Silverpop helps sporting goods retailer win big

The Company
Since 1967, Golfsmith International, Inc. has been working to provide customers the most innovative golf products, the most reliable customer service and the greatest value in the golf retail industry. The company's multichannel retail strategy includes 47 Golfsmith retail superstores throughout the United States and Canada, the Golfsmith clubmaker and consumer catalogs and an online store at www.golfsmith.com.

The Challenge
Golfsmith's email marketing campaigns were facing declining click-through rates, and its marketers were struggling with ways to make mailings relevant. Using an in-house solution, Golfsmith was unable to adequately monitor bounce rates and had difficultly suppressing bounced addresses. "We were basically shooting ourselves in the foot every time we sent out an email," lamented Internet Marketing Manager Jamey Maki. "We would send emails promoting special sales or events at the stores and announcing new products on our Web site," Maki said. "But because we couldn't properly segment our lists, some of our customers were getting two or three emails a week from us."

With retail stores throughout the United States and Canada, plus a large and thriving catalog business and online store, Golfsmith's email program needed to support all three channels while generating its own revenue stream. The company wanted to take its email marketing campaigns to a higher level. And it needed help to do it.

The Solution
First, Golfsmith's marketing department systematically and comprehensively reviewed the capabilities of the top five marketing technology providers. Maki spent time using each company's software. Golfsmith selected Silverpop as the easiest, most intuitive and most complete engagement marketing solution. "Silverpop's email reporting is far superior, and the logic of how to apply dynamic content seemed far more intuitive than the others," Maki said.

Using Silverpop's dynamic content capabilities, Golfsmith can now send one message to customers across the country and each receives only pertinent information. Golfsmith collects information about what people most want to hear about-bags, drivers, custom-built clubs, etc. -and populates personalized emails with information about special promotions or new products according to each recipient's interests. The result is the ability to send messages that are more targeted and interesting to recipients.

The Results
With Silverpop, Golfsmith's email marketing campaigns are helping the company better communicate with its customers and generating substantial results. Maki said that just six months after implementing Silverpop's solution, the company reached sales totals equal to those for the entire previous year.

The ease of testing with Silverpop has allowed Maki to fine-tune email campaigns for maximum benefit. He regularly tests subject line effectiveness and closely monitors opens and click-throughs. For example, Golfsmith sent targeted customers emails about training aids that included editorial articles about their value and how to use them. Silverpop's easy-to-pull metrics reports showed that people were clicking on the articles in a test campaign, and so the articles were added to mailings to the main list. Inclusion of fact-based "how-to" articles doubled Golfsmith's sales of these items.

"This year has been really good for us," Maki said. "With Silverpop, we can easily provide customers information about the products they are most interested in. What marketer wouldn't love that?"