Industry Eye : Furthermore - Marketing & Mobile Minute
June 2009 By Carol Worthington-Levy, By Melissa CampanelliCreative Ways to Make a Good Offer
One of the "absolutes" in the merchandise sales business is making an offer. Yet many marketers avoid offers due to the cost or for fear they'll "train" their customers to expect discounts every time they shop. A good offer controls your customer's behavior — that's why it's so essential. The best kind of offer includes one or more of the following:
- Encourages people to buy more faster, contains a reply-by date and a minimum order size.
- Is exclusively a product of yours or a gift with your logo and URL screened on to make it yours.
- Accomplishes what you want it to: If you're looking to get lots of traffic, try a more general offer or a sweeps. If you want to pare it down, information-oriented offers, such as a book or a whitepaper, can work well.
- Is easy to fulfill. Online coupons and gift cards that can be "delivered" via an e-mail are great — no postage, no breakage.
- Might be a "hot potato," such as a coupon for your store, Web site or catalog. It could be a gift like a free T-shirt (Talbots used this successfully for years to generate retail traffic) or dollars off on a purchase. The "use by" date gets consumers moving if they want to enjoy your offer.
Q&A with Strand bookstore's Eddie Sutton
The Strand Bookstore in New York City has long been known for its giant collection of publishers' overstock, used, rare and out-of-print books.
Unlike its one-time Manhattan neighbor Barnes & Noble, which began expanding into the country's largest bookstore chain more than 30 years ago, The Strand remains among the last of a dying breed: a thriving local bookstore.
Although The Strand sells nationally via its Web site, Strandbooks.com, it's never mailed a print catalog outside of New York. But in late 2007, the company launched a mobile site that allows consumers to browse and purchase books from their mobile devices.
recently discussed Strand's mobile site with Eddie Sutton, its senior vice president and general manager.
All About ROI: Why did you decide to launch a mobile site in addition to your Web site?
Eddie Sutton: To enable consumers to search from wherever they are. This was critical for us. We saw tons of people using mobile devices in the store. As a result, we believed a mobile site would be another great way for our customers to do research before they came into the store, without having to be tied to their desktops.
AAROI: How does the mobile site differ from your regular one?
ER: Not that much, but limited real estate requires some condensation of text or elimination of images.
AAROI: What kind of ROI and incremental revenue do you get from the site? Good will toward customers?
ER: We know that many of our customers check our site before visiting the store — often coming to visit during lunch or after work. The mobile site provides more utility. While consumers can purchase books from the mobile site, I'm not sure how many people actually do this, or how comfortable they are doing so.
AAROI: What are some issues to think about before launching a mobile site?
ER: A mobile site should have a coherent and consistent presentation for a variety of mobile devices. Usablenet [Strand's mobile platform developer] took care of this issue for us, which was a big help.
You also have to make decisions on what content you want on your mobile site. We worked with Usablenet, for example, to make sure a search box was prominent on nearly all of our mobile pages, because when selling books, search is really important.
AAROI: What are some best practices/tips that our readers should think about before launching a mobile site?
ER: Have an idea of what you'd like the mobile
site to accomplish. And find a reputable and competent developer. —Melissa Campanelli
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