Case History: HoneyBaked Ham Returns to Newsletters

The HoneyBaked Ham Co. is back in the e-mail newsletter business.

Last December, the food marketer launched The Roundtable, an e-zine featuring holiday entertaining tips and related content. Two issues have been sent to 70,000 “retail-focused customers” who live within a seven- mile radius of one of HoneyBaked’s 300-plus stores.

Why focus on retail when the firm also has a big catalog business?

Because “we’re worried about there not being a call to action for catalog customers,” says Tim Kiss, director of enterprise direct marketing.

In fact, that’s one reason that the company pulled the plug on its previous newsletter. In 2000, it launched an e-zine solely for its catalog customers, but it was “copy heavy and didn’t have enough calls to action,” Kiss says. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

That e-letter, which had a circulation of roughly 20,000, was sent for the last time in 2001, but the company continued using e-mail in other formats, and it now has around 180,000 names on its general e-mail list. And it has became skilled at using recommended e-mail techniques.

One is personalization. “We actually say, ‘Send your sister, Betty Sue, the same ham you sent last year,'” Kiss says. “And we try to have creative focused on the occasion—for example, we might have a Christmas tree in the background.”

Another is list segmentation. HoneyBaked goes beyond the classic direct marketing formula of RFM (recency-frequency-monetary). “If we’re doing a clearance sale, we pull out our highest-end customers,” Kiss says. “Or, if we’re doing a contingency discount, we try to pull out those who bought in the last few months.”

Channel Synergy

The catalog channel is different from retail in that is based on generating response.

“We always have a strong call to action, including an 800 number on all of our e-mails,” Kiss says. “With average order of $100, it’s worth our time to talk to them on the phone if they have questions.”

Despite their differences, though, the various channels and media support each other.

When a newspaper ad coincides with a direct mail campaign, “the two together increase sales,” Kiss says. Similarly, HoneyBaked has improved sales by using e-mail to reinforce its catalog mailings.

“The e-mail follows in a couple of days,” he continues. “Our catalog gets a customer interested, our e-mail closes the deal. It is a real call to action.”

As for The Roundtable, it is still too early to determine results. But the company is thinking tweaking the name, and it may try another newsletter in the catalog channel.

“The greatest success we’ve had is when we’ve talked to customers as a family,” Kiss says, commenting on the firm’s creative approach.

Lessons Learned

What would Kiss advise newcomers to e-mail? For one thing, keep the copy short.

“When we started, we had a paragraph and a description of the paragraph,” Kiss says. “Then we started going to two or three sentences, and found that’s too much. Now we’re down to five or six words.”

For another, try to keep everything on one page. “When a customer had to scroll down, we found they were clicking the links one fourth of the time,” Kiss continues.

And how do you get the channels to work together?

“When you work on both the retail and catalog sides, it’s not hard to talk other side into it,” he laughs.

This story is based on a session and interview at ACC 2005, this year’s catalog conference in Orlando.