Building Your Retail Customer Database

Most stores in my neighbourhood collect email addresses.  From the large multi-store organizations to the small boutique business - it is clear that many companies still see and are benefiting from acquiring email.

Here are some cases:

Heather Reisman's latest new business venture, Pistacio, an eco-friendly gift shop, will give you $5 off your purchase over $30 when you supply your email address.  Already a customer?  Don't worry, they will email you a coupon (I got one!)

My favourite lingerie store, Beestung Lingerie, lets clients in their email database know about in-store sales prior to announcing them to the public.  I went into the store to see what was on sale the day after I got the email, and it was pretty busy.  All women clearly were there for the sale.

As a new mother, I am weary of the toys my little girl plays with.  Afterall, I hear about product recalls all the time.  Mastermind will inform parents of any products that they have sold that are being recalled and also announce their major sale of the week.  I don't think there has been one email that wasn't worth opening.

So, if you are thinking of starting your own retail email database, here are a few tips:

1. Be consistent with the email you send out.  If you tell your customer you will be sending them every week, make sure it is every week. 
2. Make sure the content is valuable to your customer.  If not, they WILL mark it as spam.
3. Make sure to offer the proper opt-in and opt-out functionality.
4. Offer a valuable incentive to customers to aquire their email.  Once you have them, reward them.  AND make sure that same reward is not offered (or at least offered later) to customers whose addresses you don't have.
5. Don't have a system set up yet but want to start collecting?  Go old school and collect them in a notebook for re-entry later.  Make sure to do a double-opt in because some people may forget that they gave you their email address a while back.

Have a program already and want to give it a boost, here are some tips:

1. Make it forward-to-a-friend friendly.  Test it.  Many look awful or lose some of the content when you do this.
2. Collect preference information for more targetted email.
3. Start looking at mobile.  Look into one-day sales and only deliver the code via email.

Samples

One of my first jobs in high school was being a product demonstrator at Costco.  Every week the product would change - frozen pizza, cake, granola bars and even a mop.  I didn't have to 'push' the product, I just had to cook the food and put it out in small sample cups or just demonstrate how to use the product should someone ask.  Occassionally I would ask if someone wanted to have a taste or see how something worked, but very rarely.  Here's why:

1. People, LOTS of people love anything that's free.  Especially when there is no risk involved or you don't have to provide your name. 
2. People get hungry when they are shopping.  Have you ever opened a bag of chips or can of pop while shopping and then paid for the product when checking out?
3. Many people don't steer away from brands or products they are familiar with and know how to use or know what it tastes like.  But, should they have the opportunity to try something without having to buy it...they'll take it.  AND, if they like it more than what they already buy...(don't forget to give a coupon!)
4. People like demonstrations.  They need to know how easy it is to cook or use.  'Yes, just pop it in the microwave!'

Farm to Table Marketing

As the whole 'Eat Local Challenge' and '100 mile diet' grows in popularity, so too are small towns, food organizations and farmers' use of digital marketing.

Why the use of online?
1. Its cheap and/or free
2. You can connect with people from the comfort of your farm
3. There are already communities to tap into

Who/What are some of my favourite organizations making good use of online?

Niagara Culinary Trail
Accommodations, farms, cafes...you name it.  This site gives you great information on getting local goods.

Savour Durham
I will be the first to admit that Ajax, Pickering or Uxbridge are not the first towns to come to mind when I think of yummy food.  But the Savour Durham program gives local restaurants a chance to connect with farmers and feature local food on their menu's.  YUM!

Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance
Want the 411 on whats going on with food in this province.  'Follow' @OntarioCulinary on twitter.

Social Contests

Are you interested in running a contest for your product on facebook
or Twitter?

Here are a few ideas of what some companies do to get their product
noticed. (As a newbie mommy, I enter quite a few of them)

1. Hook up with a popular site or blog that will run the contest to
their audience. Of course, make sure their audience is your target
audience.
2. Run the contest off your facebook fan page, site and/or blog.
3. Have entrants blog, tweet, video for extra entries. This helps
spread the contest around.

Here is a contest I am hoping to win ;)

Stokke Tripp Trapp giveaway - http://bit.ly/hkljC

CASE: Future Shop gets Beaten By Clock

Future Shop's Beat the Clock contest suffered a computer glitch resulting in discounts to the XBox 360 lasting longer than the time they allotted.

The result: Angry customers who got a confirmation that their order was received and then emailed later that it was a misprint. Those angry customers went to the store's Facebook page and even their own online forums to complain.

PR disaster? Marketing disaster?

What are the potential effects?
1. Angry customers who will never trust Future Shop contests, promotions etc. again. Heck, they won't even buy from there anymore.
2. Decrease in contest entries for the next promotions.
3. A lot of bad comments on social networks that will affect the company down the line.
4. Nothing. It is a contest afterall.

Marketing During Construction

Yonge street is a mess. The city tore up the east side of Yonge
street from Eglinton to Lawrence to replace some pipes and redo the
sidewalks. That took a good three months. They are now working on
the west side, and who knows how long that will take. Cars are down
to one lane traffic and pedestrians have to live with dust, gravel and
the never ending sounds of drills, trucks and saws.

With all this construction has in no doubt affected local businesses.
With the struggling economy, times must be tough. But, this is making
things extra worse.

However, there are a few marketing tricks some stores are doing to
help bring in business.

1. Dufflet pastries is providing delivery service for a small charge.
2. The Body Shop & L'Occitane have outdoor sample tables.
3. Lululemon, Khiel's and David's Tea teamed up for a weekend to
promote each others products in their stores. This is great because
they have similar target audiences.
4. Roots opens their doors earlier to catch morning traffic like
mommys on their way to starbucks prior to 10 am.
5. Lolo Restaurant and Alize offer set menu's like summerlicious for
$25.

Book Review: Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel

Almost everyday I get asked an online marketing question. I am afterall, an online marketer. Most people find me either through this blog, twitter, a simple google search, or via some of the other sites I like to play in, like chowhound.

Some questions are broad, like, 'How can facebook help grow my business?' to asking me to look at their online strategy for further comments or suggestions. I am always happy to do so.

From time to time, I also get asked about other business books I enjoyed or would recommend. I can now happily recommend Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel.

Mitch guides businesses, especially those who are scared to take the plunge, through the world of online connectivity. His reason to dive in? 'In the digital world there are no degrees of separation between you and your customers.'

The book is full of great business examples, lots of questions to help you start building your connectivity and most of all, the online etiquette for safe entry. All stories and guidelines will show you just how close you can be to your customers and most of all, your potential customers.

NOTE: I worked with Mitch Joel and Twist Image, they are one of Scotiabank's digital agencies.

CASE: SIGG CEO Apologises

A little to late for me.

The Sigg drama is a great example of the need for transparency in this
digital world.

No matter what you are saying, honesty is the best policy and your
community will reward you for it.

via:
http://www.non-toxickids.net/2009/09/finally-apology-from-sigg-ceo-steve.html

Buy Facebook friends

I just read a very interesting article at the Globeandmail.com called Not enough Facebook friends? Buy them.


Similar to purchasing third party phone, mail and email lists, you can purchase 'friends' on facebook to try to connect with. The service will send a request to friend to the list first, I suspect this is what they consider their opt-in. If the person accepts, great. If not, no harm done...so you think?


What can go wrong?
- spamming. If you do this once, for one of your products, it may work fine. However, if you want to use this more than once, with the same target audience, you will land up spamming the friend request.
- how did they get your name anyway? Transparency is key if you are going to try this method.

CASE: Old SIGG Bottles do leak BPA

If you have been following my posts on the whole SIGG drama, the story
continues. Turns out, it actually does leak BPA. Sorry Mr. CEO. I
had a hard time believing you before, but now you have no chance.

Via: http://thesoftlandingbaby.com/2009/09/03/fred-vom-saals-test-results-found-bpa-leaching-from-siggs-old-bottles/