Golfers get great deals via
email
As North America's leading and most comprehensive
online supplier of premium brands of golf balls,
Knetgolf.com depends on email blasts to its customer
base to generate excitement for its sales of online
golf products.
Headquartered in Toronto,
Canada, and operating a mail facility in the northeast
United States, the website—located at www.Knetgolf.com
—features over 400 brands and styles of
recycled golf balls. While the company sells some
clubs, wedges and putters, it’s the big
name golf ball brands such as Titleist Pro V and
Nike Tour (Tiger Woods’ brand) being sold
online at half price that keeps customers re-filling
their electronic shopping carts.
These customers
know to move when sales on Knetgolf.com are announced
via email, because they sell out specific brands
in very short order, said co-owner Bill Birss,
a Campaign software user since 1993.
Challenge:
Business in the rough
Birss is an experienced ecommerce marketing
professional who was involved with one of Canada’s
first e-Commerce sites, offering music supplies
online. After selling that business, Birss was
looking for his next challenge when he was approached
by a colleague in 2001. “A partner of mine
invited me into this online company that wasn’t
making any money, and needing to be raised from
the ashes,” Birss recalled. “And I
said, ‘Sure’.”
Birss, who bought his first Campaign email software
license in the early 1990s, used his 10-plus years
of email marketing experience to drive company
sales. Birss and his partner first rescued the
company from bankruptcy, then boosted sales past
the million-dollar mark in just two years, all
using Campaign software.
Some 100,000 subscribers receive Knetgolf.com’s
newsletters, and over 120,000 customers and potential
customers receive the company’s email sales
blasts. The newsletter is sent every second week
and the email blasts are outbound whenever the
company offers specials on its brands.
Campaign’s advanced sending features allow
email messaging to be sent based on recorded customer
characteristics. “We email our most recent
customers notice first,” Birss said. “Then
we let the entire customer base know when we have
sales. We also always let them know when the next
sales are, because we normally sell out of certain
golf balls quickly,” Birss said.
Campaign:
Gauging customer behavior
Birss says Campaign Enterprise’s massive
impact on business has to do with its ability
to gauge customer buying behavior. “It gives
us a detailed analysis of our emails: what we’ve
done, and what we could have done better,”
he said. “We can tell a message’s
impact by examining the email subscribes and unsubscribes.
We can look at these details and change them with
the software.”
“Campaign simplifies my business tremendously.
I know when I press the submit button, it’s
going to be done right, and I don’t have
to babysit the outbound email,” he said.
“That’s important to me: the fact
that I can move on to other jobs once I hit send.
We’ve used other email programs that you
have to watch the entire outbound because it could
die halfway through.”
Solution
Details of the email message sent out provided
by Campaign allow marketers to make needed adjustments
to their message to receive maximum success. “The
email message clickthroughs tell us what signals
are working, and which are not,” Birss said.
“You can simply make one change to your
message using clickthoughs, and you can literally
watch the message grow.”
The company also uses Campaign’s Anti-spam
Compliance Check frequently, and guards its newsletter
and sales notification email subscriber lists
carefully. “We do only opt-in. It’s
very important to us,” Birss said. “We’re
not selling or renting our lists… we’re
all golfers here too, you know.”
Results
Today, Knetgolf.com
has a call center fielding at least 100 sales
a day, mostly from email-driven customers. Strong
online sales and great email response has brought
Internet golf supplier Knetgolf.com from the rough
areas of e-Commerce to the smooth greens of the
million-dollar-sales mark.
“We’ve been using your product for
years,” Birss said. “It has made our
business.”
About
Knetgolf.com
Knetgolf.com
is North America’s premier discount golf
supplier, selling name brand recycled golf balls
at half the retail price. Their business also
includes clubs and other golf supplies. To contact
Knetgolf.com, visit the website at www.Knetgolf.com
or phone them at 877-563-8877. (Arial Software
customers can enjoy a 15 % discount on a purchase
from Knetgolf.com by entering the keyword ARIAL
in the coupon code at checkout.)
About
Arial Software
Founded in 1993, Arial Software is widely considered
the leading industry pioneer in permission email
marketing software. The company's products are
used by thousands of businesses, non-profits,
associations and other groups to compose and send
email newsletters and personalized messages directly
to subscribers, customers, prospects and members.
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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