National Outdoor Gear & Apparel Retailer Significantly Increases Email Revenue
Challenge
The Orvis Company, a trusted source of outdoor discovery and adventure rooted in a strong sporting heritage, has more than 5,000 offerings including distinctive clothing for men and women, home furnishings, gifts, innovative dog gear, and travel experiences. With a catalog circulation in excess of 45 million, the company relies heavily on its website to work in tandem with its well-established catalogs and to optimize online engagement and sales.
Orvis recognized the importance of identifying website visitors to support both online-only and catalog shoppers driven to the website (when a catalog is mailed, online sales increase). For both groups, triggered emails offers a high return on investment when visitors leave without making a purchase. The company also recognized the opportunity to improve catalog mailing decisions with shopping data linked to identified website visitors.
Tim Delles
Senior Marketing Manager at Orvis.
Approach
Orvis retained Merkle for its high-level identification technology, Merkury, which more than doubling its website visitor identification rate. In addition, Orvis implemented Merkury's unique Shopping Elsewhere email trigger, which deploys bulk emails individually at the moment a customer is demonstrating shopping behaviors online, such as opening another retailer’s email.
Orvis also subscribed to Merkury's Triggered Data service, which provides a simple and easy to digest data feed that tracks each web visitor’s activity and interests. Orvis decided to use this information to create predictive models that strengthen catalog mailing decisions.
Results
increase to abandoned cart email deliveries
increase to abandoned browse email deliveries, netting a seven-figure increase in annualized sales revenue.
re-engagement of email base who hadn’t opened an email in 120 days
Keys to success
- Increased identification capabilities enabled Orvis to significantly increase email revenue.
- The Shopping Elsewhere trigger was a valuable re-engagment tool for optimizing email performance and return on investment.
