Less Can Be More

What is Corporate Express?

• Global distributor of Office Supplies, Facilities Products and Office Furniture

• US business started in Boulder

• B2B only - primary focus on large organizations

• Employer of more than 2000 people in Colorado

• One of the largest Ecommerce Businesses in the US – Hundreds of thousands of subscribed customers purchase every month– 80% of business transacted online

• Industry growth leader in Q2 2008

• Newest member of the Staples Family

What is Corporate Express?

• Corporate Express challenges, resources and opportunities are not significantly different from yours

• Keep things simple and focused

• 4 key elements guided our path

– Efficient– Targeted– Integrated– Measurable

What I hope you learn

The Situation we Faced at CE

• Although vast majority of business transacted on line….Demand generation strategies were primarily offline

• Marketing owns less than 1/12 of total Go to Market resources - significant dependence on field sales team

• Limited brand awareness….and even more limited budget to change it

• No Marketing dbase

• Segment, vertical, business lines, channels and product were pursuing their own priorities….No controlled process for managing what went to customers and what went to field sales

• Many customers prohibited anything that looked like a promotion

• Organizational opinion about Marketing’s effectiveness was very low

Efficient, Targeted, Integrated, Measurable

• Drove all priorities• Dictated tools, processes and resource usage

Saved Cart

Office Now Campaign

Online Product Marketing

Over 400K Shoppers a Month !!!

• Develop a reminder email campaign for customers with “saved” shopping carts

• First triggered and dynamic content marketing program at CEXP

• Prioritize what customers see based on stated preferences and drive business priorities

• Don’t beat customers to death

• Provide secondary dynamic messaging

• Must measure despite lack of web analytics and campaign tools

Leverage the expressions of demand that customers were making every day

• E-commerce data extremely complex due to customer hierarchies

• Thousands of lines of multiple cart data

• Identifying valid email addresses attached to each cart is difficult

• Identifying and segregating marketable customers from non-marketable customers.

• Making it dynamic required a build of complex business rules that included consideration for how information would render in the email creative

Doing all that wasn’t so easy

• Key Messaging• Encourage customers to complete their cart• Drive customer engagement through E-Way interaction• Encourage customers to purchase key products• Dynamic content in “Tips” section based on cart contents

and customer segment

• Program• Weekly message deployments• Suppress repeats to avoid fatigue

But if you promise your CEO…..

Order # to Allow Customer to Access Cart

Dynamic Tips Messaging Based on Customer Segment

and Product

Cart Contents Populated from

EWAY

Let’s take a closer look

Results show the hard work paid off

The Saved Cart email has proven to be one of the most successful campaigns in Corporate Express history

• Email metrics have been outstanding and above B2B industry averages to date:– Delivery rates: 97%– Open rates: 45% (highest of all CEXP email campaigns)– Click-rate: 18%– Click to Opens: 41% – Opt-out rates: .4%

• Test and Control Analysis of RR shows significant incremental engagement - and the trends have persisted throughout the 7 months of the campaign

• Incremental sales gains are in the millions

• High Customer satisfaction: even customers who historically don’t allow promotional messaging love this service

• Exciting News!! – The cart email campaign was recently announced as an OMMA Awards Finalist in the Online Advertising category.

Office Now!….sales team runaway……….

• Sales wanted a catalog furniture sales piece• Sales wanted more dedicated resources• Marketing was looking for direct mail piece for converting customers• Overall sales and profitability for the offering was declining

• So Office Now was born• Mailed quarterly• One version for all needs

• And it grew and grew• Mailed quantities grew• Added pages to expand offering• Sales wanted more copies for handouts• Costs increased 30%• It was hailed as a great success• And no one had measured anything

Re-Contact #2 DM/EM

Re-Contact #1 DM/EM

Office Now Landing page

Office Now virtual catalog

……. transformed into an integrated marketingsuccess

• Increased marketing spend efficiency• Program was cost hog - we would have blown department budget by 50%• We reduced total costs by 25% while tripling contacts• Further cuts are slated

• We now know that prospects won’t enter a office furniture relationship with us through this campaign

• 90% of program ROI comes from one group of customers

• Re contact is most effective through email - for all groups

• Overall program RR increased by 200 BP

• Program ROI as measured by Gross Profit dollars - marketing costs doubled

The results have been compelling

Our biggest opportunity was literally staringus right in the face

• 80% of CE’s transactions are online• Customers are subscribed to the site• We offer hundreds of thousands of products• eMarketing and eMerchandising capabilities were much more robust

than our offline capabilities

Our home page signaled to customers that CE hadnothing new to offer

Before Home Page Current Home Page

Before Product Landing Page

….And we had done very little with product pages to drivedemand for exciting products and new offerings

Current Product Landing Page

Our specials section was never visited because we had taught our customers to not waste their time

4 | Electronic Marketing

We hadn’t used store fronts to launch new offerings andto improve customer exposure to overall product offering

Making changes to Eway has proven to be ourmost effective tool for changing customer behavior

• Sort ranking modifications– Batteries: 20% lift in category sales– Headsets: 10% lift in category sales– Post-it notes: 50-100% lift in category sales

• Actually linked our efforts to the You-Tube Oprah campaign

• Search conversion (for example, desk accessories)– 7.28% Average Conversion Rate (6 weeks) prior to changes – 25.36% Weekly Conversion Rate after changes

• Supplier pages and product placement– Raised incremental supplier funding– Increased sales of featured products by 20% or more in every case– Doubled sales of new products over night– Reduced overstock inventories by 50%

10 | Supplier Relationships

If Interested After the Program…….

New commercial CEXPCustomer!

1-30 Days

• Welcome/Thank you message from Jay • DM/EM version• Monthly mailings• E-WAY order-level discount

31-60 Days 61-90 Days 90+ Days

• Scope product offering message• DM/EM version• Monthly mailings• Discounted chair offer

On-boarding phase On-going Retention phase

• “How’s it going” customer survey• DM/EM version• Monthly mailings• Facilities offer

• Savings/Offer message• Email only• Bi-monthly mailings• 3 product offers

• CEXP Newsletter• DM/Email • Quarterly• Contests/no offers

“Welcome/Thank you”“We’re more than justOffice Products”