Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade is one of the premier ice cream manufactures and started the ice cream chunk trend.

MyWebGrocer’s objective was to get 50,000 new members in the Ben & Jerry’s email club by offering a coupon across our digital Ad Network covering 92 US retailers.

Three things needed to happen for a successful campaign:

• Gain awareness with consumers.
• Work with a 3rd party for coupon rendering.
• Obtain legitimate verified email addresses.

MyWebGrocer developed the ad creative’s with a strong call to action, the landing page, the email verification and the technical requirements to work with the 3rd party coupon vendor. The ads were placed across the MyWebGrocer Ad Network inviting consumer who were already making their buying decisions to sign up to receive a coupon.

The campaign was fulfilled after only 4 days.

The response from Ben & Jerry’s “Really? 50,000 in 4 days? WOW!” They were thrilled with the immediate results and the high quality of the emails. And, the additional brand awareness and sales brought significant extra value to the campaign. The calls and emails to their customer care center solidified the campaign a success.

Cheers!
Courtney

Kellogg’s is the world’s leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods. MyWebGrocer’s objective was to increase sales in Kellogg’s snack category.

Solution: Kellogg’s eBusiness team partnered with MyWebGrocer to target moms, a key demographic, to drive incremental sales and build brand loyalty.

Kellogg’s snack campaign ran from August to December of 2008. Kellogg’s utilized MyWebGrocer’s targeted daily recipe and weekly specials emails to promote the August Fuel for School campaign and featured snack products.

MyWebGrocer designed nearly 300 creatives to serve across the network. MyWebGrocer optimized creative weekly to improve click through rates and influence sales. Rotating creative allowed MyWebGrocer to emphasize products based on factors including seasonality and new flavor introductions.

MyWebGrocer created unique landing pages featuring Kellogg’s products that enabled online users to add products to their lists and to purchase products.

Results: In 2008, Kellogg’s snacks sold on MyWebGrocer increased 81% over the previous year almost double the initial goal.

Kamela Warren, eBusiness Manager: “Kellogg’s online advertising with MyWebGrocer has shown double-digit product sales growth online from 2007 to 2008. The ability to track and report sales enable us to test and forecast what works in online grocery.”

-Cheers
Courtney

MyWebGrocer Introduces Order Express

MyWebGrocer has developed an even more convenient way for online grocery customers to do their online shopping: Order Express. This time saving email technology will save retail grocer’s online grocery shoppers time and money.

After an allotted time period from the customer’s last online purchase, an email goes to them showing what they previously purchased and gives them the option to purchase some or all of the items again and the capability to add more items and special notes. A single click from their personalized email sends their order to the store. Online grocery shopping just became more convenient.

ShopRite was one of the first to launch this Order Express system. Within the first five days of the launch, ShopRite saw over 500 immediate responses to the offer. “At ShopRite, we are always looking for ways to make shopping with us more convenient,” said Joe Colalillo, Chairman and CEO at Wakefern Food Corp., the distribution and merchandising arm of ShopRite supermarkets. “Using e-mail to place your order is certainly another step in achieving that goal.”

“Small, simple steps that help drive more business for the retailer’s online channel are sometimes as beneficial as the larger advancements,” explains Curt Alpeter Senior Vice President of Sales for MyWebGrocer. “This new tool clearly makes a difference for the consumer and the retailer”.

In a recent survey conducted by Exact Target “nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they had made a purchase because of a marketing message received through e-mail”. Consumers in our market today prefer email. Order Express enables retail grocers to target their customers directly by offering them products that they know they enjoy. Doing this on an individual level increases a client’s customer retention base because it is offering their customer’s personalized convenience.

As one of the most effective advertising methods available, email is (or should be) a marketing must. Retailers can easily drive traffic and boost sales by sending out e-mail blasts, which are faster and more cost-effective than sending additional mailers to consumers. Julie M. Katz, a Forrester analyst, estimates that it costs about $2 for every thousand e-mails sent. The Direct Marketers Association estimates that marketers earn $45.06 in ROI for every dollar they spend on e-mail campaigns. That compared with $7.28 for catalogs and $15.55 for direct mail.

Lately though, among increased efforts to get consumers in-store and drive online traffic, email has become less about the consumer and more about the bottom line. Who cares if I have to alienate 90% of my consumer base by sending 7 emails a day as long as I make a sale to the other 10%?

A recent Internet Retailer survey of 174 Web retailers, including those that operate stores, found that almost half have increased the number of monthly e-mails they send compared to a year ago. Chad White, director of retail insights for the Email Experience Council, says the number of e-mails stores sent for the week ending Oct. 17 increased 8% compared to the same week a year earlier.

Forrester Research predicts that retailers and wholesalers will send 158 billion marketing e-mails this year. Moreover, that number is expected to increase 63 percent to 258 billion in 2013.

What is this email surge doing to consumer retention and long-term brand building?

According to Forrester, online consumers are annoyed with e-mail volume and are beginning to turn to social networking sites, texting and other communication channels. The big problem, according to Stephanie Miller, vice president of market development for consulting group Return Path Inc., is that less than 20 percent of retailers’ e-mails are targeted, although those capabilities exist and are easily accessible.

Dan de Grandpre, founder of dealnews.com, said that stores are blasting e-mails that offer discounts across many categories instead of just one item. Most of the e-mails come from apparel and furnishings chains, which have been hardest hit by the economic slowdown.

The solution?

Think like your consumers. Take advantage of all the email can offer, including customized, relevant information. Email is great to highlight promotions and introduce new products and events, but if that is all you are using email for, your consumers will catch on…and log off. Matching advertising to content benefits consumers. Sending an orange chicken recipe? In one click, let consumers buy the rice to serve their chicken with.

Rachel

What’s in it for the receiver if you’re only sending them things that you want from them? Make it relevant.

Here are 4 easy tips you can do today.

1. Insert two to three relevant messages into your promotion calendar. Include a few tips to help readers save on their grocery bill, how to clean the bar-b-q, or be more productive at work (order groceries on line). When readers find value in your messages, they are more likely to open the next message, and so on.

2. Personalize. Using your customers names yield a 47% higher open rate.

3. Segment your list.You can do this by new subscribers, what customers purchased in the past month (by product or manufacture) or who hasn’t opened or clicked in the past three months. When you send a relevant follow-up message it can boost the response rate by up to 600%.

4. Use the data you have. Would knowing birthdays let you celebrate with your customers and forge a deeper bond? How about shopping history so you can let them know what they buy is on sale.

When you create more relevance for subscribers they will reward you with higher response and attention. As soon as you can start to show some results from these small tests you will be in a much better position to make the case to expand. Then you’ll be able to really start driving customer acquisition and retention via a cost effective sales and marketing tool.

-Rebecca