New product emails vs. promo emails - what’s an e-retailer to do?

October 5th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

We all know the efficiencies associated with keeping happy customers versus always finding new ones. Ya, ya, I know it’s hard to resist the excitement of closing a new customer, but as far as costs go, nothing beats the loyal, happy customer.

So it’s not surprising that retention is starting to be more of the buzz for e-commerce. Sure there’s always going to be investments made in search, the presentation of products online and all that good stuff, but keeping customers feeling the love (over and over again) is fast becoming a top priority in e-commerce.

This whole retention thing screams email. And according to a recent interview with Scott Silverman (shop.org big wig), “One of the interesting findings in the Shop.org-Forrester Research ‘2007 State of Retailing Online Part 2’ report, released in September, is that e-mails emphasizing new products outperform e-mails promoting sales.

Makes perfect sense since no one wants to be last to know about something new! I sure don’t. Actually this reminds me of a study I once read that said men like the “new” angle while women like the “sales” angle. Who really knows?! And I need to stay on track here so…

Regardless of what any study says, you can’t forget the importance of knowing YOUR own customers / subscribers. Some people are all about the deals and the sales! Others are all about the brand and being part of the trend!

So what’s a retailer to do you ask? Don’t make any assumptions. Test and segment your subscribers! I’m simplifying this a little, but it really is simple. A really easy test is on the subject line. In one subject line play with the “check out our new products” angle and in the other try the “check out this week’s deals” angle.

To read the whole interview with Scott Silverman, complete with cool charts (that I wish I had time to paste in this post), I really think you should read:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005442&src=article1_newsltr

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Email marketing, eCommerce |