If you’re new here, welcome! And thanks for subscribing to Get Elastic. Friday is Blogger Digest day where we highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.

• Did you miss this week’s webinar? Don’t miss our on-demand replay Multi-Store Retailing Online: Perks and Pitfalls or December’s webinar Dangerous Marketing Ahead: How to Break Bad Habits and Survive a Deep Recession.

• I want to start off with a link from John Audette. He doesn’t post too often but when he does, seriously, it’s good stuff. Audette Media has built an interactive “Marketing Cube” tool that helps you rate the effectiveness of your various online marketing strategies like blogging, social media, affiliate marketing and Pay Per Click using three campaign priorities: Time to Results, Persistency of Results, and Measurable ROI so you can make better decisions for budget allocation. Yes, it’s free.

• Public Service Announcement: Google Analytics has added flash tracking.

• TVcommerce? Evan Schuman reports on Domino’s and TiVo’s foray into television shopping - ordering a pizza through the TiVo interface. But no need for a tv-commerce shopping cart, Domino’s only takes cash.

• Gaming and retail, together at last. TopShop’s Christmas Fairy Tale and I Want One of Those’s Conveyor Belt games hope to create excitement and generate sales this Holiday season. Via the Snow Patrol Blog.

• We love it when retailers show products in context, and Tom from the No Turn On Red Blog spotted Land’s End showing their jackets based on the temperature they’re best suited for. The fact Land’s End tested 100 outerwear styles is a strong value proposition for why someone should trust Land’s End’s website and purchase a coat from them and not from anyone else. Who else backs up their product descriptions or reviews with testing?

• Bryan Eisenberg explains how Homer Simpson’s diet is a lot like conversion optimization.

• Avinash Kaushik’s latest in classic Kaushik style: Experiment or Die: Five Reasons And Awesome Testing Ideas. Pretty much self-explanatory.

• Our friends at the Email Experience Council have published another research report: The Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study. The executive summary has some interesting stats from the report.

In the first of what we hope to be a series of retailer interviews, I caught up with Zachary Applegate of PlumberSurplus and OutdoorPros:

Tell us a little about yourself and your company:

My name is Zachary Applegate, I am the Search and Marketing Manager for the Gordian Project which is currently the parent company for two ecommerce websites PlumberSurplus.com and OutdoorPros.com.

PlumberSurplus.com has been live since August 2004 and offers tens of thousands of plumbing, home improvement, and building products in a range of categories including Kitchen and Bathroom, Water Heaters, Lighting, Pumps, Tools, Access Doors, Valves, Commercial and more. OutdoorPros.com went live in March 2008 and offers outdoors products, outdoors equipment, and outdoors gear in a range of categories like Apparel, Camping, Cutlery, Gifts, Lighters, Lighting, Optics, Outdoor, Safety and Duty Gear and Skateboarding. We are continuing to both build out our current ecommerce websites and look for new opportunities as we grow and evolve as a company.

With the slower economy, and with DIY/trade purchases likely slowing down at this time of year, what kind of things are you doing to weather the season - if you’re affected at all?

Earlier this year we focused on making profitable decisions as a company. Along with streamlining a lot of processes and costs, we evaluated things like our pricing philosophies, marketing philosophies and shipping philosophies. Those improvements have made an impact and facilitated the company’s continued growth while boosting the overall health of the company. We have also focused heavily on supply, varying product offerings and diversification in order to hopefully limit any issues which may face.

I noticed you actually have a free shipping section customers can browse. How do you determine which products qualify? Do they stay the same all year round or are they dependent on other factors?

We think that for certain products free shipping can be a very big carrot for customers, because of that we have many ways with which we determine whether products get free shipping or not. Sometimes we partner with manufactures or suppliers for free shipping, sometimes it’s part of a promotion we might be running and other times its self funded. So for all of those reasons we have some products, which more often than not, always have free shipping and others which may only get it for a certain period.

Although we have found our current free shipping logic works well, we are thinking about moving away from specific product based free shipping to more of a cart total based free shipping logic to see if that works better.

How do you make sure you can afford a shipping promotion?

When its funded by a partner that’s great but we also want to make sure there are not other opportunities which might be better than free shipping when discussing that. If it’s co-funded or self-funded we often look at the products which will be effected by free shipping and what we think we might get charged on average to ship those products. Currently this is done on a product by product basis to make sure that we can afford to run a promotion like this for each specific product.

What’s your take on nurturing loyal relationships with shipping carriers
vs. rate shopping?

Our Supply Chain Manager, Jeff, does a fantastic job working with UPS and other carriers to build healthy relationships, and negotiate fees and rates. For PlumberSurplus.com, one of our biggest shipping issues is freight or LTL (Less Than Truckload) charges since we sell a lot of larger items which cannot be shipped via UPS or FedEx. Getting a handle on those charges and evolving our shipping philosophies and rates has helped us a lot and made it so that we can pass on good shipping rates to our customers.

Do you have any tips for negotiating with shipping carriers? (Keeping in mind UPS’ planned rate hike of 5.9% in January)

While Jeff handles much of the negotiations I can say that while negotiating your rate is important, volume and ancillary charges also seem to make a big difference. Regardless how a shipping account is setup make sure that you can ship as much as possible or consolidate accounts or carriers to allow for more negotiating power on rates. Many carriers especially freight carriers have a lot of ancillary charges they tack on which can get expensive. Often times these can get negotiated down or removed depending on the volume and types of shipments you are shipping through a carrier.

You also run an outdoor gear site called Outdoor Pros and link to it from PlumberSurplus. Have you reached out through email or other means to existing PlumberSurplus customers and converted them to OutdoorPros customers for the holidays?

We have, along with some cross site banners and information we promote each site in the others transactional e-mails we send out to promote cross site purchases.

Could you comment on the challenges/benefits of running multiple stores?

It’s been very interesting to say the least to run two ecommerce websites. Many of the things we have learned directly cross over to the other, however we have come to learn that each website represents an entirely different market. People buy and look for items differently, the way we promote and market in some places has had to change and while we are going to continue in this direction of additional websites the important thing for us is to take stock of the wins and losses across all websites to build a broader knowledge base and a more robust ecommerce solution.

Big thanks to Zachary. If you’d like to be interviewed for future installment of “Interview with the Retailer” drop me a line at linda dot bustos @ elasticpath.com.

This is a recap of our webinar Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls with Elastic Path’s own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley.

You can also catch up on all of our audio/visual webinar replays at ElasticPath.com/Events/ and blog summaries here.

Though our webinars are not product-specific — we put these out there for all online retailers to access and enjoy whether you use our ecommerce software or not, this topic is near and dear to use as our most recent version of Elastic Path is really honed for multi-store retailing. If you’re interested in a product-specific webinar on our product you can view the replay of Technical Introduction to Elastic Path Commerce 6.1.

Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls covered:

• Why Multi-Store is gaining momentum
• Types of stores to consider launching
• When to launch additional stores
• How to avoid critical mistakes

What is Multi-Store Retailing?

The key benefit of running multiple stores is higher specificity and relevance to customer and product segments.

Coca-cola began as a single product and grew to 450 brands, 2800 products and 200 countries. Some of these products are very new or niche, like vitamin flavored water - but the specificity is what builds loyalty and differentiation in a saturated market.

A major factor in the success of more specific stores comes from today’s search behavior:

This eye-tracking map shows search listing attention span was higher 3 years ago. Today that has drastically changed. We have learned to skim and skip over content not relevant to us. The reason is self-centricity. A searcher scans to find what is relevant to him or her. If retailers can capture this scent early in the selling process, they have an advantage.

Types of Stores

Geographic Stores

Many retailers start with a .com domain and focus on the US, and may expand into other markets launching new stores with country-specific “top-level-domains” (site.ca, site.de, site.co.uk for example). But that’s not always necessary. A lot of retailers do well without launching a separate store. You could consider a site that sells internationally from one storefront as “internationalized” and country-specific shops as “localized.”

A recent Get Elastic post described a recent purchase Jason made for his wife’s birthday gift. The site was an “internationalized” niche site owned by CSN Stores, and the site grabbed his attention right from the beginning in the search engine snippet, mentioning it shipped to Canada.

The post also describes how EveryJewelryBox.com addressed his Fears, Uncertainties, Doubts and Dealbreakers in its copy and landing page design:

• Clear messaging “We Now Ship to Canada!” and a Canadian flag icon for quick “scent identification” (reassuring Jason he was in the right place)
• Detailed info on shipping time, taxes & duties, returns, etc. in a pop-up (Very important as you don’t hijack a customer off a product page to show a policy. Use pop-ups or AJAX rollovers!)
• Final price is calculated for the shopper (no charges upon delivery for customs brokerage)

A great example of international selling where multiple stores was not necessary, but Jason noted that a .ca domain may have delivered the “instant gratification” of regional relevance (and assurance it’s the right place to shop) in the search engine. This goes for PPC ads as well. (It may also have ranked higher in Google.ca using location targeting in Google Webmaster Central).

Another thing to consider regarding international usability is currency should reflect the local currency when you land on the site. You can achieve this with IP sniffing tools which may either force-redirect visitors or show messages allowing them to choose their preferred store, storing the preference in a cookie for future visits. (We’re not a fan of portal-like splash pages asking everyone to choose a country. Especially if it’s all in Flash and it plays music by default.)

Fulfillment concerns are also important - some manufacturers restrict where you can ship product. Personally I have shipped products like the Flip camcorder and Dakine luggage to US hotels, crossing my fingers they will arrive on time. Freight transit for large purchases and likelihood of returns are also concerns, as are the extra costs of cross border returns unless you have a mechanism to accept returns in the geographic specific country.

The biggest question is: is the (new) market ready for this? That’s a question we’ll leave you to answer for your own business.

When to use geographic targeted stores:

• When fulfillment is the first decision (medical product example: the CDN retail was $1200, US retail $400).
• Based on product set, ease of shipment, likelihood of returns, if CSRs can handle intricacies of currency, taxation, etc. = good to go if market is there.

Downsides for geographic targeted stores:

• Cultural differences - payment habits are different. Germany not credit card based economy, prefer debit cards. Asian countries pay cash on delivery often. So your multi store structure could change.
• Language - Example: the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store uses French translation, which was performed by a French speaker from France, not a French Canadian. The dialect has its own nuances which can cause confusion on the site. Even English/English sites can have variants of spellings or even terms people use to describe the same thing (soccer vs. football).
• Technology - EU countries use different electric plugs and adapters than North America.
• Product warranty fulfillment - You must communicate the specifics of your warranty fulfillment process, not all can be fulfilled across borders.
• Duplicate content - If you have 2 English speaking country domains you technically have duplicate content (more details later).

Tips:

• Use a master catalog + sub-catalogs, more efficient

• Don’t worry too much about SEO issues with duplicate content, just make sure you target your site in Google Webmaster Central
• Switch default title tags and meta descriptions to make them country-specific
• Use IP sniffing to redirect or show option to switch stores only to international customers, not all visits
• Don’t be afraid to NOT launch an additional store, but deal with selling restrictions, extra duties/taxes, lead time etc. on your internationalized site clearly.

Brand Specific Stores

ElectricShopping.com and KenwoodMajor.com are an example of a mother site and a sister site that is brand specific for loyal shoppers of Kenwood products.

If a searcher who is loyal to brand can see the brand in the URL: www.kenwoodmajor.com vs. www.appliancesmajor.com, there’s a relevance factor (even higher search rankings) but also a perception of better selection. You can have domain.com/brand or brand.domain.com, but branding in the domain name is far more effective for both organic search and pay per click marketing

When to use brand specific stores:

• If you sell other peoples brands
• If you are a manufacturer with strong brand lines
• Consumer has strong affinity to brand for entire Product line (DeWalt tools)

Downsides for brand specific stores:

• Limiting cross-sell opportunities, if people are highly influenced by cross-selling this may not allow you to do that as well as with a multi-brand options.

Tips:

• If you can’t launch a brand store, consider brand notifications (new items, new reviews, new accessories) on current store (MyBuys - simple notifications service).

Segment Stores

Zappos is a good example of serving customer segments with different shopping experiences.

PRICE SEGMENTS

Based on price segment, a customer sensitive to higher priced market can enjoy shopping without heavy discounted prices or lower prestige brands at Couture.Zappos.com (higher relevance, ease of navigation, perceived value much higher). Some customers are anti-price sensitive and they want a shopping experience that matches that, for which Zappos has 6pm.com. Price-segmented sites may use custom imagery and user interface (no blinking sale prices) or different copy giving the notion of exclusivity for higher end, or sale sale sale messaging for clearance sites. Clearance sites are great for inventory mobility and for more efficient comparison shopping management (certain shopping engines may attract bargain hunters and others luxury shoppers - know your channels).

Jason notes that on Zeta.Zappos.com — Zappos’ test sandbox for user experience — nowhere do you see visibly sale or discount because the mother site is not positioned as a discounter. Their market position is their huge selection and customer service.

LIFESTYLE SEGMENTS

Rideshop.Zappos.com caters to sub-segments by interest like skate, surf, snow and BMX. The lifestyles and activities that occur within those sports are different. Even if they’re not different, the perception is that the products are more relevant to the customer.

You also enjoy better cross selling when you know this person is a skater or a surfer, for example. You won’t be cross-selling cowboy boots here.

These aren’t the only types of segments you can target, just examples.

When to use segmented stores:

• Think Cluetrain Manifesto – Markets are Conversations: Where are your customers having conversations? Address that need
• If you can identify candidates for segmented stores: price, experience level (novice, intermediate, expert), gender, age, activity, ADA compliant, green/eco friendly, local

Downsides for segmented stores:

• Unfortunately most retailers do not segment very well or have segmentation history so it might not be a cultural fit

Niche Product Stores

The key is to have strong, keyword targeted domains (largely generics for quick SEO wins). Major players using this strategy include CSN Stores, Netshops and NicheRetail. Mostly for pure-plays and seems to be very popular for the furniture category.

When to use niche product stores:

• If drop shipping is common across all niche multi-store retailers
• For pure plays

Downsides for niche product stores:

• If drop shipping: Returns to own warehouse = importance of inventory clearance store or channel

Regarding SEO and duplicate content, we ran “some sanity checks” on CSN Stores, and for the most part, Google did not even filter if duplicate content existed across domains (if a long tail term) — meaning all the domains were showing up in Google search results. This is consistent with previous findings we had on SEO modifiers for color links. The SEO filters will impact “head terms” (more competitive, like “body lotion” vs a long tail term like “St. Ives Swiss Formula Vanilla Nut body lotion 200ml.” Chances are your web properties will not dominate the SERPs when so many other sites match the query.

Tips:

• Carry reviews across stores (make sure they are not delivered through iFrame)
• Use a universal template
• Use content templates BUT try to use modification via variable replacement
• Use distinct customer service numbers

Loyalty Stores

Launch a new store based on loyalty programs when you want to offer exclusives for high value customers. It’s not that common but these days, people are more transient in purchase behavior so this is very valuable when done well.

When to use loyalty stores:

• You have a strong loyalty program
• There is a propensity for repeat purchases (replenishment, low ticket value, life staples, natural life stages – marriage, home, kids, etc.)

Downsides for loyalty stores:

• Perceived exclusion (walking past first class on airplane)

Wholesale/B2B Stores

An example is MyWeddingFavors.com which focuses on the consumer but runs a wholesale B2B site KateAspen.com which requires registration as a retail reseller to receive volume discounts.

Why to use wholesale/B2B stores:

• Make procurement more efficient
• Find new retail channel partners

Downside of wholesale/B2B stores:

• Do you want it to be indexed in engines if also selling direct to consumer?
• Not all retailers have products that can follow this model

Tips:

• Hide pricing until customer logged in
• Use price lists based on customer
• Aim for rapid replenishment (customer service is key!)

Campaign Specific Stores

Great for special event marketing like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, the Super Bowl etc. They will have shorter shelf life but also have more relevance. We did a full webinar on holiday and event marketing in January.

Or you can optimize for holiday gifting terms, a cause (Breast Cancer Awareness pink theme), a single product store or hot product launch (Wii Store) or even current event/trend (plastic bottles vs. metal or products that match Michelle Obama’s style).

When to use campaign specific stores:

• For ongoing prominent causes the company is associated with or supports
• Narrow product lines associated with event (don’t launch entire store with Pink ribbon = shoppers can see through that, unless 5% of all orders go to cause)

Strategic partnerships (partner with media, or joint promotion like Omaha Steakss micro-site from Overstock.com for grilling and cooking products) or the CTV (Canada Television) store that sells Olympic gear mentioned in Olympic segments

Downsides for campaign specific stores:

• Possible limited shelf life
• May be additional costs to design, develop (depending on your platform) and maintain

Sticky Stores

These are deal-of-day sites or any other site that brings customers back daily for a good reason.

Examples:

Backcountry.com
Backcountryoutlet.com
Steepandcheap.com
Chainlove.com
Whiskeymilitia.com
Dogfunk.com (not DotD)
Tramdock.com

Steep and Cheap turns over the offer as it depletes or if the velocity decreases substantially (no interest) to warrant a new deal. It captures excitement and competition, and even offers instant alerts.

When to use sticky stores:

• NOW! Jason is very bullish on this method in this economy

Downsides for sticky stores:

• Some brands are not discounters and have to protect premium positioning
• You may need to cap quantities people can purchase due to Ebay selling or resale

Tips:

• Work with manufacturers on deals.
• Use alerts (email, RSS, SMS, MMS, IM, Twitter, browser plugins, widgets, etc.)
• Pre-announce to list members based on loyalty tiers to acquire sign ups & promote purchasing
• Use creative pricing (price drops, but inventory is invisible – Jellyfish does this with Smack Shopping)
• Create urgency with time countdowns, show inventory that’s left
• Show percentage of savings use red, strike-throughs, promote price and savings right in the titles, try to use percentage off as a faceted navigation method
• Cross-sell into the outlet store on page
• Use post purchase cross-selling / offers from main store
• Many have communities surrounding them, even Deal of Day forums
• Allow people to store account information so they don’t miss a deal due to slow typing speed – seriously
• Consider swapping the items based on velocity of sales
• If you sell to defined segments (men/women), consider separate Deal of Day sites
• Update the site using AJAX in close to real time or small intervals

Questions

Should you no-follow subdomains (or use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling pages) to avoid duplicate content?

We assumed that it would be a problem, but after running our own tests, what we found was that it wasn’t really a problem. All variations of different pages, they’re getting smart on delivering the best page possible. Optimize your Title Tags and target your domains in Google Webmaster Central and you should do fine.

What are your thoughts on the GAP 4 stores 1 checkout strategy?

Good strategy for the Gap but there’s not a lot of crossover. Banana Republic and style is different (but maybe a mom and kids?) Piperlime is interesting, but again not in a position to have 4 strong brands like that. COuld work but there are downsides as well.

Linda’s note: I covered GAP’s talk about its strategy from Shop.org Annual Summit on the Shop.org Blog in September.

Should you market new sites to your current email list?

There’s no reason you can’t market directly, but do it with finesse. We wrote about this recently, and provided some tips:

• Use your regular sender name and sender address
• Clearly reinforce the familiar brand while introducing the new one
• Explain a bit about the new store and shopping experience in the email (set expectations)
• Provide a clear opt-in to the new list, don’t hide it
• A bonus would be a discount or free shipping offer

Contact Jason

Jason Billingsley
VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
www.ElasticPath.com
www.GetElastic.com
jason.billingsley at elasticpath.com
Twitter: @jbillingsley

Next Webinar

Dangerous Marketing Ahead: How to Break Bad Habits and Survive a Deep Recession

Think you can promote, e-mail or SEO your way out of this recession? Until you stop thinking and functioning tactically you’ll keep failing to earn a proper seat at the management table - if not fail completely. Survival today requires divorcing yourself of the comfortable myths of “branding”, easy answers and digital hocus-pocus that pass for most marketing strategies.

If you sign up, you’ll learn how to:

• Break bad habits and focus on creating measurable actions that deliver sales, repeat business and true customer loyalty
• Get integrated, get authentic, get honest and embrace the science of it all
• Get promoted AND have fun by replacing your wasteful, ineffective marketing that most still cling to

Guest Speakers:

Jeff Molander, CEO, Molander & Associates, Inc.

Jonathan Salem Baskin, Entrepreneur, Consultant and Author of the controversial new book, “Branding Only Works on Cattle”

Thurs. Dec. 11th @ 9am PT Sign up today

The following is a guest post from Armando Roggio, a web developer, a marketer, the Contributing Editor of Practical eCommerce and a serial entrepreneur with many micro-businesses.

The leading web standards body, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently announced new content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0) to help make the Internet easier for blind, deaf or otherwise disabled web-surfers to access and use. Such visitors require aids such as screen readers to follow content.

Not only is adhering to web accessibility standards ethically and morally the right thing to do, there are 2 other pragmatic reasons to abide by WCAG 2.0:

Two Pragmatic Reasons to Design for Accessibility

1. Get More (Loyal) Customers.

According to the American Foundation for the Blind, there are at least 1.5 million Americans with some vision loss who use the Internet. Ecommerce merchants that make their websites easy to access, use, and shop will find a significant and loyal customer base. Add to this group the deaf/hard-of-hearing community and having an accessible online store can add up to a lot of business.

2. Avoid Legal Challenges

In September, multi-channel retailer Target was ordered to pay $6 million to settle a legal challenge from the National Federation of the Blind. The suit marked a few scary new trends in Internet law—websites as public places and the application of disabilities acts to the Internet. None of this would have been necessary if Target had proactively coded their site for accessibility.

Three Quick Accessibility Tips

1. Add a “Content” link at the top of the page.

When a screen reader translates your page for a visually impaired visitor, it is helpful if the first thing it sees is navigation, not an ALT attribute (a piece of HTML code that describes your image using keywords) for your logo. On the sites I design, I include a brief bit of navigation that points a disabled visitor to the site’s content or important category pages. I don’t necessary want that navigation to interrupt the page design, so I use CSS to position it off screen. Sighted visitors never see it, but it’s the first thing screen readers find.

2. Remove time limits.

It can be a lot harder for a disable visitor to complete a task like filling out a form. Too many websites have applications that “time out” and make it really hard for disabled users. Removing time limits on shopping carts, for example, is a big help.

3. Offer extended audio descriptions with video content.

If you are using video on your site, be sure to include an alternate version of the video with audio descriptions. There are several ways to achieve the effect technically and it will include deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors.

Check out Practical Ecommerce for more tips on web accessibility.

Who cares about Twitter?

The microblogging network has enjoyed impressive 343% Y-O-Y growth and is the fastest growing US social network according to Nielsen Online. Some claim Twitter attracts 2000 new users a day.

Wouldn’t you like to know if people are “Tweeting” about you, your company or your products? What are they saying?

A simple way to find out is to use Twitter’s own search engine.

After you perform a search, you can subscribe to the search keyword through RSS:

Or you can sign up with TweetBeep and get Google Alerts style updates every time your tracked keyword or URL is mentioned.

Reputation Monitoring and More

Monitoring Twitter mentions of your brand names is akin to listening in on a conversation - you may hear something you like (ego gratification!) or you don’t (your customer service or ads stink, your product is low quality). If you have affiliates, you may also see how frequently your deals and promotions are pushed and by who.

If someone is having a problem with your customer service, consider reaching out to them and making good. If you identify an evangelist, you may want to reach out and thank them for their kind words, and offer them a special gift or gift card.

Using Twitter to Develop Personas

You’d be surprised how much you can learn about one person through Twitter. For example, real Twitter user @Torrie became an LL Bean customer after she asked her Twitter friends where she could find a good swimsuit. She had considered Land’s End but wanted something less expensive.

One of her followers wanted to direct message her, but since @Torrie wasn’t mutually following her, she had to Tweet it publicly:

Apparently @Torrie got many helpful responses, but LL Bean won her business, and she informed her network (and the whole Internet):

Now, if you want to build a persona for an LL Bean customer, why not gather as much information about @Torrie as you can? She’s shared a lot about herself in her Tweets and on her blog which is linked from her Twitter profile. I learned that @Torrie is:

• 32 years old, but “in denial about it” (since when was 32 old, come on!)
• Married 11 years to a doctor who works long hours, she loves him dearly and misses him a lot during the day while she cares for an almost-two-year-old
• Ex-pastry chef turned portrait photographer
• Grew up in Manhattan, now lives in the suburbs
• “Vegetarian, recycling, yoga-practicing, organic hippie”
• Voted Obama
• Self described complainer, not afraid to complain on her blog or through Twitter (her blog is called “I Pretty Much Hate Everything”)
• Among her hates are commercials and “not being able to get a real live person on the phone”
• She’s bummed there is not a Babies R Us in her area
• She really likes eco-friendly stuff, in fact, she blogs about stuff she doesn’t hate on her product reviews blog “Stuff I Don’t Hate” (she’s an Amazon affiliate)

Blogger since 2003, contributes to Alpha Mom Guide to Everything and is a member of the BlogHer Network

LL Bean, @Torrie is now your customer. There are certain assumptions you can make:

• @Torrie trusts her social network and her social network trusts her
• With her busy mom lifestyle and her technical savvy, she’s likely to be comfortable researching and shopping online. Convenience is important
• She knows her budget and sticks to it
• Customer service is important to her
• She’d rather buy green products from ethical, socially and environmentally responsible companies
• She’s on Twitter, and may prefer to receive deals and offers through Twitter than email or RSS
• She’s a potential affiliate

Questions I have for LL Bean:

• Are you listening to customer conversations about your brand? Are you tracking Twitter?
• Do you have a plan for outreach to both evangelists and unsatisfied customers?
• Do you provide price filters that help customers with a price range in mind narrow product selection?
• If a customer were looking for sustainable or “green” products, could he/she find them through navigation or search? What shows up when a user searches for “eco friendly” or “green”?
• What shows up for a site search on “yoga”?
• Are you offering alternative communication methods like Twitter or mobile for tech-savvy shoppers?
• Does your affiliate manager have a strategy for reaching out to people like @Torrie? How easy is your affiliate program information to find on your website?

And don’t forget the Twitter user that recommended LL Bean to @Torrie, what’s her story?

Now I don’t suggest you rely solely on Twitter for your persona development, or stalk every single person that mentions you. Just keep Twitter in mind for your persuasion, reputation management and social media marketing programs.

Did you know you can follow me and Jason Billingsley on Twitter?

If you’re new here, welcome! And thanks for subscribing to Get Elastic. Friday is Blogger Digest day where we highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.

The economy is top-of-mind for everyone involved in online retail, as evidenced as I went over my picks for the week - the majority are related to the tough times consumers and retailers are facing this year:

• I was interviewed last week by Plumber Surplus about my thoughts on how online retailers can ride out the economic swell, check out Preparing Retailers for the Economic Downturn.

• Blue Acorn offers Tips for Boosting Average Order Size, which is very important in troubled economic times…

• Maxim Mironov offers 3 suggestions on how you can cut costs, rather than cutting employees.

• Remember Prisoner’s Dilemma from Microeconomics 101? The Rimm-Kaufman blog relates this to the Promotional Dilemma — how the pressures for retailers to offer free shipping may lead to profit losses for everyone (not to mention solidifying customer expectations for the future). Will free shipping become the standard?

• On a positive note, Bryan Eisenberg has compiled a list of 33 tools to make your website better, including Kampyle’s suggestion-box tool.

• You can be successful this holiday despite the doom and gloom — Justin Palmer presents a checklist for holiday ecommerce success.

• While Valentine’s Day is till many moons away, the Bronto Blog uses a cute dating analogy to explain best practices for welcome emails.

Earlier this year, Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group teamed up with the Acquity Group to survey 24 merchants with questionnaires and in-depth interviews to put together a white paper and webinar called No Retreat! Investing in eCommerce Despite the Times.

The study set out to discover how multi-channel and pure play merchants are positioning themselves for growth while still addressing the bottom line during an economic slowdown and their challenges, asking hard-hitting questions like “Will you have the guts to make the necessary investments in the tough times?”

The webinar and white paper address topics like the Macro State of Retail, Defining and Driving Your Multi-Channel Strategy, Investing in eCommerce and Roadblocks to Success:

Can’t see video? View this post at GetElastic.com

You can download the companion white paper here.

Marketing Sherpa recently published an email marketing case from Drs Foster and Smith which tested the impact of mixing educational content with product promotions, whereas in the past their emails were either informative or sales-oriented.

The results of mixing content were 7% boost in click through rate, 6% lift in conversion and 15% increase in sales (meaning average order size was higher).

The campaign involved segmenting the “dog owner” customer, and performing an A/B test using email creative that offered products and discounts comparable in value proposition. As you can see, both emails below include an offer for a free pack of BioSpot and an article about protecting your home and pet from fleas. The difference is which call to action appears first (and more than double the size) in the content area.

Week 1:

Week 2:

The winning design in both tests was information more prominent, offer less prominent. Remember, the informational call to action translated to a 15% increase in sales over the promotional offer.

The all-important landing page used shorter copy with a top image hot-linked to a product page where readers could purchase products relevant to the information. In a sense, readers were being pre-sold on an item with expert advice which further motivated the purchase.

Marketing Sherpa summed up the key takeaway as “Their audience responds better to relevant content than to a heavy-duty sales pitch.”

This is a perfect example of what Marketing Experiments’ Flint McLaughlin recommended in the recent web clinic Ecommerce Holiday Playbook: 13 Ways to Maximize Revenue and Beat the Downturn. If

If you skip to slide 31, Flint explains that the goal of the landing page is to sell (or in this case, pre-sell) the product. The goal of your email (or PPC ad) is not to sell, but to generate interest. A mistake is to try to sell in the email then sell again on the landing page.

Offering educational content within emails is a great way to generate interest — it’s non-committal and it builds trust and long-term loyalty. Even if the customer doesn’t buy from you today, he or she is more likely to open your email expecting to receive valuable knowledge in exchange for their time.

Two additional takeaways noted by Marketing Sherpa:

• Wisely placed educational articles may heat up sales in a blue economy. With consumers tightening purse strings, Web shoppers are not likely to be in as much of a hurry as they used to be. Therefore, holding people’s hands with educational content can be worthwhile for your brand.

• Educational content can create a comfort level for Internet shoppers who don’t have the luxury of physically assessing products the way brick-and-mortar shoppers do. Hence, relevant content can help bridge that gap between the product and the shopper.

Here’s an action item: McLaughlin suggests you look at your last 5 emails you sent, or the next 5 you plan on using for the Christmas season, print them out and lay them on the table. Look at the messaging and ask yourself if the email was written to get a click, or to sell something.

Also, take a couple hours to watch the replay of Ecommerce Holiday Playbook: 13 Ways to Maximize Revenue and Beat the Downturn. There’s a lot of valuable information here.

This post was originally posted on February 21, 2008. With the holiday season underway, and most of you new readers to Get Elastic, I’ve reposted it today in case you missed it the first time.

We do so much to encourage holiday gift shopping (or birthday, anniversary etc), but do we drop the ball in catering to the special needs of gift givers like gift boxes, gift wrapping, gift announcements / messages and gift receipts?

There are many ways you can accommodate gift givers to improve customer and recipient experience with gift options.

Gift Boxes & Gift Wrap

While it may be fine to ship something in a plastic bag or a brown box or a manila envelope (that’s what they send those MacAir computers in, right?), this doesn’t fly with gifts sent directly to the recipient. It also stinks for gift givers who ship items to themselves to wrap and give personally. The customer now has to find an appropriate box to put that personalized t-shirt in, and all he has kicking around is an empty GAP box from last Christmas. Providing a gift box solves a customer problem.

Then there’s gift wrapping. For some people, it’s a hassle. Gift wrap’s not cheap, and it may require an extra trip to pick it up at the drug store. And for customers who ship items direct to the gift recipient, it’s essential.

A couple examples: GAP offers one complimentary unassembled box for every three paid items ordered (why not one for one)? The other option is premium gift wrap service for $5 per order. Victoria’s Secret will send you a gift wrap kit for $3, or wrap the gift for you for $6.

These add-ons also give you an opportunity to brand yourself to the recipient. If you sell items carried by many other retailers, the recipient has no clue where the gift giver bought the item. Why not put your logo on your gift box, or as a watermark on the white side of the gift wrap?

Whether you include gift wrapping or boxes as upsells or freebies is up to you - one will bring you easy additional revenue, the other a fantastic customer service experience.

Continue Reading:
Giving Gift Givers More Options »

Perhaps we can agree religion and politics have no place in retail email marketing?

While many can play it safe and avoid references to Christmas with “holiday” or “season,” political-themed emails may require the same finesse. Chad White of the Email Experience Council flagged some examples of some election-themed retail emails that may offend. For example, Spiegel used “Luxury First!” in an email, which may be received as a mockery of the Republican presidential slogan “Country First.” Says Chad, “It stops being clever when people are feeling attacked.”

An online tea-tailer sent this email post-election:

United States of Tea

Unite our post-election nation by sending a gift of tea across the blue/red divide. Mail a gift of tea between any blue and red states, selecting $19 or more and your shipping is free.

Other than the fact that this email clicks through to a home page that doesn’t repeat the offer or promotion, I didn’t find anything offensive about the email (but then again, I’m Canadian).

It does seem a bit complicated (requires looking up a voting map and figuring out which friends/family live there and predicting what kind of tea they may fancy).

But apparently this email did cause a stir, according to Adagio Tea’s Twitter posts:

Says one Twitter follower:

Regardless, kudos to Adagio for being open and addressing the issue through Twitter (and inviting email subscribers to engage through Twitter in the email campaign). I’m curious if a formal correction, clarification or apology will be sent via email, as well.