>From the Web to the Desk

double-digit click-through and response rates are leading Boise Cascade Office Products Corp. to increase its investment in e-mail marketing.

Itasca, IL-based Boise has been using e-mail to bolster its online catalog (www.bcop.com) for less than a year. E-mail order volume is presently less than 10% but growing, says Ann Stoddard, Internet marketing manager.

In the office products and supplies market, the response to e-mail is substantially higher than the typical 1% from regular direct mail, notes Stoddard.

“Our response is very encouraging,” she says. “The industry standard for click-throughs is 16% to 18% and we’re seeing 20% to 25% click-through rates. Response to e-mail promotions averages 12%.”

Earlier this year Boise began publishing an online version of its 900-page annual catalog. The paper edition is mailed only upon request and distributed primarily by field sales reps who, along with mail and phone orders, still account for about 90% of Boise’s business.

The company offers more than 10,000 core products available for next-day delivery. Upwards of 200,000 products can be sourced by the company to accommodate special orders for customers. In 1998 Boise sold $3.1 billion worth of office products, computer supplies, paper and office furniture.

Boise has developed an e-mail list of 6,000 commercial accounts, representing 80,000 registered customers. E-mail is used for special and seasonal promotions and for supporting the electronic catalog.

All customers must register online to place e-mail catalog orders or opt-in to receive direct e-mail promotions. Registration requires filling out questionnaires to collect such data as name, e-mail address and street address. The forms include 20 product categories customers can choose to indicate areas of interest.

More than 75% of sales revenues at Boise come from contracts with purchasing managers or agents at corporations, educational and government entities. Once contracts are signed, Boise uses e-mail to target secretaries and administrators who place most orders. The typical target for these offers is women ages 30 to 35 years old.

Sales contracts typically allow specified end users with predetermined budgets to place their own orders. Only about 10% of Boise’s contracts specifically exclude marketing directly to end users, requiring that an e-mail suppression file be maintained, Stoddard says.

Boise jump-started its list by capturing e-mail addresses from correspondence before it used the Internet for direct marketing. It used these compiled e-mail lists to send out “invitations” to visit its new Web site and online catalog.

Stoddard says she subsequently learned that the best way to build an e-mail list is by encouraging Web site visitors to fill out registration forms to opt-in to receive information, because using e-mail for prospecting often annoys customers.

When Boise sent out unsolicited e-mail to announce the Web site, customers protested. “We were accused of spamming. From the [negative] reaction we received, you would have thought we had sent out something pornographic,” Stoddard says.

Future plans at Boise include using database information to further personalize e-mail offers. At present the only personalization used is a salutation greeting. Boise plans to introduce an interactive Web page using its database to allow customers to ask and receive answers to frequently asked questions. Boise also plans to do more analysis of click-through visits to its Web pages in the future.

Boise outsources back-end e-mail and online catalog operations to ClickAction, relying on its server to communicate with customers. Stoddard works with ClickAction to oversee the scheduling and content of e-mail promotions and links to Boise’s Web site, similar to the way a traffic manager oversees projects at an advertising agency.

The Arlington Heights, IL, branch of Advantage Marketing handles fulfillment for e-mail promotions on behalf of Boise. Milwaukee-based Prime Source Inc. (formerly known as Momentum) is in the process of developing an integrated advertising and marketing campaign for Boise’s “water cooler” Web page, which is used to register customers to generate additional e-mail names and addresses.

To build online traffic for the water cooler page Boise regularly posts a gossipy one-paragraph installment of a story involving a nostalgic high school romance. It uses a replica of a yearbook from 1964 – the year Boise was founded – to report on the goings on between Judy the cheerleader and Steve the football player.