CASE STUDYE-commerce: Edible Arrangements' countdown ad lifts same-day orders 8%

SUMMARY: Think you have a great service that no one knows about? Even if it's not new, it might be worth promoting anyway. Edible Arrangements tried it and increased sales. 

The e-commerce team increased same-day delivery orders on the Web 8% with simple promotion in a handful of channels. See where the team promoted the service, how, and where the campaign is headed.by Adam Sutton, Senior Reporter

Edible Arrangements has offered same-day delivery for its fruit baskets, fruit bouquets and other sweet gifts for more than a decade. It extended the deadline for same-day orders to 5 p.m. a few years ago, which helped the company stand out, but only to the people who knew about it. 

"It's kind of our hidden gem," said Kaitlin Reiss, Vice President of E-commerce, Edible Arrangements International. "A lot of people don't realize that we have same-day delivery, even though it is not something new for us, so we realize that we still need to do even more to promote it."

Reiss' team has since launched a campaign to spread the word. The results have been sweet:

8% increase in same-day orders on its website since promoting the service

Slightly higher open rate and average order value for emails with same-day messaging

Here's how the team raised awareness.

Step #1. Extend same-day service

Same-day service is not an option for every company or even every franchise location. Edible Arrangements has more than 1,100 storefronts worldwide, which makes it easier to expedite local deliveries. 

Most stores offer the 5 p.m. deadline for same-day orders. Some go even later, Reiss said, but the extension was impossible at some locations. The team chose to make 5 p.m. the standard to attract business from commuters who might want to pick up an order on the way home. 

"Our consumer is changing. There are a lot more last-minute orders, so we wanted to make sure that we are available when they forget a birthday, or an anniversary, or any other special occasion," Reiss said. 

Step #2. Promote on website

Before Edible Arrangements spread the word, it promoted the service on its website to reinforce the message to visitors. This was done primarily on the homepage with a countdown timer. 

The timer ticks down the hours and minutes each visitor has left to place an order for same-day delivery. The counter adjusts for each visitor's time zone and uses 5 p.m. as a universal deadline. 

A timer and not a clock

The timer is expressed more in words than digits. Below the top portion of the homepage — which has a logo, navigation bar and search box — visitors are greeted with large text that clearly expresses the offer:

"Want it in today? Order in the next [X] hours and [X] minutes."

Though short on detail, the headline conveys a clear deadline and message. 

Instant gratification

A display ad that hovers over the right portion of the homepage's "hero shot" shows a graphic of a speeding truck and the words "Instant Gratification" in large capital letters. 

Below in smaller text is this message: "Same-day delivery is our specialty." This helps reinforce the service as a differentiator in the market for gifts and arrangements. 

Testing the ads

The timer and the graphic have been tested to help optimize clickthrough rates, Reiss said. For example:

Textual format of the timer was tested against a digital format (i.e., "12:00").

"Instant gratification" message was tested against copy that emphasized the company’s refrigerated delivery trucks.

Step #3. Promote via email

Email is an important channel for the company and the team made sure to mention the same-day service in email campaigns. Doing so is especially important during the holidays, Reiss said. 

"We don't rely on FedEx or UPS to make all of our deliveries. That is one advantage that we have during a holiday period for those last-minute customers, so it's often the main message around the holidays."

Weave into everyday emails

When it's not the holiday season, the team is less likely to feature the same-day service as a main message of an email. Instead, it mentions the service with simple bold text in the header, such as:

"Order by 5 p.m. for same-day delivery."

Other times, the team will use the "instant gratification" message it tested on the homepage, but in a larger display ad. The ad's call-to-action: "find a store."

Step #4. Raise awareness

Promotion on the homepage and in emails helps Edible Arrangements connect with current customers and prospects. The team has also made strides to raise awareness of those who may not be shopping for a gift. 

Social media

The team has active profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest. It occasionally mentions the same-day service in posts, hoping to catch the interest of someone who has put off gift shopping for too long. 

Ad networks

Edible Arrangements runs ads on search engines and websites. Soon, the team will test messaging to promote the same-day service in the PPC and display ad networks it uses. 

"We are definitely happy with the results and I think that they are only going to get better," Reiss said. Lesson: Don’t assume your company’s existing features or services are on the customers’ radar.

The basis for a stellar marketing campaign doesn’t have to revolve around a new service, product or feature. Your company could have a pre-existing item that could use some additional awareness. Take Edible Arrangements’ same-day delivery service. Kaitlin Reiss, Vice President of E-commerce, Edible Arrangements, told MarketingSherpa the service was the company’s “hidden gem.”

“A lot of people don’t realize that we have same-day delivery, even though it is not something new for us, so we realize that we will need to do even more to promote it,” Reiss said.

The hub of tasty fruit bouquets utilized simple promotion through a variety of channels to increase both email open rates and its same-day orders, too. Are your company’s pre-existing services being promoted to its greatest potential?

Doubtful. Despite the fact that those features may not be new to the company, it could be new to consumers.

CASE STUDYE-commerce: Moving beyond shopping cart abandonment nets 65% more checkout conversionsPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: Marketers know shopping cart abandonment emails work. But, what about other types of abandonment? For example, can an email get customers who abandon a

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product page to return to the site and buy? 

This e-commerce site cut checkout abandonment 40% with emails targeted at three types of abandoners. The site sells to businesses and consumers, and this article shows the results of three triggered sends. Read on to discover the most effective send times for Envelopes.com.by Adam Sutton, Senior Reporter

Envelopes.com sells almost any type of envelope you can imagine. They come in plain white, translucent green, and dozens of customizations. The site attracts a diverse audience, and that can create challenges for email marketing. 

Many of the store's customers are businesses, said Laura Santos, Marketing Manager, Envelopes.com. Some of these customers consider the store's products a commodity. They visit the site once and buy. 

"Most of our purchases happen the same day," Santos said. 

However, not all visitors shop this way. A significant number visit multiple times before buying. They may be a consumer who needs envelopes for a wedding, or a freelancer who needs to check designs with a client, for example. 

The marketing team reviewed its site data and saw an opportunity to increase sales with these multiple-visit shoppers. By sending emails that encouraged them to return, it could reduce abandonment rates and increase conversions.

The plan worked. Envelopes.com cut its checkout abandonment rate by 40% in under two years resulting in a 65% increase in checkout conversions. Here are the site's checkout abandonment rates over that period:

2011: 51.18%

2012: 46.52%

2013 (to date): 30.95%

Read on for three abandonment emails that supported this change and its results. 

Campaign #1. Product category abandonment

Envelopes.com does not send all three of the emails to each shopper. Instead, it selects one of the three depending on where a shopper abandoned the site, and abandonment can happen anywhere. 

Product abandonment emails work for some marketers, but they weren't right for Envelopes.com, Santos said. The site's products can have dozens of styles, colors and customizations. 

"To send a product abandonment email with 10 different A7s in 10 different colors, we didn't find it really to be effective," Santos said.

Instead, her team sends emails that focus on the product category abandoned by the shopper. For example, a customer who views square envelopes on the site and leaves will receive a category email with these features:

Product image — A large image shows four colors of the envelopes, which implies they come in a variety of colors.

"Thank you" message — The copy thanks the person for shopping, notes their category of interest, and offers help to complete the purchase.

"Shop now" button — The email's main call-to-action is a black "shop now!" button.

Options to shop — Below the main call-to-action are three links to shop envelopes by size, color and style.

The team sends this abandonment email to anyone who has provided an email address, spent at least four minutes shopping, and failed to complete a purchase. The average shopper spends about 4.5 minutes on the site, Santos said.

RESULTS

The email performed best when sent at 11:30 a.m. on the day after abandonment. Here are the average results:

Open rate: 44.28%

Click through rate: 7.08%

Conversion rate (among shoppers who clicked ): 21.33%

The team tried sending the email three days after the abandoned session and saw slightly lower results:

Open rate: 39.37%

Click through rate: 7.09%

Conversion rate: 19.84%

Campaign #2. Shopping cart abandonment

The marketers at Envelopes.com believe customers who begin the checkout process are different from customers who place items into a cart. This is why each group has a separate abandonment campaign. 

"A cart is not necessarily as committal as a checkout. A checkout is like you are almost there and you are filling in your information … A lot of people use their cart almost as a wish list, so it's not necessarily as final," Santos said. 

A shopper who abandons items in a shopping cart on the site without buying receives an email from Envelopes.com about 48 hours later. Here's what it includes:

Header — The website's logo and top navigation bar are featured at the top.

Headline — The email has a tongue-in-cheek message emphasized with the headline, "Your Cart Misses You." There is also a large image of an empty shopping cart.

Call-to-action — Shoppers are encouraged to "rekindle the flame" with the cart via a call-to-action button.

Copy — The main copy of the email gives shoppers a "friendly reminder" that they left items in the cart and that those items will be saved.

Products — The last portion of the email lists images and descriptions of the products left in the cart.

Envelopes.com sends two additional reminders to shoppers who do not convert. The emails are very similar to the first with slight differences, such as a headline that states, "Reunited And It Feels So Good."

RESULTS

Waiting 48 hours to send the email earned great results:

Open rate: 38.01% Click through rate: 24.71% Conversion rate: 40.00%

Sending this email at 11 a.m. on the day following abandonment showed a slightly higher open rate but significantly lower performance overall:

Open rate: 38.63%

Click through rate: 19.54%

Conversion rate: 27.66%

Campaign #3. Checkout abandonment

The checkout email is very similar to the cart email described above. It lists the products left behind, has a single button for the call-to-action, and uses the same header. 

Differences between the two:

Creative — The tone of the email is less humorous. For example, the image simply states, "Checkout Today!"

Call-to-action — The cart is also mentioned in the copy and the call-to-action button, which states, "View Your Cart."

This campaign also sends two reminders to shoppers who do not convert. These are very similar to the first message with slight changes. 

RESULTS

Waiting 24 hours to send this email achieved the best results:

Open rate: 39.24%

Click through rate: 18.18%

Conversion rate: 33.93%

As with the cart email, sending this message on the following morning (this time at 10 a.m.) earned a slightly higher open rate but lower overall performance:

Open rate: 39.72%

Clickthrough rate: 17.91%

Conversion rate: 24.62%

Always test and tweak

Envelopes.com regularly tests emails to improve performance. For example, the team is wrapping up tests that gauge the impact of the additional reminders. Another test analyzes the impact of including a discount offer. 

One insight the team discovered early on is to avoid sending too many emails, Santos said. 

"If you make it to the final step, checkout, then you are not going to get a cart email and you are not going to get a category email within a certain time period. We have a buffer zone that we look for before we even attempt to send out a checkout message," she said. "We double check to make sure we don’t bombard people."Lesson: Targeting customer abandonment is worth it.

We’ve all been there. Perusing products on the Internet when the phone rings, it’s time for dinner or the dog is barking for a walk. No matter what it is that pulls us away from the computer, distractions are inevitable.

As an e-commerce marketer, understanding and reeling your consumers back in is crucial for garnering conversions. Many e-commerce companies have found success recovering customers through abandonment emails.

The case study above examines how Envelopes.com targeted category, cart and checkout abandonment with emails sent less than a week after the customer left the site. The campaign lifted the company to net 65% more checkout conversions.

Examine why your e-commerce site isn’t earning those sales. Is it internal, or could it just be the busy lives of your consumers? Sometimes, all it takes is a little reminder.

CASE STUDYEmail Marketing: How an e-commerce site eschews discounts in favor of eco-friendly contentPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: When Paul Cannella started his online business 10 years ago, he became the first manufacturer of eco-friendly canine waste bags in the United States, and snagged the URL PoopBags.com. 

Learn how he built an email marketing strategy around environmentally conscious content, and used his employees and passions to grow the company.

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by Courtney Eckerle, Reporter

Like many businesses, Paul Cannella, President and Owner, PoopBags.com, started his company from an issue he found in everyday life. 10 years ago, he was constantly collecting various plastic bags for his Labrador, May. 

"I assumed there must be a place to buy poop bags on the Internet, so I started looking. What I discovered was a ton of information on plastic, and just how terrible it was for the planet," Cannella said. 

His search for eco-friendly dog products was futile, finding only one manufacturer of biodegradable dog waste bags, and it was located in Norway. The fact that nothing was available in the U.S. seemed ridiculous to Cannella. 

He thought, "Why are we taking a natural product, sealing it up in a bag that will preserve the contents for 100 to 1,000 years?" 

Cannella knew the market for his product was in retaining the highest standards for biodegradable product certification, and using his content as a means to emphasize that to consumers. 

Over the past 10 years, he has been developing email content that engages his consumers, and emphasizes the issue that was important to him from the very beginning of the company. 

CAMPAIGN

Cannella is passionate about the ways in which his product protects the environment, and his email content has served as an outlet for his business and his customers to communicate on that topic.

He established a content calendar that revolves around various earth-related holidays, as well as topics that reflect his products — 100% biodegradable dog waste bags, and upcycled bag holders he calls BAR3K, the three R's standing for reduce, reuse and recycle. 

Limited time-focused marketing has taken the place of sales and discounts for Cannella, and he said this encourages his customers down the purchase path faster than discounting his product. 

"We've learned less is more. Newsletters should be focused to one or two highlights versus trying to cram in a ton of information or updates," he said. 

Step #1. Set a theme for email content to reflect

Cannella spent 15 years in the publishing industry, concluding his career as the Director of Corporate Online Media Sales for Time, Inc. Because of this background, he knew from the beginning that he needed to utilize email marketing. 

He realized people who were interested in buying his product, instead of just using any plastic bags or shopping at their local pet store, probably had similar ecological motivations. 

So, Cannella decided the email content would have to reflect that desire to "make a small difference in the world." Every plastic bag he takes "out of use … is a huge personal victory," he said. 

His belief that businesses should be responsible and "give back to the communities that support them" are what drive his email content. He believes customers are purchasing not just his product, but peace of mind in reducing their "carbon paw print." 

"PoopBags has always been, and will always be, green at its core. I could sell plastic dog waste bags with a really nice margin all over the world with a URL like PoopBags.com, but I don't want to," Cannella said. 

He added by writing on topics he and his staff care about, such as environmental causes, charities and pet-related issues, compelling content becomes more simple to produce. 

"It makes it easy to bond with people … Knowing that we write about things that are so important, and we care passionately about, makes [writing email content] pretty easy to do," he said. 

Step #2. Create content calendar that reflects that theme

Overall for the year, Cannella said, they are "hitting main pinnacles" like Earth Day, the beginning of both spring and summer, as well as online shopping highlights Cyber Monday and Christmas. 

"As the year unfolds, we look at the upcoming month, and lay out the real specifics on what will be featured," he said. 

When it comes to frequency, he believes his team allows a schedule that works for both them and the subscribers. With a "less is more" approach, their newsletter sends focus on one or two major updates. 

"We always align to the big days for us, like Earth Day, but then we lay out a schedule for the rest of the year. Once a month is too little, and once a week is too much, so we're somewhere in the middle with each having a significant update or promotion," he said. 

For example, as a new product is officially in the warehouse, he said, it will become the focus of an upcoming newsletter. 

Earth Day

This past Earth Day, PoopBags.com sent out the newsletter with a watercolor graphic of hands holding the earth, and asked readers:

"What action will you take today to make your part of the world a little bit better? At PoopBags.com, we are always looking for ways to help improve our surroundings; whether big or small we are committed to reducing carbon (paw and foot) prints." 

They, the team announced their "Earth Day contribution … for our tenth year," teaming up with the Arbor Day Foundation to replant trees after a forest fire. 

"Simply place an order of $25 or more and we will automatically donate a tree in your name! But that's not all … you can also purchase additional trees! Hurry, this offer is good for one day, April 22, 2013!" 

Step #3. Draw from employees for content ideas

"Content ideas for me pop up at random times. I usually jot these down, and then use them to kick off conversations at our weekly employee meetings," Cannella said. 

These weekly content meetings are vital to the process of producing newsletters, Cannella said, and "the team all contributes to the evolution of the newsletter." 

The atmosphere of the meetings is collaborative, and he encourages his team to shoot down any of his ideas, or add to them. 

"Sometimes they're a dud," he said, but added "sometimes they lead to something else with the team's feedback … and they're a hit." 

One of the most rewarding newsletters, and experiences for his company, Cannella said, came from the newly chosen Employee of the Month. 

That title comes with a bonus, he said, that the employee gets "to decide how to spend on the office, and their co-workers." 

Cannella also owns a restaurant in the Chicago area, and after a fundraiser to rescue a dog named "Hopalong from the Chicago Animal Shelter," the chosen employee decided it would be a perfect opportunity to organize a field trip for the PoopBags.com team. 

"What goes around, comes around"

The team volunteered walking dogs, and spent the day with the animals at the shelter. Cannella described their experience in a letter to subscribers as content for their regular newsletter send. 

He said, "I believe there are certain days in your life that will stand out when you're looking back one day. I'm confident that I just experienced one of them." 

Cannella went on to describe the trip he and his employees took to the Chicago shelter, complete with pictures of the team with dogs, one of which has the caption "Team PoopBags & Glamor — who possesses a playful, yet gentle demeanor. She is one of many dogs we encountered who are in need of a forever home." 

He encouraged subscribers to volunteer at local animal shelters, and in closing, said, "If you are already working to improve the lives of animals, or are inspired to take action after reading this, please share that with us by posting to our Facebook page or shoot an email to Paul@poopbags.com. Take care." 

Step #4. Put giving before giveaways

Cannella said he has never really believed in coupons or relying on "a quickie percentage off" a product as a go-to way to drive your business. 

"If you offered me 10% off my business or said you were going to donate 10% to a cause I was passionate about, I would forgo the money to me, personally," he said. 

Over the past 10 years, Cannella said he has found his customers to be very smart, up to speed on environmental issues and receptive to this type of offer. 

"While everyone likes to save money … our customers would rather see the collective efforts of their savings be dedicated to save this specific dog, or save hundreds of trees," he said. 

You Buy, We Donate — The Wounded Warrior Project

For this Fourth of July, Cannella and his team sent out an email benefitting the Wounded Warriors Project. The email stated:

"This Independence Day installment of You Buy, We Donate will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. From July 3 - July 7, PoopBags.com will donate 4% of every sale to the Wounded Warrior Project. It is our hope that you will join us in supporting them. Simply follow the link, and happy shopping!"

The newsletter then invites the reader to share via social media, concluding with, "Sharing is caring! Be sure to share this email with all of your family and friends. We’ve made it easy, simply click on the links below!" 

RESULTS

Cannella's three types of newsletters receive the following results using his environmentally conscious content strategy: 

Consumer:

16.3% - 24.3% open rate

0.4% - 5.5% click through rate

Commercial:

16.2% - 24.7% open rate

0.8% - 5.1% click through rate

Retail:

16.9% - 27.9% open rate

0.4% - 5.8% click through rate

Creative Samples

1. Earth Day newsletter

2. Chicago Shelter newsletter

3. July 4 newsletter

CASE STUDYE-commerce: How Wine Enthusiast increased organic traffic 154% with content marketingPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: Marketers around the world are learning how to sell more with content marketing. The team at Wine Enthusiast has been doing this for decades. 

We sat down with this wine retailer and publisher to understand how it uses content marketing to drive e-commerce sales and how the team increased organic traffic 154% last year.

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by Adam Sutton, Senior Reporter

In content marketing, every brand is a publisher. The opposite is also true at Wine Enthusiast Companies. The publisher of Wine Enthusiast Magazine has sold wine and wine accessories for more than 30 years. 

The monthly magazine is nearing its 25-year anniversary and is available as a paid subscription in print and digital formats. Its website is bursting with content, such as wine reviews, articles, videos and more. The company sells subscriptions and advertising, but it also uses the content to attract customers for its two e-commerce sites. 

"We put time into creating helpful content that helps people either make a buying decision or entertain them. Even if they aren't making that purchase in the moment, we feel that they will come back to us as a great source of information," said Erika Strum, Director of Internet Marketing, Wine Enthusiast Companies.

Strum's team uses the content to build an audience, earn its trust and drive sales. 

Working with the company's online content last year yielded good results:

104% increase in traffic to the magazine site in 2012

154% increase in organic traffic to the site

50% increase in monthly email opt-ins

"In general, the larger our email list, the greater an opportunity for sales through either ads based on our total send count or direct sales from our e-commerce properties," Strum said.

Below, we highlight the tactics Wine Enthusiast used to increase traffic, build lists, and integrate its magazine and e-commerce sites. 

Tactic #1. Connect content and e-commerce

Wine Enthusiast operates three websites:

1. Wine Enthusiast Magazine — the site of the paid-subscription magazine

2. WineExpress.com — e-retail shop for wine

3. Wine Enthusiast Catalog — e-retail shop for wine accessories

The team hosts most of its content on the magazine site. For this content to effectively attract people and encourage them to shop, the site has to be clearly connected to the online stores. The primary way the team achieves this is with a simple three-tab navigation bar at the top of every page. 

This tool stays with visitors throughout the three sites. A visitor can hop from the magazine site to a retail site with a single click, and vice versa. This creates constant cross-promotion between the channels and provides a simple way to organize the experience. 

Tactic #2. Become a leading resource

"We like to make our customers and our readers feel that we are really the best source for everything wine," Strum said. 

Wine Enthusiast has arguably achieved this goal by providing a vast and growing library of content. Below is a list of just some of the material the company publishes. We will dig further into several of these areas later in the article.

Print and digital magazine — Wine Enthusiast Magazine is a paid publication offered in print and digital formats.

Buying guide — this searchable database of wine reviews is hosted on the magazine site. The reviews are performed and written by Wine Enthusiast. Access to the database used to require a subscription, but the team removed the paywall and it is now a free resource.

Wine tasting videos — the team publishes a daily video of a wine tasting and review on WineExpress.com. The videos are fast and easy to shoot, and they are integrated into the wine store’s e-commerce strategy.

Wine 101 — this section of the magazine site gives budding wine connoisseurs in-depth articles to teach them fundamentals such as how to select wines and pair them with food.

Email newsletters — the company maintains two email lists that it sends wine-related content and offers.

And there's more — the team also publishes blog post and recipes, and it often repurposes content for infographics, PDFs and contests. 

"Even though all this content is available online in different articles, we find that people

actually like to download a beautiful multi-page PDF to will help them cook, plan parties and that kind of thing," Strum said.

Tactic #3. Aim for "simple and effective"

The company has a big team of photographers, designers, copywriters, editors and other people who create and publish the content. Even with these resources, efficient production remains important. 

The team's wine tasting videos are an example of how it stays efficient. 

These clips are shot daily and featured on WineExpress.com. They are created with a small budget and shot on a simple, fixed set that never changes. The production is not as sleek as the company's Wine Enthusiast TV videos — but it works. 

"It is tremendous in terms of helping sell wine," Strum said. "The videos we develop are often the number-one most popular area in our emails for clicks. For example, on a recent Wine Express email, the video was directly linked to 20% of the revenue."

The videos are published and promoted throughout WineExpress.com, such as in:

Product pages  for a corresponding wine

The “Wine of the Day” spot on the homepage

A page dedicated to promoting a free video library

Email newsletters  when a corresponding wine is on sale

WineExpress.com also displays a small video icon next to the titles of wines that include a video tasting. The icons are used on product category pages and search result pages. 

Tactic #4. Take down the paywall

The buying guide is one of the most popular areas of Wine Enthusiast’s magazine site. It is a database of more than 134,000 wine ratings, and new entries are added each month. 

The company used to charge customers to access the guide, but the team decided to monetize it in another way. 

"Our competitors put the content behind a paywall, but we made a pretty big decision to give the content away for free," Strum said. "It built tremendous traffic for the site." 

Much of this additional traffic came from natural search. In addition to pulling more people within reach of the team's e-retail sites, the boost helped in two other ways:

Ad revenue — the magazine site includes third-party display advertising. Increases in traffic help the team sell the ads.

Email subscribers — when new visitors spend time on the site, a lay-over ad periodically encourages them to join one of the team’s email lists. These ads are customized for context, such as whether the visitor is viewing the buying guide or homepage.

"We find that if people are enjoying our content, they are happy to hear more from us, and something like an email address can be very valuable to us," Strum said. 

Tactic #5. Separate the email lists

People come to Wine Enthusiast’s sites for many reasons. Some want to browse content. Others want to buy wine. Others want to research wine accessories. 

The team uses two email programs to help meet these varying needs:

Retail — people who opt-in on WineExpress.com mostly receive discount offers for wines. This list receives a higher frequency of emails.

Magazine and catalog — people who opt-in on other sites receive emails with content and offers. This list receives a lower frequency of emails.

"We like to keep it separate because we feel the right frequency for promoting things like wine cellars and wine glasses is lower than for promoting wine," Strum said. 

Tactic #6. Repurpose content for SEO

The team works with an agency to maintain and improve its search engine optimization. The agency helps target keywords, find opportunities, and optimize videos, articles and other content. 

Here are a few ways the team improves results in organic search:

Link building — some of the team's content is great link bait. For example, the team publishes an annual list of the top 100 wines. The list and corresponding information is published in a variety for formats, such as a premium PDF, infographic and in the buying guide. Once the content is live, the team promotes it to media sources and bloggers to earn backlinks.

Topic hubs — with so much content, the team can easily aggregate material on a given topic to create a great resource. For example, the team once wanted to improve rankings for terms related to "pinot noir reviews," Strum said. 

The magazine had thousands of related reviews on its site, so it aggregated them onto a single page. The result: the page is now the second natural result in Google for the phrase "pinot noir reviews" and the top natural result in Bing.

"No matter what somebody sells, there is someone out there who is excited about it. You can take what you already have and use it to your advantage rather than always feeling bogged down by the need to create new stuff," Strum said. 

Tactic #7. Find more ways to repurpose

Contests are another way Wine Enthusiast builds lists. The team repurposes content to help promote these campaigns. 

"We just launched a contest based on our 10 Best Wine Travel Designations … We have over 10,000 entries and the contest still has two months left, so it’s pretty incredible," Strum said.

For example, one of the team’s contests is giving away a trip. The page includes repurposed content such as:

Architectural highlights of the destination

Activity highlights

Video for the 10 Best Wine Travel Destinations of 2013

The page includes all the information regarding the contest. Visitors can sign up with an email address or Facebook account, and they can leave comments at the bottom of the page. Combined with the repurposed content, the page provides a hub for the contest the team can promote to bloggers and the media to build traffic and entries. Lesson: Content can help you connect with consumers while building trust, too.

As an e-commerce marketer, you’re not face-to-face with your consumers — your computer screen is. Establishing trust and connecting with them is a feat of its own. In these two case studies, e-commerce companies utilized content to increase traffic and awareness of their brands to stand out in a crowded Internet space.

PoopBags.com – yes, you read that right – built an email marketing strategy on eco-friendly content. As a biodegradable bag for pups’ – er – business, the brand developed email content emphasizing environmental causes, charities and pet-related issues.

“It makes it easy to bond with people … knowing that we write about things that are so important, and we care passionately about, makes [writing email content] pretty easy to do,” Paul Cannella, Owner, Poopbags.com, told MarketingSherpa of the company’s content strategy.

Retailer Wine Enthusiast also put content into play to earn trust with consumers. The company’s website features wine reviews, articles and videos to help build an audience. The content helped yield a 50% increase in monthly email opt-ins.

“We put time into creating helpful content that  helps people either make a buying decision or entertain them,” said Erika Strum, Director of Internet Marketing, Wine Enthusiast Companies. “Even if they aren’t making that purchase in the moment, we feel that they will come back to us as a great source of information.”

Do you have something to offer your consumers other than a great product or service? Look to content to form valuable trust and relationships in your market.

CASE STUDYB2B E-Commerce: Redesigned online form increases quotes 67.68%Post a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: Website redesign can be particularly important for e-commerce websites because online buying behavior, and ease-of-use expectations from website visitors, can change over time. Beyond redesigning an entire website, taking that process down another level to improve a key element of the website can really pay off. 

Read on to learn how Company Folders redesigned its entire website, and then tackled its online quote form, and experienced a dramatic 67.68% increase in total quotes.

15

by David Kirkpatrick, Senior Reporter

CHALLENGE

Redesigning a website can improve results, and rethinking a particular aspect of the site directly impacting conversion-to-sale can dramatically increase performance.

This case study looks at how Company Folders, a firm that provides custom folders for businesses, redesigned the company's website. With that stage accomplished, the team then took one element of the site — an online quote form — and completely changed the entire process and created a form with a new design and brand-new functionality.

Continue reading to find out the process Company Folders used to refine and improve its website and eventually reach a 67.68% increase in overall quotes from the website form. 

CAMPAIGN

The entire effort began with a redesign of a company website, which dated back to 2007.

Step #1. Redesign the entire website

Vladimir Gendelman, CEO, Company Folders, said the old design of the website was "obviously 'last year,'" and there were two main reasons to redesign the site:

It was five years old, and out-of-date

More importantly, the way people shop online changed over that time frame and the old website didn't reflect the ease-of-use online shoppers had come to expect

He explained the multi-step process the team used for the redesign began with a wireframe detailing the basic user design and user experience.

The early version of the new website was then shown to friends and family, particularly people that could be considered part of Company Folders' target audience. This feedback was used to make the new design user-friendly.

The next step was creating an attractive look and feel for the new site, and once again, the team sought input from friends and family.

Once the new website launched, Gendelman stated the site was not static. The team would listen to feedback from customers and site users to make small changes that improved the overall user experience.

Step #2. Recognize the importance of specific website elements

Company Folders understood the online quote form was a key element on its website. It was also an element requiring an optimized design because it was so complex.

The product involved multiple steps of choices, with many options at each stage.

For example, the company offered over 100 folder styles, such as one pocket, two pockets, with windows, without windows, with fold-down tabs, without tabs, pocket orientation could be vertical or horizontal.

After the folder style is chosen, there were 70 different paper options. Beyond those choices, there were a number of different printing options.

There are some limitations within those options, because if someone chose very dark paper, it could only be printed by embossed foil. A four-color printing process simply wouldn't show up on dark paper.

"You can see how the complexity gets out of hand really quickly," Gendelman said.

He continued, "We actually calculated at one point that if we take all the different options that we have, we ended up with 15 million combinations."

This only applied to presentation folders — only one of the product lines Company Folders offered on its website.

The team also understood the online quote form needed to address two separate audiences. Designers who are buying from Company Folders typically have purchased this type of product before and understand the basic process of making a series of choices resulting in the end product they have in mind.

Business owners and office managers are another key audience for Company Folders, and these prospects often go to the quote form not understanding the process, and possibly purchasing custom folders for the first time.

Recognizing the online quote form was complex, needed to serve two distinct audiences, and was a key website element in conversion-to-sale — the team decided to tackle a redesign of the quote form once the entire website redesign was complete.

Step #3. Review the history of the key website element

Gendelman said the online quote form evolved over time:

On the first website dating back to 2003, the site provided product information and asked visitors to call for more information or a quote rather than beginning with an online form.

To accommodate visitors who didn't want to call, a form was added to the site asking for name, contact information and a comment box to explain what the visitor was looking for.

The next version of the form was one page asking for the main information about the folder, such as product, paper, print method and number of folders needed.

This final version of the form remained in place through the redesign of the website, although Gendelman described a few tweaks which were tested along the way.

"At one point, we even tried to have a pricing calculator on the product detail page," he said. "That was the absolute worst conversion we had."

One problem with the final online quote form was even though it asked for a lot of information about the

potential order, Company Folders was still having to call most of the prospects for additional details about the quote request and clear up orders with conflicts such as four-color printing on dark paper.

Step #4. Redesign the key website element

The online quote form redesign needed to meet two challenges: Company Folders needed a great deal of information to generate a quote, and because there was some complexity to the process the team did not want people filling out the form stopping in the middle of the process to find more information.

"We don't want them to stop in the middle of the process and go look for answers, whether it could be on our website, somebody else's website, or maybe it would be stepping off of the computer and just seeing a co-worker," Gendelman said. "Because once people leave like that, chances are that they are not coming back."

The first decision in redesigning the online quote form was to make the form a multi-step process in order to get away from the single-page form and provide additional relevant information for form users.

Step "zero" was when a website visitor comes to a product detail page where they can enter a quantity and click on the "quote" button.

The visitor was then taken to the online quote form with the quantity and product pre-populated since that information was already provided.

The first step of the online form was choosing the print method. The page included check boxes next to each option with a brief description of the print method along with the image of a flower showing how that flower looks with each of the print methods.

There was no information overload for the prospect who came to the form understanding the process, but the page did provide both descriptive and visual information for visitors who might not fully understand how each print option affected the final product.

The next step was choosing the paper type. The options included texture, color and weight of the paper stock.

Gendelman likened the naming of paper colors to the nomenclature of nail polish colors, such as "ivory," "sand" and "waxed" colors. To help visitors choose the exact shade, colors in a similar group, such as brown papers, would be shown together ranging from off-white to dark brown.

If visitors begin the paper section choosing the style or texture, only colors available in those options would be presented helping the process by eliminating some of the choices.

The next step was flap options, such as flaps for business cards. Because this option was difficult to describe, each type of flap was illustrated with an image to show the visitor exactly how the final product would look.

The final folder option was for spine attachments, or in the case of binders, the ring style.

The final step was asking for contact information, and from there the form was submitted.

Once the form was submitted to Company Folders, the website visitor was then asked to submit artwork, if applicable, for the potential order.

Receiving artwork along with a quote was important to Company Folders because it helped create a more accurate quote, and gave the team the opportunity to find possible issues with combining the artwork with folder options chosen.

RESULTS

An immediate result of the redesigned online quote form was seen in the website exit survey. Gendelman said previous to the new quote form, the feedback was often, "everything is great, however hard to understand and difficult to select [from all the folder options]."

The new exit survey feedback included, "I like the ease of which to choose options."

"We did not want to cut down on the amount of options," Gendelman said, "and, we wanted to really offer as much as possible and then do it in a proper way. That is exactly what I feel we were able to achieve with this."

Simply redesigning the entire website improved the performance of the old online quote form:

13.96% increase in total quotes

12.98% increase in website visitors requesting quotes

But, redesigning the online quote form produced even more dramatic improvements:

67.68% increase in total quotes

59.53% increase in website visitors requesting quotes

65.16% increase in visitors uploading artwork

"In order to tackle this, and do all this, we had to think just like a customer would," Gendelman explained. "A redesign is not just like making [the website] look pretty. It is about making it extremely easy for [website] function." 

On website redesign, he said, "Definitely think like a customer. Look through the eyes of a customer to understand [the redesigned website]."Lesson:  Your website must align with the way people shop online.

A website is never a finished product – it’s forever evolving. After all, it has to. Think about what would happen if you kept your website the same year after year. You couldn’t do that and be successful. The

Internet is constantly changing as is the way customers expect to shop online. Failure to take this into account with the structure of your website has the potential to lead to your company’s downfall.

Take our case study on Company Folders, a company that provides businesses with custom folders. Prior to its marketing efforts, the company’s website was out-of-date and had a quote form that wasn’t conducive to the ease-of-use online shoppers expected.

By redesigning the website and online form, Company Folders experienced a 67.68% increase in total quotes.

The old online form: 

 

The new online form:

 

Company Folders CEO Vladimir Gendelman explained to MarketingSherpa how crucial it was for his company’s website to keep in the consumer in mind.

“In order to tackle this, and do all this, we had to think just like a customer would,” Gendelman said. “A redesign is not just like making [the website] look pretty. It is about making it extremely easy for [website] function.”

CASE STUDY

E-commerce: Adding trustmark boosts sales conversion 14%Post a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: Not every website test has to be complicated to offer impressive results. Sometimes, testing a single element can greatly impact sales, particularly if that element reduces visitor anxiety on an e-commerce website. 

With many consumer marketers in their busy season, this week we’re sharing a simpler case study than usual: a 30-day test ModernCoinMart ran on its e-commerce website in which the only change was adding a trustmark. Read on to learn how the test was executed and led to a 14% increase in transactions.

10

by David Kirkpatrick, Senior Reporter

CHALLENGE

Website optimization can be a powerful driver of conversion, and even testing a single element can prove valuable. For an e-commerce website, removing anxiety from the visitor's path, which might impede a sale, should be high on the list of website design goals.

In this case study, we look at that very scenario.

ModernCoinMart, a division of John Maben Rare Coins, Inc., outsources its Web hosting to a third party. While the hosting company scanned the e-commerce site for security issues such as viruses or vulnerabilities, ModernCoinMart did not have visibility into those reports.

"We also questioned if the protection provided by the Web hosting company was sufficient," said Wayne Leiser, Chief Technology Officer, John Maben Rare Coins, Inc.

He added that ModernCoinMart was "always looking at ways to boost traffic" and "increase the number of sales conversions."

"We knew that some visitors to the site were browsing, and considering buying or selling coins, but abandoned their purchases before finalizing transactions," Leiser stated. "We wanted a way to reassure customers that their credit card and personal information was secure."

The result of this marketing pain point was to enlist the services of a separate website security vendor that could provide ModernCoinMart reporting on the security of its website, as well as a trustmark that might reassure customers of that security.

Read on to learn how testing this simple website element led to a 14% lift in website sales conversions. 

CAMPAIGN

The website security vendor offered ModernCoinMart a 30-day trial of its product.

Leiser said this trial period gave the company an opportunity to understand the vendor’s website scanning and reporting, as well as offered an opportunity to perform an A/B split test on how ModernCoinMart’s customers responded to the vendor’s trustmark on the website.

Step #1. Analyze website for optimal trustmark placement

The ModernCoinMart website was analyzed for optimal placement of the tested trustmark.

In this case, determining "optimal placement" did not involve any website testing.

The team’s goal was to simply find a prominent location on the website where visitors can see the trustmark above the fold and where they would not be required to scroll down before seeing the trustmark.

The ModernCoinMart website featured a banner with the company logo on the extreme left, and navigation elements sat on the right. Below those navigation tabs were other elements, including a small contact information box and a grouping of social media icons.

The trustmark was placed in a blank area to the left of the social media icons, giving the trustmark a prominent position in a largely empty banner at the top of the ModernCoinMart homepage.

Step #2. Use special website code to serve the trustmark

The main "under-the-hood" element of creating the website test was a special "survey code" used to serve the trustmark to website visitors on the ModernCoinMart website.

This code is different from a website code that would be used to serve the trustmark on a permanent basis.

Step #3. Split the test subjects with a website cookie

The second "under-the-hood" element was a persistent cookie that was involved in actually executing the test.

Every website visitor was given this cookie, and the cookie alternated with each visitor as a "yes" cookie or a "no" cookie.

For example, visitor number one would receive a "yes" cookie. Visitor number two would receive a "no" cookie, with visitor three receiving a "yes" cookie, and so on through the duration of the test.

This cookie allowed the test to evenly split website traffic between the original site and the ModernCoinMart website featuring the trustmark.

Step #4. Execute the test

After determining the trustmark placement, creating the special survey code, and setting up the cookie protocol, actually executing the test made up the last stage.

The test ran in the fall of 2011 for 30 days, splitting website traffic between the original ModernCoinMart website, the control in this case, and the website with the trustmark, the treatment.

The only difference between the control and treatment was the trustmark, with it placed in an area of the treatment that would have been blank space for visitors to the control site.

ModernCoinMart visitors who received the "yes" cookie were directed to the treatment, and "no" cookie visitors viewed the control website.

RESULTS

Over the 30-day website test, Leiser said, "Half of our 74,890 visitors to the site saw the trustmark on the site, and half did not."

With this visitor count, the statistical confidence level for the 30-day test reached 90%.

At the end of the thirty days, the treatment website featuring the trustmark beat the control with a 14% increase in sales conversions.

"The A/B testing showed that the trustmark was beneficial," said Leiser.

He added, "People are familiar with (the security vendor’s) logo. Even if there wasn’t an increase in sales,

the comfort of having the website scanned daily for any vulnerabilities by a professional company like (the security vendor) is well worth knowing that we are taking yet another step for our customers’ safety and security."

Lesson: Small changes can lead to big differences.

Optimization doesn’t have to involve some huge website overhaul. Even the seemingly smallest of things can make a huge difference for your company and our case study on Modern Coin Martcertainly demonstrated that.

The self-described “Modern Coin Superstore” added a simple trustmark to its e-commerce site to ease customers’ anxieties about the purchasing process. A tiny graphic produced monumental results, boosting sales conversions to 14%.

What can you as an e-commerce marketer take from this? Don’t think you have to exhaust yourself to yield impressive results – even small changes can lead to big successes.

CASE STUDY

Social Media Marketing: How a small e-commerce site attracted 293,000 Facebook fansPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: A single picture can be worth a thousand words of copy. A customer can snap one and send it in seconds, giving you a testimonial, product review and free content that’s easy to share. 

This e-retailer collects product photos from customers and uses them to support its website and social media marketing. The images increased conversion rates 13% on product pages and helped attract more than 293,000 Facebook fans. See how the marketing team receives a steady supply of customer photos and makes them sell.

19

by Adam Sutton, Senior Reporter

Diamond Candles launched in 2011 to offer scented, soy-based candles with a twist: each one has a ring at the bottom. The excitement of claiming the prize, worth from $10 to $5,000, helped the company grow. 

The company's marketing strategy is largely based on ad-free social media marketing and word-of-mouth, said Justin Winter, Co-Founder and CEO, Diamond Candles. 

According to Winter, the average Diamond Candles customer tells three people about the brand. Even if they have never heard of the company before, he said, those customers will actually end up making a purchase. 

Customer-contributed photos are a central part of the company's marketing. Adding them to product pages increased conversion rates by about 13%. They also helped the company attract a jaw-dropping 293,000 Facebook fans since 2011 without using ads. Update: 469,661 Facebook fans as of October 7, 2013.

In this case study, discover the social media marketing tactics Winter used to grow Diamond Candles and how he plans to push results even higher. 

Tactic #1. Sell a conversation starter

Most of the rings embedded inside the company's candles are inexpensive, but a few lucky customers see real diamonds surface in the wax. 

"We initially had this gut feeling, 'Hey, women love rings!' With a candle, it's kind of a surprise. It's kind of exciting," Winter said.

Other than giving customers more incentive to buy, the rings help the company's marketing by making the product well-suited to social media and word-of-mouth.

"Rings are something that women wear out and frequently compliment each other on," Winter said. "People can wear the ring around afterwards and mention us."

Even the candle is easy to talk about. 

"People generally burn candles in public places, in their homes on different occasions, and when they're having people over," he said. 

Put it on the product

To remove any question about how the product works, each candle includes instructions for how to get the ring inside. Customers also see a call-to-action urging them to take a photo with the ring and share it on Facebook or the Diamond Candles website. 

Tactic #2. Harness the power of photos

Winter is a big believer in the power of user-generated photos.

"A photo can create an intensely emotional response while at the same time requires only minimal invested effort," he said in a recent blog post (see related resources below).

Creating and sharing a photo activates and engages a potential customer, he added. For example, that behavior helped Instagram and Pinterest build audiences. 

"Ring reveal" photos

Diamond Candles focuses on what Winter calls "ring reveal" photos. These images, captured by customers after their rings surface, are the content that drives much of the company's social media strategy. 

"Early on, we figured out that the best way to communicate the value proposition was really in a succinct photo that shows the ring coming out of a candle," Winter said. 

Add to product pages

The "ring reveal" photos have several benefits. One of the biggest and most measurable, Winter said, is their impact on the site's conversion rate. 

Customer photos are featured prominently on the site's product pages and visitors can click to view them in a gallery. The photos increase the conversion rate of a product page about 13% on average, Winter said.

"It's the additional social proof of having a whole gallery of hundreds of lavender-lemon photos that people can easily see," he said. "It's a ton of help when it comes to building trust and legitimacy."

Tactic #3. Gather more photos

To collect these photos, Diamond Candles’ website has a "share your photo" button on each product page and gallery page. However, many of the photos are acquired through product giveaways that are promoted on social networks. 

The campaigns typically encourage people to create images, share them, or complete another social actionfor a chance to win free products. 

For example, the team ran a giveaway in April called "Pin It to Win It." Entrants were asked to create a Pinterest board titled "Scentsational Spring Fever" and add at least 10 photos of their favorite candles or rings. 

The team even extended this approach to YouTube where it has given away products to the first 20 customers who uploaded a product review video to the network. 

Tread carefully

Some social networks, such as Facebook, have terms of service that restrict giveaways and contests. This creates a sensitive legal issue for marketers, and Diamond Candles treads carefully. 

One way it handles this is by promoting giveaways on social networks while centering them on the company’s website or a third-party tool. 

Before running a similar campaign, be sure to review each network's TOS with your legal team and create a list of "dos and don'ts." 

Tactic #4. Create a culture of sharing

Diamond Candles has user-generated photos almost everywhere. Its pages on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and its website emphasize them heavily. This turns the company's social profiles into pseudo product catalogs with proof that customers love the experience. 

The photos also help create an impression that snapping and sharing a photo is part of buying a Diamond Candle. Anyone who crosses the brand online is likely to see a customer photo or a photo-based

giveaway. Even the product label encourages people to share. 

"One of the first things we tried was, rather than telling people to do it, we would frequently repost photos that people had posted and say, 'Hey, this is what Sally found in her candle,'" Winter said. "So to a degree, we're setting an unspoken expectation that this is kind of what you do. This is the product experience."

Tactic #5. Automate and personalize

Most of the company's social media marketing has focused on Facebook, and Winter is excited by the potential he sees in the photo-based networks like Pinterest and Instagram. 

"Instagram has increasingly been very huge for us," he said. 

Using a third-party tool, the team tracks photos on Instagram that users have marked with hashtags related to the brand, such as #diamondcandles. The tool can aggregate and display these photos on the company's website. 

"What we found is that it's not just the collection of the photos, but also interacting with people at those points of user-generated content has been very valuable," Winter said. "Right now, with some tools we have set up, within a day of someone mentioning us on Instagram, our account is responding or acknowledging in some way that person’s post."

Add more social proof

Winter also hopes to one day test showing shoppers product photos that were taken by their friends. 

"If we know that someone sees a photo that a friend of theirs took on a product page and the conversion rate is 20% higher, or what have you, compared to a relatively anonymous photo, then we can know how much we can play with incentives to get more of this content," he said. 

Lesson: Social media fosters marketing by the consumer.

What’s on your mind? Facebook gives its users a platform to speak their minds, share their photos and promote your products. Yes, promote your products.

It may not be what Mark Zuckerberg initially had in mind, but Facebook can offer huge boosts to your company. It’s so simple for a customer to take a photo of your product, which provides your company with a testimonial, review and super sharable content that is free.

Does the product or service you’re selling suit the Facebook realm? In other words, is it sharable? Could it be? This can lead to impressive results. Look at our case study on Diamond Candles, a company that features rings beneath the wax of its candles. By utilizing

customer-contributed photos on its Facebook page, Diamond Candles upped conversion rates and attracted more than 290,000 new Facebook fans.

For minimal effort, your e-commerce site has the potential to produce maximum results. Determine how your product can start a conversation in consumers’ social networks and then capitalize on it.

CASE STUDYEmail Marketing: Clothing retailer lifts average open rate 40% via customer segmentation campaignPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: Engaging customers through email campaigns is a craft. As a marketer, you understand the importance of appealing to your customers' behaviors, but what behaviors are most important to hone in on? Which area of focus will result in the most success for your company? 

This case study illustrates how a women's e-commerce retail site, SwayChic, optimized its email campaigns by tuning them to different segments of customers, ultimately increasing revenue as well as clickthrough and open rates.

16

by Allison Banko, Reporter 

CHALLENGE

SwayChic is the e-commerce store for a California-based women’s fashion retailer, Sway. The brand features six brick-and-mortar store fronts speckled throughout Northern California, and it's through these stores Sway's associates organically collect customer email addresses. 

Sway team members entice customers to provide their addresses at the point of sale with alluring website promotions, including coupons and gift card giveaways.

Plus, SwayChic isn't only the online presence of Sway. The site is a unifier of the six physical locations, too.

"We were just trying to make it go full circle, and a lot of people wanted to be a part of that," said Cheyanne Sequoyia-Mackay, Project Manager, SwayChic. "We got lucky."

SwayChic had already been utilizing an email service provider, but email marketing efforts had plateaued and the company was no longer experiencing positive results. The brand longed for a new strategy in its email marketing to increase traffic and more fully engage its loyal customers. 

The challenge was to maximize revenue from existing customers through optimized email campaigns. 

Step #1. Examine pre-existing data

SwayChic's campaign wasn't sprouted from scratch. 

Because of the team's existing email service provider, SwayChic already had access to select data, serving as a base point. Sequoyia-Mackay explained she had already been tracking general patterns to see which days produced the best open rates for email sends. 

Through previous testing, she discovered emails sent on Tuesdays triggered more customer engagement

than emails sent on Wednesdays, for example. While this sort of data was certainly valuable, SwayChic needed to get deeper into the metrics to reap results. 

Step #2. Test for characteristic engagement patterns

Coming into this process, SwayChic wanted to:

1. Maximize revenue

2. Avoid spending hours comparing data

The next step encompassed collaborating with a predicative technology vendor who could give SwayChic a better glimpse of its customer engagement.

However, at the same time, the vendor had to be able to present that data in a way that was clear and easy to apply optimized email efforts. SwayChic didn’t want just a slew of data the team had to exhaust time analyzing. 

Newly harvested data was to be focused on behavioral features, testing 30 to 50 attributes including:

Days with the highest open rates

Time of day with the highest open rates

Customers' past purchases

Clickthrough rates

Time of actual conversions

Timing

SwayChic already possessed the data on which days opened best, but it needed to delve deeper to see what time of day stimulated the highest engagement. 

To test this, customers were divvyed up, organized to receive an email at different times of the day.

Starting out, a certain percentage of customers were sent an email in the early morning, while additional groups were sent the same email either in the late morning, afternoon or evening. 

Behavior, with a heavy focus on ROI

In each group, typical ESP elements (open rates, clickthrough, etc.) for those time slots were collected and examined. However, these items were collected with a focus on how they tied back to SwayChic’s revenue, so it wasn't just run-of-the-mill A/B testing. 

Data was presented in a way that highlighted how much revenue SwayChic was generating at the particular tracked times. The trick was looking at those behavioral patterns that resulted in transactions. 

Perhaps a customer would open her email in the morning on her way to work, but she wouldn't have time to buy the clothing right then (input credit card information, shipping info, billing address). So, she may go back to it in the evening to make her purchase. 

Because the overriding goal centered on ROI, these behavioral patterns of when the conversion actually took place overruled all other data. So, in the situation above, though the open rate may show activity in the morning, the transaction took place in the evening so it would be most beneficial to engage this customer in the future with an evening email. 

Step #3. Segment customers, then customize

After initial testing, SwayChic was able to segment its customers based on the behavioral data collected.

One aspect of the segmentation was the creation of an optimized email schedule revolving around the highest engagement days and times. Customers were divided into following slotted groups:

5 a.m.

10 a.m.

5 p.m.

If their engagement behaviors change, the vendor's technology allows for customers to be automatically shifted into the better performing group. 

"Honestly, we keep adding more to our evening group," Sequoyia-Mackay said. "That's apparently when our customer opens the emails the most." 

SwayChic also collected behavioral tidbits of customers in terms of their purchase histories with the brand, enabling for the customization of what's in the email, too. 

For example:

One-time buyers

Three-time buyers

Buyers who are no longer engaged

By collecting that data, SwayChic was able to launch a retention-based campaign, specifically targeting those customers who are no longer engaged with a "We miss you" email in hopes of reengagement. 

Eventually, Sequoyia-Mackay said, SwayChic plans on launching incentive-based campaigns to target those different types of buyers. She outlined some possible ideas such as offering product recommendations to the three-time buyers or free shipping for the one-time buyers. 

"Those campaigns haven't launched yet, but they're on the horizon and we're really excited about them," she said. 

RESULTS

SwayChic unveiled 12 optimized email campaigns per month and experienced the following results:

Increased average open rate by 40%

Doubled average clickthrough

Tripled revenue for each campaign

"Marketing for us is really, really based on timing and making sure that you can follow a customer’s behavior," Sequoyia-Mackay explained. "It's helped us really hone in and keep a keener eye on how to recognize those behaviors and utilize them to make more money." 

Aside from successful metrics, Sequoyia-Mackay explained the campaign has helped SwayChic fine-tune its marketing voice to better build relationships with customers — something extremely delicate in its industry. 

"In fashion, it's a really big deal," she said. "It's great if you can market well to someone, but you have to market in a way that doesn't sacrifice who you are as a company." CASE STUDY

Email Marketing: Li-Ning's dynamic content nets 11% of clicks, 49% of email salesPost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: This case study spans the globe. Li-Ning is a multibillion-dollar sports brand company based in China that provides footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for both professional and recreational athletes. 

In order to promote the brand in the U.S. marketplace, Digital Li-Ning discovered that understanding its customers through collecting demographic, psychographic and customer interaction data would allow the company to know who its customers were. 

Digital Li-Ning leveraged this data trove to develop an email campaign featuring dynamic content unique to each recipient. Read on to learn how this effort led to 49% of all email-sourced purchases.

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by David Kirkpatrick, Senior Reporter

CHALLENGE

When an email marketer has data such as demographic and psychographic information on the subscriber list, it opens the opportunity to take advantage of not only targeted emails, but even placing dynamic content within individual emails.

Li-Ning, a multibillion-dollar sports brand company in China, is branded Digital Li-Ning in the United States market through a partnership with the Acquity Group.

Ray Grady, General Manager, Digital Li-Ning, and Executive Vice President, Acquity Group, said the brand faced a recognition problem.

"Li-Ning is a relatively unknown brand in the United States focused on a number of different categories — running and basketball specifically," Grady explained. "Understanding who our customer was and [what] their needs and likes were was the challenge."

The answer was to capture information about those customers, and then use that information to target the augmented list with emails populated by dynamic content.

This case study looks at how Digital Li-Ning created a largely automated dynamic content email campaign, and accounted for 49% of all sales sourced back to the email program.

CAMPAIGN

The genesis of this effort was collecting the data because database records require more than a simple email address to be able to serve the dynamic content.

Step #1. Build the database

Any email marketing effort requires a database of at least email addresses. Since Digital Li-Ning was starting the U.S. business from scratch, the company needed to build that database.

"We didn't want to go out and buy emails, as that's proven to be a flawed approach in the world today," Grady said.

Instead, Li-Ning took a grassroots approach and collected addresses through:

Opportunities to meet one of the sponsored professional athletes

Promotions

Contests

Offers for limited edition footwear

All of these incentives required prospective customers to provide an email address to sign up or attend.

These incentives included offline events, such as meeting a professional athlete, and online events, such as Facebook contests.

All promotional activity required participants to provide an email address at minimum, but the goal was to acquire more detailed information in order to more highly target those people with email. The more detailed information for customer profiles was obtained through an API integration with the e-commerce platform and external data from a third-party vendor.

Once someone on the list actually made a purchase, that database record was populated with more detailed information about that person.

Organize the richer database records

For the database records that held more information than just a name and email address, each record contained a variety of fields, including demographic and psychographic information such as:

Gender

Age range

How the sign up for the email list occurred (product event, athlete meet and greet, etc.)

For those people who had already converted to a customer, there was even more detailed information included with the database record:

Previous purchases

Items clicked on

Time of day for purchases

To create the more extensive database records, three pieces of customer information were analyzed:

1. The type of customer making the purchase

2. The customer's previous purchasing behavior

3. Which products were similar to the previously purchased products

Step #2. Create content for the dynamic email and design the email

Grady said content for the email sends was created with two different goals in mind. Some content was produced for what he described as "creative for creative sake" to engage the customer, and other content was produced to generate a click, and Grady said "hopefully generate an order."

The overall goal of the dynamic email content was to match that content to the buying patterns, demographic, psychographic or geolocation information for each individual.

Core creative plus dynamic content for each email

Once the content was created, each email send contained core content that did not change.

Some examples include email that highlighted Spanish national team basketball jerseys, and announcement when Li-Ning signed Miami Heat basketball player Dwayne Wade to a partnership for shoes and apparel.

Beneath the core content was a dynamic box within the email where content highlighting products specific to each recipient was displayed.

Step #3. Automate the content audit

In order to organize all of the different content pieces to be dynamically served, a content audit was performed to determine how each product’s creative looked, and what items had creative pieces that

could be utilized in the email campaign, and then ensure each element of the creative pieces was consistent.

This process for Li-Ning was actually accomplished through a backtesting algorithm that evaluated each element with the creative pieces, helping to streamline the content audit process.

Before the campaign went live, there was something of a manual audit where email with dynamic content was sent internally to Li-Ning's U.S. partner to get input from actual people to make sure everyone was comfortable with the look and feel of the dynamic content email. 

The ongoing process once the campaign was put into place included:

Ongoing data hygiene

Data normalization

Checks and balances on triggers

Internal audit points to ensure transparency and auditability at every step

Step #4. Set rules for dynamic content

For this campaign, gender was the starting point for dynamic content rules. Men were generally sent content focused on products geared toward males, and women's products geared toward females.

At the same time, purchase history was used to override these basic principles at times. For example, if a woman had a purchase history of buying a lot of products geared for males, possibly for their sons for example, the ongoing internal audit points would catch that information and begin serving dynamic content that aligned more closely with the actual purchase history.

Serving the dynamic content

The content was created and audited, the rules were in place and the last stage of executing this campaign was to actually serve the dynamic content.

To accomplish this, Li-Ning incorporated a simple widget into each individual email pulled data points on the recipient and highlighted products relevant to that person based on the above content rules and automated algorithm.

The widget hooked into the e-commerce platform to gather images associated with the product to be

displayed, and within the email service provider, the process involved mail merge fields to dynamically populate each product recommendation.

RESULTS

The most telling result of this campaign is that the dynamic content garnered 11% of email clicks, but those clicks were responsible for 49% of email purchases. Essentially, dynamic content drove a very impressive conversion rate after that initial clickthrough.

14% of Digital Li-Ning's sales occurred through the dynamic email campaign.

"Good technology affords you the opportunity to be a data-driven marketer," Grady said. "There is a lot of specific information you can glean from someone, not only what they share with you, but [also] based on patterns and trends."

This approach allowed Digital Li-Ning to execute a fairly sophisticated dynamic content email campaign with very little manual effort. Once the content was created, the auditing process was mostly automated, and the actual placement of the dynamic content was handled with a small widget within each email. Even the ongoing auditing to refine what content each recipient would see was happening mostly "under the hood" as the campaign ran.

CASE STUDYEmail Personalization: 750% higher CTR and more revenue for e-commerce sitePost a Comment   Permanent Link   Print Version   Free   Newsletters   

SUMMARY: "Personalized" emails do not always have to target a person. Marketers can "animalize" them and see great results. 

This flash sale website for dog owners targets emails to its subscribers' pets and even wishes them a happy birthday. We explain the unique ways the team gathers data and how they use it to increase clickthrough rates and revenue, to provide an example of how marketers should look beyond personalizing emails solely based on the recipient and consider what other factors affect purchase decisions.

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by Adam Sutton, Senior Reporter

Doggyloot is a flash sale site that helps dog owners spoil their beloved canines. The marketing team at the company segments and personalizes emails based on "doggy data," not people data.

For example, subscribers receive emails customized to the size of their dogs. Someone with a Rottweiler is offered different products than someone with a Chihuahua. 

"We can send a customized email for large dogs to a customer, which should have a better conversion rate because it's more relevant," said Jeff Eckerling, CEO, Doggyloot. 

Doggyloot even triggers emails to wish dogs a happy birthday. A few results of that email include:

Open rate: 28.1%

Clickthrough rate: 750% higher than the team's average

Contributes up to 16% of daily total revenue

The team's emails targeting large dog owners also have good results:

Open rate: 10.2%

Clickthrough rate: 410% higher than average

Contributes up to 13% of daily total revenue

Below, we describe the tactics Doggyloot uses to power these campaigns and a shopping cart abandonment email that added over a day's worth of revenue to the company's monthly average. 

Tactic #1. Segment new subscribers

Email is an important channel to Doggyloot and the team needs data to power its segmentation and personalization. In some cases, the marketing team collects doggy data before it collects an email address.

Here's how:

Homepage/landing page combo

Doggyloot's homepage is dedicated to generating subscribers. Other than the header, the main text is a headline and sub-headline emphasizing the value of joining the list:

Headline: "Daily deals for dogs and their people"

Sub-headline: "Discover chews, toys, treats, and more at up to 75% off"

The first question of the sign-up process, "How big are your dogs?" greets visitors as soon as they arrive.The second and final step requests an email address. 

New visitors to Doggyloot cannot view products or offers before signing up for the email list. Once they register, the site reveals the current flash sales. 

Radical test, radical result

The homepage may be unconventional, but it works. 

"We did some A/B testing on whether or not people were more likely to buy after initially joining Doggyloot if we asked for that information, and the results indicated that subscribers were having no problem providing it," Eckerling said. "We ended up rolling it out to everyone."

Tactic #2. Segment current subscribers

Doggyloot had a large list before it began to segment and personalize its emails. The challenge was to persuade current subscribers to provide the doggy data. 

"We knew if customers gave us more relevant information, we could deliver better products to them at the right time," Eckerling said. 

Offer a treat

The team added a "My Dogs" page to each subscriber's account profile. There, subscribers could enter data for each of their dogs, such as:

Name

Breed

Size

Gender

Birthday

Next, the team launched an Email campaign to offer subscribers a $5 credit to share their dogs' birthdays. The call-to-action links of the email directed traffic to the My Dogs page.

"By continuing to learn more about our customers, we'll be able to deliver more relevant products to them, which should lead to better conversion rates and better sales," Eckerling said. 

Tactic #3. Personalize by "style"

Since it does not make sense to offer a 10-pound bone to a five-pound dog, the marketing team segments its email list into three groups:

Small dogs (under 20 pounds)

Medium

Large (over 40 pounds)

The team uses this data to select products for promotional emails. In a typical campaign, the marketing team sends the same email template to every subscriber and the products vary by the size of the owner's dog. For example, only the email for owners with a large dog will offer a three-foot duck chew.

As mentioned above, the promotional emails that are targeted to large dog owners have clickthrough rates 410% higher than the company's average. 

"The results have been really good," Eckerling said. "We've been pleased, which is why the direction we're going in is to provide our customers with more and more personalized offers."

Tactic #4. Happy doggy birthday email

Wishing someone's dog a happy birthday may seem bizarre, but not at Doggyloot. 

"This gives our customers another way to spoil their dogs, which is what we're trying to help them do," Eckerling said. 

Once Doggyloot has the birthday of a subscriber's dog, it schedules an automated email to deliver about two weeks before the date. The email features birthday-related products, treats and toys under a "happy birthday" header. 

"Customers love it. One of the products we had last month was a pet cake mix. You could literally make your dog a cake," he said.

Click through rates on these triggered emails are 750% higher than the team's average. 

Tactic #5. Emphasize urgency to abandoners

Like many e-commerce companies, Doggyloot earns great results with shopping cart abandonment emails. By automatically reaching shoppers who add products to a cart and leave, the team has earned an additional day's worth of revenue each month. 

The emails have done "phenomenally well," partially due to the company's flash sale approach, Eckerling said. 

"Customers know that there is a chance that the product is going to sell out and they need to respond quickly if they want to buy. So, there is this additional sense of urgency," he explained.

The team's abandonment email reaches subscribers about one hour after they leave the site. It aims to win a sale with these features:

More urgency — a sub-headline mentions that the products in the shopper's cart are "almost sold out."

Clear call-to-action — two large orange buttons encourage visitors to "restore my cart."

Product images — items from the shopper's cart are featured with the lower "Doggyloot price" and higher "retail" price.

Speaking of the 750% increase in click through rate, Eckerling said, "I did not expect to see the numbers we're seeing in terms of the open rates, click through rates and conversion. It's been really impressive." Lesson: Segment your customers, then tailor email campaigns accordingly.

Tapping into the consumer mindset is one thing, but targeting it? Now that’s key. Appealing to consumer behavior through segmentation has served up successes for plenty of e-commerce companies. The three case studies above highlight the successes companies have experienced through customization and segmentation.

SwayChic, a women’s clothing retailer segmented its customers based on email open times, past purchases and time of conversions. Sports brand company Li-Ning optimized its email campaigns by targeting items such as gender, age range and items clicked on. Doggyloot customized emails for subscribers based on the size of their dogs.

No matter what each of the e-commerce sites segmented on, all experienced increased click throughs and revenue. In other words, personalization pays off.

e-Commerce Case Studies

The Herman Story

Herman Street is an eCommerce website that launched in 2005. They sell and service computer software and electronics to both consumers and other businesses from their website at http://www.hermanstreet.com. They chose ShopSite software for their launch and it initially met their needs. Herman Street enjoyed vigorous business growth and added developers to their staff to create and customize the website. Their growth and success was rewarding and also presented problems that Herman Street needed to solve to ensure they could scale the business.

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The Challenge

Herman Street found that their business demand outstripped the capability of the ShopSite’s eCommerce application. Herman Street’s in house software developers had the skills and talent to modify the shopping cart software to meet their needs; however, the software vendor ShopSite did not allow anyone else to have access to their application code. Herman Street was also concerned about their conversion to sales metrics. Their cart abandon rate was 49%; that meant a high percentage of customers started shopping but abandoned their cart before they completed the purchase. This metric was in line with the industry average but Herman Street thought they could do much better by improving the shopping experience for their customers. This issue was linked to another shortfall of ShopSite because Herman Street was not able to test their marketing theories with their current shopping cart software. ShopSite did not support split testing for marketing purposes.

"Their customization delivered the results they wanted and improved their conversion to sales rate to 65%. This represented a 27% improvement over their previous conversion to sales metrics."

Finding a Solution

The first step Herman Street took was to make a list of all of the things they needed in a new shopping cart solution. First, they needed access to the code so they could customize parts of the application, they also needed security so open source was out of the question, they preferred PHP scripting, they needed to be able to perform A/B and multivariate testing so they could try out various marketing testing on their site and they needed solid well written code and robust performance in the application to handle their increased online order demand.

Their next task was to find the right shopping cart software.

Herman Street has a sister company, Top Ten Reviews, that specializes in comparing various products. They went toTop Ten Reviews and compared the various shopping cart software solutions. By accessing the shopping cart comparison information from Top Ten Reviews, Herman Street was able to perform a comparative analysis quickly and easily. They were also able to determine that Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart had the key requirements they needed for their new eCommerce application and it was also a top rated ecommerce software package. Pinnacle Cart has proprietary code, allows clients to have complete control of the code, supports A/B and multivariate testing, uses PHP scripting, has well written solid basics including front end, back end, search engine optimization, export capability, reports and marketing. Pinnacle Cart’s eCommerce software was a perfect fit for Herman Street in all areas of their key requirements.

The Solution

Herman Street switched to Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart software and they are totally satisfied with their choice. Herman Street’s in house developers modified the shopping cart check out process to put their own customization in place. Their customization delivered the results they wanted and improved their conversion by 27% improvement over their previous conversion rates. This metric is also significantly higher than the industry average and represents an increase in revenues and in their customer’s satisfaction with the shopping experience. Herman Street is also able to perform A/B and multivariate testing on their site so they can try out new ideas for improving their response rate, ROIand market perceptions.

All other areas of the Pinnacle Cart code were put in place without customization and function very well for Herman Street. They use the export capability from Pinnacle Cart to support their existing inventory management, order management and accounting programs. The export feature allows Herman Street to prioritize and stage in changes to their systems at their own speed. They are planning to migrate to Pinnacle Cart inventory management in the future but are not forced to make migrations until they are ready.

The MyWebsiteSpace.co.uk Story

MyWebsìteSpace is a web design company that offers a number of web based products and services including eCommerce site design. www.MyWebsiteSpace.com was founded in 2005 and in the beginning used ecommerce solutions with lower start up costs and limited functionality. However, they were not satisfied with the poor support of these “economical” eCommerce applications. They struggled but managed with them, for a time. The driving force for change came in June of 2010, when PCI compliance began to financially impact their clients. When MyWebsiteSpace eCommerce clients started getting assessed higher charges for non-compliant PCI transactions it was imperative that MyWebsiteSpace find a better, PCI compliant, ecommerce solution.

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The Challenge

MyWebsiteSpace needed to find an eCommerce solution that would meet all of their customer’s needs, including PCIcompliance. High on the list of requirements was user friendliness and intuition for for clients and their shoppers. MyWebsiteSpace also needed an application that their eCommerce clients could manage easily and have a user friendly GUI (Graphic User Interface) that would support that goal. When their eCommerce clients are able to build and market their stores effectively it builds trust and confidence in their ability to use the software. Another factor in selecting an eCommerce application was the number of shopping transactions completed, and not abandoned. Better conversion rates meant increased sales metrics and revenues. Finally, shoppers needed to be happy with their shopping experience and more likely to return to the merchant’s website.

Their next task was to find an eCommerce shopping cart solution that met all of their requirements. MyWebsiteSpace had previously identified Pinnacle Cart as a software solution they wanted to investigate further because it was one of the few PCI compliant ecommerce applications available. Over a three month time period beginning in June 2010, MyWebsiteSpace tested 12 different ecommerce shopping carts. Pinnacle Cart scored in the top of the class for the majority of the categories they considered to be a priority.

Pinnacle Cart was PCI compliant, which was absolutely essential. ln addition, Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart software scored high in global attributes, easy thumbnail generation and intuitive functions. It was an eCommerce software that MyWebsiteSpace could provide their clients with confidence. An added benefit was the shopping experience provided by Pinnacle Cart, they saw that it was user friendly and supported a higher conversion to sales rate both because of ease of use and features such as drift marketing that allowed merchants to push email communication to shoppers who had abandoned their orders.

"My WebsiteSpace owner, Matt Carroll, has stated that, "Pinnacle Cart has a world-class support team, that in our view is unrivaled in the eCommerce software sector and they are paralleled with the best in the whole website industry"

The Solution

In November of 2010, MyWebsiteSpace converted the first of their clients, www.a3sports.co.uk, to Pinnacle Cart. They followed with conversion of the Crufts Store (The Kennel Club) to Pinnacle Cart in January of 2011 followed Toy Crufts-merchandise in February of 2011. Now, Pinnacle Cart’s software is the only eCommerce application that MyWebSiteSpace offers to their customers.In addition to easy client use and acceptance of Pinnacle Cart, MyWebsiteSpace also monitored shopping metrics and shopper reviews. One of their clients, www.crufts-merchandise.com, has received an overwhelming number of thumbs-up reviews from their members/ users and Crufts is in turn very happy with those results.

Some of MyWebsiteSpace clients receive as many as 11,000 visitors per week. The Pinnacle Cart software handles this volurne with ease and has always come through with top performance. It was very important that their frame work and technology be up to the task of handling high traffic and volume on their servers. Initially there was only one MyWebsiteSpace of clients using a back office system that integrated with Pinnacle Cart that gave merchants the ability to upload product customization attributes, but this feature is available for all of their clients now. The client that is using system integration with Pinnacle Cart actually integrates a complete stand-alone application. The client www.a3sports.co.uk has an application that is used to upload designs and logos for tee shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and other personal products. This feature was a must-have for their business.

MyWebsiteSpace owner, Matt Carroll, has stated that ”Pinnacle Cart has a world-class support team, that in our view is unrivaled in the eCornrnerce software sector and they are paralleled with the best in the whole website industry.” Matt went on to name names of people at Pinnacle Cart who have delivered exceptional service and said, “the Pinnacle Cart team has offered a level of support that we just don’t get from any other supplier.”

MyWebsiteSpace is, “Very satisfied” with the Pinnacle Cart’s ecommerce application and their World-class support team and intends to continue referring Pinnacle Cart eCommerce Software exclusively.

The Dolly Hair Extensions Story

Dolly Hair Extensions was a startup business founded in 2008. They specialize in 100% human hair extensions ranging from quick fix clip in extensions to permanent hair extensions. They also sell hair straighteners and application kits. Dolly Hair Extensions wanted an online store and knew they would need to find an eCommerce system for their online sales process.

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Finding a Solution

Dolly Hair Extensions had only basic computer technology skills and didn’t want to have to hire a professional web designer or developer to manage their eCommerce solution, so ease of use was a big consideration. They spent several months looking at various eCommerce platforms, considering the various features and options. A friend kept insisting that they needed to look at Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart software. Their friend had been a customer for over 4 years at the time Dolly Hair Extensions was trying to find eCommerce hosting, and absolutely loved Pinnacle Cart’s e-commerce platform.Dolly Hair Extensions chose Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart software and have been very pleased with their selection, for the following very important reasons:

Pinnacle Cart was easy to update even for users with basic computer technology skills. Pinnacle Cart has simple search engine optimization tools that help them improve their online search results

quickly and easily. Pinnacle Cart has a one page checkout process for shoppers, which makes it simple to use and improves their

own customer’s experience. Side note: It is amazing how clunky or archaic checkout processes can reduce conversion rates.

Pinnacle Cart has great customer support! Natalie Padjan, Sales Manager at Dolly Hair Extensions, complimented Pinnacle Cart on their level of customer support and went on to say that Pinnacle Cart provides fast responses to calls for support and have even called Dolly Hair Extensions regarding system updates.

Dolly Hair Extensions has used Pinnacle Cart’s shopping cart from the beginning of their eCommerce launch, so they have no comparison with any other shopping cart system, but there are features in the software they know contributed to their success. They are so happy with Pinnacle Cart’s software they have no reason to shop for alternative solutions.

Dolly Hair Extensions uses Pinnacle Cart as a stand-alone system because they do not have other back office systems and thus do not have a need for the Pinnacle Cart software system integration capabilities.