The Children's Place gains
from in-house email marketing
New Jersey-based The Children's Place Retail
Stores is a leading retailer of high quality,
value-priced apparel and accessories for children.
The company sells products under its own label
and has 693 retail stores in the United States
and Canada. The company also sells its merchandise
through its online store at www.ChildrensPlace.com
The Children's Place sends outbound email campaigns
to its customers featuring store information and
product promotions for both its retail locations
and its online store. Coupons, news about the
latest line, and different sales alerts are all
part of the active, ongoing messaging between
the retailer and its customers. The coupons contain
an online code which drives traffic to the website.
"There's always a spike in the number of
orders when we are using email messages to drive
online traffic," said James Diee, e-marketing
analyst for The Children's Place. And because
the email coupons are also printable, the email
campaigns become important for driving traffic
to the retail stores as well, Diee said.
Email campaigns are coordinated directly with
the marketing department and are often sent in
tandem with print advertising campaigns. Email
customers receive the same promotion, with links
back to the website directing consumers to the
same items online that they can find in the stores.
The challenge: improve email turnaround time
and delivery
The initial challenge for The Children's Place
was to improve its delivery, open, and click-thru
rates for its email messaging at a competitive
cost. The retailer also wanted to improve the
turnaround time for its marketing emails. Outbound
email marketing campaigns are sent by the company
between two and four times a month, and each of
them is critical to the levels of traffic at both
its online store and its retail locations.
Prior to Campaign Enterprise, emailing was outsourced,
and coordination of the message between the marketing
department and service provider was an extra and
sometimes lengthy step in the process. Also, because
the service provider charges per email, the cost
of emailing was directly associated with the size
of the campaign.
"The cost of sending emails was probably
the most attractive aspect for management in making
the decision to bring its email campaigns in-house,"
Diee said.
The solution: in-source the email
" We chose Campaign Enterprise because it
is very powerful and easy to use," Diee said.
"Campaign Enterprise offered everything other
outsource vendors did, at a much more competitive
price…. we were looking for a product that
would give us the ability to bring all of the
aspects of sending mass email campaigns in-house."
Diee said.
Besides meeting standard Children's Place vendor
requirements like best price and ease of use,
Diee said Campaign Enterprise's ability to handle
email bounces, unsubscribes, expired addresses,
and other automatic database cleansing features—all
performed in near real time reporting—made
it a clear leader as a comprehensive email marketing
solution. Diee also said vendor companies for
The Children's Place must typically have five
years minimum experience in the field. "Arial
Software's been in business for over 10 years,
and they have a strong client list," he said.
Results: Email helps gain sales
Sending campaigns at a lower cost than using a
service provider, shorting email turnaround times
and improving coordination between the marketing
and IT departments led to immediate management
endorsement for bringing the email campaigns in-house.
"They love the fact we were able to streamline
the process at a lower cost," Diee said.
The company's online business made big gains
in 2003 thanks in part to ongoing in-house email
marketing campaigns: The Children's Place ecommerce
saw a 120% sales gain on top of an 80% increase
over its sales numbers in 2002. Company officials
attributed these results in part to increased
marketing exposure resulting from its new in-house
e-mail capability.
Even more email marketing plans scheduled for
the future means The Children's Place will look
to do even stronger sales for 2004.
"Campaign Enterprise has had an extremely
positive effect on our business," Diee said.
About The Children's Place
The Children's Place Retail Stores, Inc. is a
leading specialty retailer of high quality, value-priced
apparel and accessories for children, newborn
to age 10. The Company designs, contracts to manufacture
and sells its products under the "The Children's
Place" brand name and it operates stores
in the United States and Canada. Its virtual store
is at www.ChildrensPlace.com.
About Arial Software
Founded in 1993, Arial Software LLC is widely
considered the industry leader in comprehensive
software designed exclusively for relationship
marketing through personalized email messaging.
Arial’s mission is to be a universal provider
of software tools to automate, personalize and
measure meaningful email communications.
If
you are interested in a Campaign Enterprise email
best practices case study, contact the Arial Software
Media & Press Relations department here.
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