Targeting the Well-Dressed and the Time-Pressed

E-mail marketing suits Zoots’ search for loyal dry cleaning customers IT WAS TIME TO GO to the next level on the Internet. Zoots, a two-year-old dry cleaners, had already capitalized on cyberspace. Its Web site (www.zoots.com), which is somewhat of a novelty in the industry, has been a boon to business and the company’s dabbling with interactive marketing netted some rewards too. But with 50 stores, primarily on the East Coast and in Cincinnati, the business – founded by Tom Stemberg and Todd Krasnow, creators of office superstore Staples – required more.

Enter Eversave.com (www.ever save.com), an online source for local offline coupons with more than 1 million registered members and local merchants in 50 states. By chance one day last year, the hard-to-miss purple Zoots delivery van pulled up to the home of Jere Doyle, founder, CEO and president of Eversave while he was out front raking leaves.

DRIVING BUSINESS “The driver stepped out, noted that I looked very busy and said I was just the kind of person who would benefit from Zoots’ pick-up and delivery service,” recalls Doyle, who became a customer even before he began doing business with them.

“It was clear to me that Zoots was the type of business that could benefit from our services,” says Doyle.

Eversave’s content focuses on promoting local, relevant offers that connect shoppers with their neighborhood retailers and services. The company delivers coupons and promotions from local businesses by tapping their members’ zip codes and customized shopping preferences. As a member, consumers can either print out coupons or show their free Eversave member card to get discounts at stores across the country, such as Linens `n Things, BJ’s Wholesale Club and online services like CoverGirl.com, Estyle.com and others.

CLEAN TARGET Members of Eversave – who can be targeted to up to 53 data points including age, location, gender, shopping categories and store preferences – “opt in” to receive weekly notices about special deals.

The ability to reach such a targeted audience appealed to Zoots, which wanted to reach people interested in its specialized services, says J.J. Pellegrino, vice president of business development for Zoots, based west of Boston in Newton, MA.

“We had done banner advertising in the past, but the environment changed over the last six months,” he says. “Banner advertising is now less effective.”

Eversave came up with a targeted e-mail campaign, offering to Zoots some 12,000 of their members who were selected based on their vicinity to Zoots’ stores and their stated preference for receiving dry cleaning coupons.

For example, a recently e-mailed coupon for $10 off dry cleaning services for those who signed up for Zoots’ home pick-up and delivery was a hit. The clickthrough rate was a healthy 5.3% and the conversion rate was better than average compared to other opt-in e-mail campaigns and banner ads Zoots has tested. The campaign also scored high in terms of customer acquisition costs, which were half that of other e-mail campaigns.

The results were surprising. Pellegrino suspects the highly targeted audience – in terms of geographics, psychographics and demographics – was a huge part of the success.

While it’s too soon to see if these new customers will stick around like the typical Zoots customer who is big on loyalty, Pellegrino is optimistic.

“We can’t be sure yet whether they were merely motivated by the coupon, but when they signed up for our services they gave us preferences, they bagged their clothes for pick-up – seems like a commitment to me,” he says.

RINSE AND REPEAT Of course, while the e-mail campaign generated new customers for Zoots, its up to Zoots to foster repeat business. The dry cleaning firm’s home pick-up and delivery twice per week, e-mail reminders of pick-up days, automated credit card billing, printable coupons – all of which can be done online – as well as stores that offer drive-thru drop-off and pick-up, accessibility 24 hours a day, seven days a week, among other services, are likely to appeal to time-stretched consumers looking to eliminate a few hassles from their lives.

MINING OPTIONS Given the results of Zoots initial forays into e-mail marketing, more e-mail campaigns are expected in the future. And the possibilities – far from being rigidly starched – are highly flexible, notes Doyle. “We can track who opened the offer but didn’t respond and explore offering them a higher discount, or look at those who didn’t respond to the $10 coupon or a second bigger discount and conclude that these are people who aren’t price sensitive. So maybe what we want to push to them is the delivery and pick-up,” he says. “There are many ways to mine the data, and we can do it in real-time, not the several weeks it used to take.”

That ability to mine is important to Zoots, which is preparing to move into new markets.