Loyalty Truth

We recently published a new Case Study examining the competitive scenario between two leading retailers of cycling gear and supplies – Bike Nashbar and Performance Bike. There is a de-facto advantage to one of the players and a key channel that the other can leverage to fight back.

The ultimate question: What would you do if wearing the moccasins of either Chief Marketing Officer?

I recruited a panel of experts to review this Case Study and offer insights into what it will take for Bike Nashbar to put forth a differentiated Customer Strategy and how it should revamp its email marketing strategy.

Michael Della Penna, the Co-Founder & President Aiti Solutions, LLC offers up the first round of insights and critique here:

Five Email Marketing Fixes for Performance Bike & Bike Nasbar:

The experience Bill observed from both Performance Bike and Bike Nasbar is not uncommon.  As brands increasingly look to grow sales and reduce costs in a tough economy, many are turning to the power of email to do so.  Email’s proven ability to drive ROI seduces many of us to send more to sell more without thinking about the consequences.  As a result email marketing is losing its effectiveness.  In fact, the DMA projects email will generate $43.52 for every dollar spent in 2009.  Not bad, but this is down 10% from the $48.34 reported in the 2007 study.  The DMA also goes on to predict emails steady declines through 2013.  With cluttered inboxes and a continued batch and blast mentality, it is easy to see why.  So what should Performance Bike and Bike Nashbar do to grow the success of their e-communications program?  Re-examine their approach for one.

Email is about building an ongoing dialog and relationship with your prospects and customers.  To do so requires both companies to take a new look at their email marketing strategies and tactics.  Here’s how.

1. Audit the customer experience: Step into your customers shoes.  If you were in their spot would you find the emails timely, relevant, valuable?  How do the communications compare to others you’ve seen and appreciate?  If you can’t be objective hire a third party to conduct that audit for you – you’ll be glad you did…remember the internet is social and the cost of not fixing a bad situation can be detrimental to your brand.
2. Think strategically:  If you have a successful website you’ve probably done some research on who visits, common paths and activities they take and perhaps even built some personas and “day in the life vignettes” to design a great experience.  Now its time to leverage all that great work to think about how you build a complementary communication program.  That program should speak to those various customers throughout the purchase process and customer lifecycle.  Email is about building relationship, not just selling – a successful lifecycle program should include acquisition, conversion, retention and winback communications that speak specifically to the customer’s needs, interests and mindset.
3. Nail the tactics:  Exception email is all about the details.  Be sure you work with someone who is going to help you maximize your programs success by providing strategic pointers, best in class practices, deliverability and creative expertise and new ideas.  Remember once you get in the inbox you need to stay in the inbox and get recipients to open and respond to your offers.  Make sure that partner is someone who has the experience and know how to help you scale your dynamic communications and stand out from the crowd.  It is also important for that partner to work with you to set some ambitious goals that can also be measured, so you constantly push the boundaries and ultimately establish your brand as the benchmark for all others to follow.
4. Expand the footprint & encourage participation:  Email is a wonderful communications and relationship platform.  Encourage users to participate with your brand and others.  Include forward-to-a-friend mechanisms and share to social features that allow users to write reviews, share feedback, and post email to their social networks.  Email users are typically your most loyal users so why not engage those users by getting them to participate with your brand.  With their help and participation you may just find that next great new product or promotional idea that further sets your brand apart.
5. Analyze and Optimize:  Email derives its great advantage from the power of immediacy.  Every email communications offers an opportunity to learn something.  Implement a robust testing strategy that helps you optimize every aspect of your communications including creative design templates and offers.  Use surveys to get inside the minds of your users and leverage data and customer actions including website activity to sense and respond to customer needs.

Ultimately email offers a great opportunity to build a relationship and drive sales.  To be successful, you need to break out of the push promotional mentality and embrace email as a participatory medium where the recipient is an equal partner in the dialog.

Michael Della Penna is co-founder and president of SuiteDialog (www.suitedialog), a participatory marketing company that helps leading brands build interactive marketing program that engage users in an ongoing dialog.  Michael also writes a monthly column for eM+C that highlights the strategies and tactics behind exceptional email communications.  Michael’s column can be found at www.emarketingandcommerce.com.