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. 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,” said Tim Kiss, director of enterprise direct marketing.
In fact, that’s one reason that the company, which has over 300 retail stores, 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 said. “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 become 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 said. “And we try to have creative focused on the occasion
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