Bluefly CEO Payner: Customers Want to Talk to You

Bluefly CEO Melissa Payner doesn’t have a thing to wear, or at least that’s what she thinks when she looks in her closet full of black outfits.

First she thought she was crazy, then she wondered if women all over the county felt the same way. And that’s where the idea for the online merchant’s current campaign, “Why Women Shop,” was born. It also led Bluefly to discover that if it asks its customers questions, they will answer.

Bluefly, which sells discounted designer apparel and home accessories, sent to about 10,000 women customers an e-mail survey in September asking why they shop. The e-mail had a clickthrough rate of 15%, and 85% of those who opened it completed the survey. A second e-mail survey was sent to 90,000 consumers, asking them to review a soon-to-air commercial that was a result of the first survey; this had an 8% clickthrough rate and was answered by 87% of those who opened the e-mail.

“It’s clear that our customers want to talk with us,” Payner says, “and they felt they had a lot to say to us.”

What they said confirmed to Payner that she wasn’t crazy, and that many women in the U.S. have similar shopping patterns. They don’t shop because they need something—hence the lack of clothes for specific occasions–but for emotional and irrational reasons. Shopping was a way to celebrate a good day, feel better about a bad day, even to blow off steam after arguing with a significant other. And because women often shop for comfort, they tend to buy the same sort of clothing over and over.

The “why do you shop” survey showed the following results:

• 51% of respondents called themselves shopaholics.
• 72% said they were not happy with the contents of their closets.
• 55% said they had a “closet crisis” once a week.
• 50% said they shopped when they were board, having a bad day or celebrating.
• 30% said they shopped for “other” reasons, and wrote in those reasons.

“Almost 100% of the customers who responded said their shopping habits were related to some sort of emotion,” Payner says. “I was shocked to get that kind of response.”

Bluefly launched a print and TV campaign based on those replies. The print ads, which run in fashion and women’s lifestyle magazines “Elle,” “Harper’s Bazaar,” “InStyle,” “Lucky,” “Marie Claire,” “Vogue,” and “Real Simple,” show the back of a naked woman staring at her full-yet-empty closet, with text that reads “That’s why I Bluefly.”

The TV spots were sent to the second group of customers on Oct. 18, a day before they were to launch uncensored on Bravo and censored on Oxygen, NBC, and the WB. Both commercials showed the same woman looking in her closet and finding “nothing” to wear. One had her then go downstairs to entertain guests; the other had her meet a friend at an outdoor café.

“We sent them to the consumers to see if they got the connection between feeling like you don’t have anything to wear and being naked,” Payner says. “We had 67% of the respondents say they liked the commercials and would send them to a friend, 42% who thought they were very funny, and 34% wrote back with their thoughts.” Respondents didn’t like the café spot as much as the home entertaining one, so Bluefly removed it from the airwaves.

“We read every single comment that we received, we listened to what they had to say, and I think our customers appreciate that,” Payner says. “We want to be connected to our customers and develop these interactive relationships.”

Bluefly will be analyzing the initial results of the TV campaign, which ends Nov. 19, this week. Payner says it’s hard to translate the impact of commercials to Bluefly’s sales, but she notes that the site has seen a 100% spike in traffic compared with this time last year.