Email Marketing: How a home design company's lackluster campaign led to a 10% increase in foot traffic

by Erin Hogg, Reporter

T.F. Andrew, a family-owned company, established more than 30 years ago. The company offers carpet, hardwood, laminate, vinyl and tile flooring solutions in the New York tristate area. With two locations in New York, the company has achieved significant growth over the years and plans on expanding showroom locations in more cities.

"It's a tremendous family business that, through the years and through hard work and perseverance, has found a way to keep recreating themselves and finding other avenues and other business silos to keep moving forward in an extremely competitive business model: the flooring business," Jeff Perez, General Manager, T.F. Andrew, said.

In growing to achieve a broader reach in the east coast, T.F. Andrew opened its latest location in Elmsford, N.Y., in October 2014.

THE CUSTOMER

Currently, the main customers for T.F. Andrew are in the retail and home replacement markets, which the brand puts heavy emphasis on reaching to come into the new Elmsford location.

These are the mid- to high-end homeowners in the market, but the brand also offers products for mid- to low-end customers, who may be more value and price conscious.

"We're trying to capture that entire spectrum of high to low, and we have the product offering and the labor support to meet any of those needs," Perez explained.

CHALLENGE

Wanting to publicize the grand opening of its newest showroom in Elmsford, T.F. Andrew launched an email marketing campaign.

The brand partnered with a marketing firm that purchased a list of 50,000 potential customers, focusing on women. This was because the brand and agency determined that women most frequently make home flooring buying decisions. This list also focused on potential customers in Westchester County.

The batch-and-blast send was sent after the grand opening and included a $250 discount at the in-store location for a short amount of time.

Over one week, the teams saw open rates of 20% and clickthrough rates at 10%. However, the excitement around the campaign quickly fizzled — T.F. Andrew received no calls, consults or inquiries from the email campaign.

Click here to see the full version of this creative sample

"I think we have to look at it two ways. I think in one aspect, it was disappointing, and [in] another aspect I think we did a good job. You look at trying to make a big splash and having a real nice, for [lack of] a better word, party, or celebration. I think we did a pretty good job of that," Perez said.

As well as the email campaign, there were also TV and direct mail campaigns targeting that area. The email was part of a follow-up in getting people to come into the store. However, the teams determined that the target was off. The list was too broad to accurately target people who were actually in the market for flooring.

"We got a good showing, and we got a good word out to the market, but I don't think that generated any immediate business," Perez explained. "It really focused on a blind market. We didn't go after our truly big fans, some of our existing or past customers."

CAMPAIGN

Perez and the team at T.F. Andrew needed to take the lessons learned from this campaign and apply them to future email marketing efforts to bounce back.

A new opportunity arose toward the end of the year — an email campaign to draw in potential customers to think about new flooring projects for the New Year.

Step #1. Conduct a post-mortem analysis

Working with the agency, Perez dove into the analysis of the exact reasons why the grand opening email campaign did not perform and generate business for the brand.

Although the teams had a hunch about the large rented list not providing enough targeting to customers, what else about the campaign could be optimized?

Other than the untargeted email send, the second problem identified was a disconnect for email receivers when they arrived on the landing page.

The email provided an offer code in the email with the $250 off offer, but the landing page was simply a contact page with no mention on the page about the discount.

Additionally, the teams noted a lack of content and the need for more product visuals in their email campaigns.

"I think it had to be more content-driven. I think it had to be more [like a] product that they could kind of visualize and say, 'Wow, I'd love to go see that in person,' or 'That's what I'd really like to see in my home.' I think that was a big omission on the initial launch — the lack of the actual product," Perez explained.

Identify website development hang ups

In a rush to promote the grand opening, another lesson learned from this campaign was that having a website 100% ready for traffic is important when launching an email campaign.

At the time, the site was rudimentary, still in its beta stage. There were no images, galleries or inspirational content to continue the T. F. Andrew's message from the batch-and-blast send.

Because of the heavy workload required to prepare the new showroom for its grand opening, the launch of the new site was delayed until the last minute. The website was then launched within hours of the showroom opening. This was noted, and taken as a lesson learned for future campaigns.

"If anything at all, we got a lot of things out of it. We at least knew what we had [to] correct and how fast we had to correct it, and we had a really good test at that point to work hard and diligent and get the image and the vision that we were looking for," Perez said.

Step #2. Apply lessons to new campaign

In moving forward, one of the main focuses for email marketing campaigns was to focus on products and putting product visuals into emails.

Furthermore, it was decided that the site needed more visuals as well, including galleries of the top brands offered in the T.F. Andrew store.

"I think we realized it wasn't, 'Hey, let's just throw some money over here, and it's going to work.' It really took us sitting down with [the agency] and coming up with a real plan because they're great at what they do, and we think we're pretty good at what we do," Perez explained.

The goal was to put out a site that would get potential customers excited and solve some of their fashion and design problems in their homes.

"Flooring is not a sexy purchase, so it's up to us to translate that to our perspective customers that it's not just a flat screen TV or the Italian leather couch," he added. "It really is trying to romance a product and having the consumer say, 'Wow, I want to see it. I want to come in. How do I get more, and how do I read more about this?' That's what really got the needle moving."

Click here to see the full version of this creative sample

Step #3. Drill down the email list into a more targeted group

In contrast with the October campaign, which was blasted out to 50,000 people on a rented list, the new January campaign was sent to past customers and people who had opted-in to the T.F. Andrew database.

While the list was significantly smaller, the email was sent to a list that was familiar with the brand and had a higher propensity to come to the store for their next flooring project.

There was not an offer tied to the email campaign; it was more of an inspirational send to get potential customers to click through to the site, view galleries and ultimately, come to view flooring in-store.

"I think what we did was, we did a real good job of meshing together more product but still keeping to that lifestyle. That was the big tie-in. Before, we did more lifestyle and not a lot of product," Perez said.

Not only were the email subscribers seeing a product, but they were also seeing what it could look like in their home.

Step #4. Connect in-store with online experience

To bring more of a connection between the T.F. site and brick-and-mortar showrooms, the team added visuals to flooring product information pages.

When putting themselves in their customer's shoes, Perez and the team realized that shoppers looking at options online want to visualize what the floor would look like in a home.

Therefore, there is now more visualization for each product offered, showing what the floor selected would look like in a furnished home.

Click here to see the full version of this creative sample

Additionally, because a customer cannot purchase flooring solutions via the site, the team needed to drive online traffic to the store. As Perez explained, they use email, the site and social media to get potential customers excited about new products and interested in seeing what else the brand has to offer.

"You want to give enough there (on the site) that they say, 'Hey, what else do you have? I'd really love to see more.' That's the tie-in that we're trying to get. We don't want it to end on our site — we want to get them into our store," he explained.

Step #5. Align goals with agency and internal teams

When working with an agency, Perez explained that alignment with all teams involved is integral to success. Having the agency present in sales meetings, at least a few times each month, has been key to ensuring that everyone is on the same page in terms of goals and campaigns on the horizon.

As the agency has become more involved, a new issue was realized: No one from the retail staff was present in sales meetings.

This was a problem as the retail staff was finding out about campaigns and promotions at the same time as consumers.

"We had to do a better job [of], not only communicating with our marketing department, but actually communicating with the department that was being affected the most in a good or bad way of what we were doing and getting more of their input," Perez explained.

Having a direct line of communication with staff members who interact with customers in a face-to-face manner has been important to improving alignment. The marketing team now has a way to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts, and the retail staff is now sharing valuable insights, which will keep the brand in the know with its customer base.

This change has resulted in the retail sales manager sending weekly customer logs, which are reports of every customer who has walked in the door, to the marketing team.

This log includes information such as:

• If they purchased during that visit


• If they were a previous customer


• How they heard about T.F. Andrew

The purpose of this was to give the team additional insights to provide an accurate picture of their marketing audience.

"[The log] also helps us make better decisions as far as where we're putting our energy, where [we're] doing the heavy lifting, where we're walking away from," Perez added. "It's a pretty, real, basic tool … and I've been looking at it for profitability and appearance of the store."

RESULTS

In taking the lessons learned from the grand opening email campaign and applying it to the January campaign, T.F. Andrew experienced a twofold lift in website visitors.

In addition, the team also saw:

• A 31% increase in pages per visit


• A 15% increase in time spent on the site

After the email campaign was sent, the foot traffic to the showroom increased 10%, which the team directly attributes to the campaign.

"You may have a tendency to go into something thinking you may know the results or the answers, but I think it's about being open and letting other ideas peek in," Perez said.

In the future, Perez explained that he always wants to be optimizing his marketing efforts at T.F. Andrew. He also wants to continually challenge T.F. Andrew's retail sales team, vendors and the agency to always be thinking about what can be improved.

"That's the one thing that I wholeheartedly want to continue and challenge everyone in our organization — to constantly change and evolve," Perez concluded.

Creative Samples

1. October campaign


2. Landing page


3. January campaign


4. Galleries


5. In-home look


6. Tweet

Sources

T.F. Andrew

MSCO

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