In 1978, when Brad Harper started The Bombay Company it was strictly a mail-order company. Almost 30 years and almost 500 retail outlets later, the firm is reaching out to its customers in a new way—through e-mail newsletters. And it has plenty to talk about.
The Bombay Company, whose product line once consisted of reproductions of traditional 18th and 19th century English furniture, now offers a line of home accessories for children and adults at BombayKIDS, The Bombay Outlet and Bombay Canada.
The main newsletter, Bombay, is a weekly, and BombayKIDS is send “at least twice a month,” says Stacey Gross, director of internet operations for The Bombay Company. Both provide readers with information about upcoming products, decorating ideas and savings opportunities.
Growing the List
Different methods are employed in growing the subscription list. Visitors can opt in on The Bombay Company’s site, and co-op in programs are also employed in attaining addresses.
From experience, Gross steers clear of sweepstakes for acquiring new list names due to the “astronomical” cost per acquisition based on putting the sweepstake together.
"I think it's a good idea,” she says. “We just didn't have the best success with it." She adds that Bombay’s sweepstake was conducted on the kids side of the business where there were only 50 stores—not a huge presence.
There are 650,000 unique and almost 900,000 total subscribers receiving the newsletters. However, some recipients have opted in to receive both the Kids and the core newsletter. Open rates range from 17% on the low end to 28%, according to Gross. Click-through rates are, "generally pretty high as well."
Higher opt-out rates occur seasonally, usually after the first of the year. Those rates are mainly attributed to gift buyers who check out without unchecking the box to receive newsletters. During the rest of the year, bounces are a result of people changing e-mail addresses.
"All of our e-mail links are tagged so we're able to track sales attributed to an entrance to our site through the e-mail,” says Gross. However, the only way to track the diversion of a customer to a store from the e-newsletter is through the use of an attached coupon.
Lessons Learned
"One thing we've learned from online tracking is that our customers like to shop," says Gross. "Even if we have a featured product on the e-mail, the most clicked-on link regardless of position is Start Shopping. They will click on Start Shopping before they click on any other link, which is why we don't do a lot of editorial."
Two other lessons Gross cites are that the offer in the subject line is highly effective and directly relational to the open rate as well as the strength of offers in the e-newsletter such as free shipping or percent of total order discount.
Challenges Moving Ahead
Segmentation is a present challenge. "From a back-end data perspective, we struggle to get the right info queried to create a pointed e-mail to find out who bought a particular bedding collection in the kids store so we can offer them a special offer for that collection,” says Goss. “But we're getting much closer to that and I think we'll be able to start segmenting e-mails much more effectively going forward."
The Bombay Company has been working with Silverpop for approximately three years, using its Silverpop Marketer platform to create, track and send its e-mail newsletters. Moving forward, Silverpop will be instrumental in the execution of segmenting customers.
”The implementation of segmentation, looking at past purchase behavior and hitting them with specials is the next phase,” says Shane Desrochers, senior regional sales manager for Silverpop.
Further EZINE LISTS Reading:
- How to Build Your E-Zine List
- How to Write an E-zine Your Subscribers Will Love (or at Least Open and Read)
- How to Start and Run an E-Mail Newsletter
