), the permission conversation is never an issue. Targeting visitors with relevant content is based on behaviour, geography, etc. and it’s an automatic thing.

But for e-retailers who use our email marketing services, the permission conversation is a big one. And we take it seriously since we aren’t interested in spamming people. We always want to know how they’ve built their list, how it can be segmented etc.

In an article by Stefan Pollard of ClickZ called Many Opt-In Sources, One Permission Standard, Stefan touches on some really important points. He comments on the common reality of a retailer who has both an online business and a brick-and-mortar store. He notes they likely have list growth strategies that include, but are not limited to:

an opt-in form on web site
an opt-in (or gasp opt-out) checkbox on the order or confirmation page
solicitation by salespeople to purchaser’s at the point of sale
possibly even co-registration or affiliate programs

That’s all fine but what happens once the retailer gets these much anticipated email addresses from such a wide variety of collection channels? This, my friends, is where retail gets random.

Let’s consider best practices around opt-in acknowledgement. For people who opt-in on the web site, the acknowledgement is usually pretty good. It typically begins with a landing page that confirms their request has been processed. Then in a perfect world, that experience is followed by a welcome email that contains immediate gratification (maybe a free shipping offer) for the new subscriber. This is all good.

But flip over to the person who opted in via an order confirmation (i.e. a person who just opened their wallet for you!!!), and they typically get nothing. No special welcome email. No real acknowledgement that they are now signed up to receive special emails. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

If you agree there’s something wrong with this picture, you should definitely read Many Opt-In Sources, One Permission Standard…

Posted in Email marketing, eCommerce |