Motorcycle Superstore Boosts E-mail Revenue with Dynamic One-to-One Merchandising
Dynamic one-to-one merchandising has been the ultimate goal of our e-mail marketing program. Thanks to this Webtrends and ExactTarget integration, we’re finally there. The returns were even better than we had expected.
Erick Barney
VP of marketing, Motorcycle Superstore
Overview
Motorcycle Superstore is the leading online retailer of motorcycle gear, apparel, parts and accessories. They have more than 100,000 products, and customers whose interests range from dirt bikes to street cruisers. They strive to make it easy for shoppers to find the products that match their interests while delivering the best prices and service.
For several years, the marketing team at Motorcycle Superstore has integrated Webtrends and ExactTarget data to test and analyze its e-mail strategy, with the goal of increasing conversions and sales. The integrated solution has helped optimize everything from send frequency to e-mail layout and subject lines, and increased the return on e-mail marketing efforts through targeted segmentation.
Challenge
Motorcycle Superstore has used Webtrends Analytics to identify promotional opportunities for products that generate a high number of views, searches or purchases. But the retailer also wanted to deliver dynamic, one-to-one product offers through ExactTarget. “We knew we were leaving money on the table without targeted product recommendations in our e-mails,” said Erick Barney, VP of marketing for Motorcycle Superstore. “The information about our individual visitors was there; we just weren’t sure how to act on it.”
Solution
Motorcycle Superstore brought in the experts from ACR Analytics, a highly experienced web analytics consultancy, to help them add behavioral-based product recommendations to its e-mail marketing programs.
ACR drew on its in-depth knowledge of both Webtrends and ExactTarget to develop a program and implementation strategy for the integration of Webtrends Analytics for Behavioral Retargeting and ExactTarget’s Dynamic Retargeting. This new solution allows the marketing team at Motorcycle Superstore to deliver dynamic one-to-one merchandising based on products that individuals abandon in shopping carts, view or search for without purchasing.
“Having a solid foundation for identifying visitors is critical to any remarketing effort that leverages behavioral data. This is where Webtrends’ flexible, visitor-based cookie tracking fits in. With a clear opportunity in sight, we were able to optimize Motorcycle Superstore’s approach to visitor identification to make it more remarketing friendly,” said Cameron Nelson, ACR principal analyst.
Approach
The new solution got its first test when Motorcycle Superstore added a “Your Picks” section to its standard weekly e-mail. This dynamic section, added initially to e-mail sent to only 10 percent of the retailer’s active list, included four customized product recommendations. Other customers received static recommendations, which the marketing team chose.
Webtrends Analytics behavioral retargeting was used to generate recommendations based on the products a person has previously viewed, abandoned or purchased. The behavioral data was then cross-referenced in ExactTarget with product data from Motorcycle Superstore. ACR used ExactTarget’s dynamic retargeting capabilities to populate the content for each individual.
Once the initial set up was complete, ACR used the Webtrends Analytics data scheduler to automatically load the data feeds into ExactTarget, ensuring that the information Motorcycle Superstore acts on is always available and up-to-date without any additional effort.
Dedicated tracking also was placed on each type of recommendation to determine how viewing, searching for or abandoning a product affects later conversion and sales. In addition to overall tracking, Webtrends Analytics broke down reporting for the different types of dynamic recommendations for easy attribution of orders.
Results
The reaction from Motorcycle Superstore has been unanimous: “This stuff really works!” Orders generated by the first dynamic recommendations generated a 24 percent incremental lift in e-mail revenue.
The one in 10 customers who received the personalized “Your Picks” generated 22 percent of the e-mail click-throughs. The conversion rate for one category of the dynamic recommendations (those based on products previously abandoned) was 4.5 percent – more than twice that for the retailer’s standard e-mails (2 percent).
“Customers seem to react impulsively to these familiar products. It is great to see the positive impact of delivering relevant content to our customers,” said Sequoyah Munroe, Motorcycle Superstore’s promotional coordinator.
