Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

Hat tip to Jason Billingsley for sharing and Loren McDonald for creating.  Presentation below…

Viral Loop is a new book by Adam L. Penenberg.  I’ve not read it yet but did go through the author’s guest post on TechCrunch.com (article link).  The Hotmail story is relevant to BetterRetail.  A summary:

Hotmail initially raised money through the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  While considering advertising Hotmail founder suggested billboards.  Draper (founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson) suggested putting PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail at the bottom of every email.  The Hotmail team did not like this approach and didn’t include it in launch.  Hotmail.com launched Independence Day 1996 and was adding couple of hundred users a day.  Draper still insisted on adding PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.  Finally, the Hotmail team agreed; though they dropped the PS: I love you bit.

The impact was almost instantaneous.  Within hours Hotmail’s growth took on the shape of a classic hockey stick curve.  They started averaging 3,000 users a day, compounded daily.  By Labor Day they registered 750,000 users and within six months they were up to 1 million.  Five weeks after that they hit the 2 million user mark, adding more than 20,000 signups a day.

The rest is history.

Yes, if you make them worth reading…

My buddy Mike from Vexxt shared this great email from 1-800-PROFLOWERS:

My dad asked me to buy 3 GPS accessories for him.  He gave me the name of the equipment and the web address of store.  I had never heard of buygpsnow.com and though it violated quite a few of my ecommerce essentials I knew dad had done his research.  I made the purchase.

Data can be highly subjective.  Looked one way it says something, looked another way something entirely different.  How much money buygpsnow.com makes off me depends entirely on how accurately they segment me as a customer.  Under one view my transaction was quite standard and I couldn’t fault them for assuming I am a typical site shopper and sending communication messages intended for GPS enthusiasts.  But this view is inaccurate, and a brief review of the transaction proves it:

— This was my first purchase on the site and I bought 3 GPS units.  [Why did I buy 3?]
— I completed my transaction in 32 seconds and spent $150. [This speed of transaction suggests I knew exactly what I wanted]
— I used expedited shipping. [Arguably, I was in a rush]

If I was working with buygpsnow.com I would have stored these extra bits of data in my customer file.  I would also add a field called “inactivity”.  If Rishi does not open our emails or make another purchase for the whole year it would clearly indicate he is not a GPS (or gadget) enthusiast and made this purchase as a gift for someone else.  Just knowing this could help me make more money through Rishi.  See, they’ve been sending me emails assuming I bought the GPS for myself and this is one reason I don’t read them.  However, if I got an email that said “Hi Rishi, six months ago you bought the GPS 33.  We believe this was a gift purchase and wanted to inform of a new accessory that would be a perfect gift for someone who already has the GPS 232 unit”.  Suddenly I am interested and would love to gift this to my dad.  Context is everything.

Related article: Capturing Intent

Nybgshop.org has a nifty strategy to grow their registration list.  They call it “Member Price”:

Get Elastic posted a fantastic example of how Office Max uses the checkout process to expand their email list.  You can read the whole article here.

Related Articles: Tell Me What I’m Getting Into, Making The Most Of “Out Of Stock”.

Every eCommerce store wants you to join their email list.  But customers hate the idea of getting email blasts and this apprehension can be a negative for companies that actually do send out well crafted, thoughtful emails.  Madeinnapavalley.com solves this by providing an example of their typical email newsletter:

Here is the sample email pop up:

I know it’s tempting to send mass emails to your customer database in hopes that 1% would convert and buy your products but a few companies have realized that by sending relevant marketing messages they can significantly improve conversion AND generate word of mouth without annoying 99% of their paying customers.  This email message that my wife received from Flat Top Grill is a perfect example:

Flat-top-grill-email-marketing-message