Content Marketing Today

How a Small Retailer Does Powerful E-Mail Marketing That Delivers Dollar Results

Miss Lucy’s House of Holidays understands how to segment its customers and deliver targeted messages as part of a consistent content marketing campaign.

Like many small retailers, Miss Lucy’s has a limited marketing budget. Unlike many small retailers, they have a very clear understanding of their ideal target customer and know how to conduct carefully segmented e-mail marketing.

Their elegant shop focuses on high-end product lines and unique gifts which are centered around a holiday theme. Throughout the year, and for a wide variety of holidays, they continually redecorate and refocus the design of their store. Among their collections are Swarovski Crystal, Waterford Crystal Crabtree & Evelyn and Christopher Radko.  They complement their retail efforts with exquisite holiday decorating of homes for affluent customers. This side of the business is so popular that they are booked two years ahead.

Since their founding in October 2006, they have experimented with a variety of marketing that included print advertising, TV advertising, radio advertising, direct mail–and most persistently and effectively e-mail marketing. Today, they do almost no traditional marketing.  They have instead focused their efforts on e-mail marketing.

Here’s why that works so well for them:

• They understand their ideal target customer: a 45-year-old+ woman with a household income of $500,000 plus.
• They assiduously capture e-mail addresses from customers and prospects.
• They make it easy and comfortable for customers to provide information by encouraging them to put information in an elegant looking guestbook that you might find in a four-star hotel.  They let the customer do this privately rather than forcing them to fill something out at the cash register.
• They have created a detailed database which shows exactly what each customer has purchased down to the detail of specific product lines and price points.  They understand exactly what each customer likes; they can observe seasonal purchase patterns, and they even know when a husband needs help selecting the right gift for his wife.
• They maintain a consistent e-mail marketing campaign throughout the year that is customized for specific holidays, targeted customer interests, and special product offers.
• They use an off-the-shelf software tool, QuickBooks POS Pro, to capture all their CRM data and to handle their e-mail marketing. They have taken the time to customize it for their marketing needs.
• They track the specific results of their e-mail efforts so they know exactly how well each effort is working. They can assign specific dollar returns to the time and effort they put into the program.

As an example of how creative Miss Lucy’s team can be with their e-mail marketing, they make note of husbands who need help remembering an important event or holiday–and who would otherwise be clueless about their wives specific collections. Therefore, if there is a birthday or major holiday coming up for a customer who has particular Waterford Crystal collection, they will send out a reminder to the husband in which they make specific suggestions about a particular item with images and pricing included. In other words, they make it very easy for every husband to be a household hero.  That makes for a host of happy customer households.

Miss Lucy’s e-mail marketing matches in both creativity and execution what you might expect from a much larger company. But it is driven by the three people who own and run the company.  Their secret boils down to an in-depth understanding of their customers and how to keep those customers for life by proving that understanding again and again.