CASE STUDY: Chadwicks.com Sales Grow "Beyond Expectations"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From MarketingSherpa.com
ConsumerMarketingBiz April 27, 2001 Vol. II, Issue 9
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CASE STUDY: How Apparel Cataloger Chadwick's of Boston Grew
Online Sales Far Above Their Own Expectations


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According to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive and
Nielsen/NetRatings, online spending on apparel rose 122.3% over
the past year March 2000 to March 2001. We contacted famed
discount apparel cataloger Chadwick's of Boston to learn how they
took advantage of this online spending boom.

CHALLENGE
As Neal Patrick, ecommerce Manager for Chadwick's of
Boston admits, the venerable cataloger was definitely not a first
mover online. In fact the company didn't launch its Web site
until late 1999, so Patrick had a lot of ground to make up in
order to make his sales budget in an already noisy marketplace.

CAMPAIGN
First things first. Patrick immediately coordinated
with the print Chadwick's catalog that millions of American women
aged 25-55 receive about every two weeks. The Web URL is noted
throughout the catalog, and the very first option on the site's
navigation bar is "Order by Item #". Items have a different
number in the print catalog than they do online, so Chadwick's
can track where the sale originated.

Two-three months after the site launched, Patrick began regular
email marketing to support it. The email schedule was somewhat
coordinated around the catalog mail schedule. Patrick says, "We
looked at the catalog mailing calendar and then matched our
outbound email calendar to that as a first pass. Then we tweaked
things here and there to make sure the customer wasn't getting
too many emails. The biggest piece of the business [the catalog]
is going to drive the way the smaller piece of business
operates." Patrick chose Responsys to power his email campaigns.

Whenever possible the art and offer in the email matches the
current catalog cover. Sometimes though, photographs that look
great in print just don't work in email. In this case, the email
team uses the catalog's cover concept as a "starting point" for
email creative.

Similar to the catalogs, emails are very focused on product
offers. Each email gives fairly brief information on three to
four items. Buyers must click through to the site (itself not
remarkably copy-heavy) to get sizing and color option specifics.
Patrick tested heavier copy, but learned "The main thing online
is to be consistent with our catalog's brand. When we even
slightly steer away from that, the responses go down. We're not
J. Peterman or Lands End. The photos sell our products, the
price sells it. 'Here's a blazer and it's only $25, you can't
beat it!' That's what we try and focus on. If we get too
enamored with copy, it doesn't work."

Chadwick's grew its strictly opt-in email list by placing two
email update offers on the site (one on the navigation bar and
one on the harder-to-find catalog request form); by testing a
sweeps offering; through viral pass-alongs; and, by testing co-
registration offers through Bay9.com and PageWise. (To learn
more about co-registration see the links at the end of this
story.)

Following the example of many Web-only stores, Chadwick's also
launched affiliate programs through Commission Junction in 2000.
Patrick decided to offer a 10% sales commission to affiliates;
and, encourages affiliate sales by personally keeping in touch
with the very biggest while sending a regular newsletter to the
rest.

RESULTS
Yes, Patrick definitely beat his sales goals. He says,
"The growth has been so fast and so far above our expectations
that we're still watching and waiting for it to slow down! We
just didn't expect the adoption rate to be that fast."

Patrick's current, adjusted goal is to match the percent of
online-to-total sales that catalogers who've been online much
longer are experiencing. He says, "A lot of catalogers are at
20%. We are not there yet, but we've only been online for a year
and a half, and I'm surprised at how far we've gotten!"

He adds, "You look at online-only companies and how hard a time
they had getting customers to adopt and buy from them. It shows
the brand has everything to do with it."

Here's what worked for Chadwicks.com:

- The biggest bulk of buyers come directly from the print
catalog. (Remember Patrick uses different item numbers so he
could track these sales carefully.)

- The affiliate program is the second biggest driver of online
sales.

- Patrick's average email to Chadwick's opt-in subscribers gets
results in the low double digits! He says, "We're pretty happy
with that." In fact, emails are the third largest sales driver.

- Patrick says, "Pretty much any opt-in name we get is
profitable." The best places to get names have been his own site
(surprisingly the harder-to-find catalog request form pulls far
more opt-ins than the straight forward email offer on the
navigation bar) and co-registration offers on other sites.

In fact co-registration has worked so well, that Patrick says he
found the omission of co-registration from a recent Wall Street
Journal article detailing ecommerce traffic generation tactics to
be "very surprising." His most successful co-registration
campaign has been with PageWise.

- Sweeps didn't work that well, in fact Patrick has moved away
from them for now. He does get some viral email pass-along "in
the hundreds" but notes that pass-along email recipients are more
likely to click on links back to the store than the original
email recipients.

Related links:
http://www.chadwicks.com
http://www.responsys.com
http://www.Pagewise.com
http://www.comissionjunction.com

Links to two short articles on co-registration:

1. Major Consumer Brands Test Online Co-Registration; Top 3 Tips
to Do it Safely
http://www.emarketingtoher.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1469

2. Co-Registration May Be the Next Big Online Media Sales Trend
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1416

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