Retailers Need to Boost Their Footfall with Email Marketing

Dec. 22, 2011 - PRLog -- High street retailers are lagging behind in using digital marketing methods to drive people into their stores, and need to take inspiration from high street restaurants and online retailers.

High street vs online and retail vs ecommerce is an ongoing debate about which a lot is written, especially recently with Mary Portas’ recommendations for boosting town centres.

There are many tips, blogs, whitepapers and general advice for how ecommerce sites can boost their sales with email marketing campaigns, distributing offers and driving traffic to their site. But email marketing is not solely the preserve of the online retailer as restaurants like Pizza Express have proved with their use of digital marketing.

They focus on using printable vouchers, discounts and offers for things like birthdays and seasonal events to drive people into their restaurants. By finding out information about their customers such as birthdays and running interactive competitions like “design a pizza” they drive engagement with the brand and increase their customer base.

Digital marketing specialists and email marketing companies believe high street retailers can emulate this engagement but the majority don’t. They seem to see their stores as separate from digital activities, viewing themselves as physical and removed from consumer’s online activities. But it doesn’t have to be this way – they could use targeted email marketing to drive people into their stores.

Urban Outfitters recently ran an initiative to ask people to write down their email address while at the till. This can be done easily while your card is processing, and the names were then added to a mailing list which has provided offers and seasonal content. List building does not have to be restricted to point of purchase – stores could place a pod in store offering free gifts or samples and asking for email addresses, or name collections could be tied in to a more experiential marketing campaign.

Asking for added value information such as birthdays gives retailers the opportunity to send out birthday presents such as discounts or personal shopping advice. Tying emails in with store card and reward card activities and making it really personal makes for an even more successful campaign – the more targeted the email the more likely it is to create a click through.

Companies who offer robust targeted email marketing tools that can track user behaviour, such as Profunnel, http://www.profunnel.co.uk/, can help retailers to emulate the success of restaurants and online stores by creating useful lists of engaged parties that the company can maintain contact with digitally and convert this into footfall.

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Profunnel, the UK's leading online marketing solutions company, offer a complete solution for all your lead generation and marketing automation needs. Find out more at http://www.profunnel.co.uk/