Stein Mart - Direct Mail AMP'd

Overview

By integrating social media sharing with its traditional direct mail campaign, Stein Mart, an upscale, off-price specialty store chain, added significant net new opt-ins and dramatically increased redemptions.

The Campaign Objectives

The main objective of this campaign was to
increase offer redemptions at store level
leverage their current customers to build a database of new customers.

The Campaign Results

Using social media sharing, we:
increased offer redemptions from 601 to 8,000 (40% redemption)
added 13,868 new customers, starting with a mailing list of 20,029.

The Campaign Strategy

Stein Mart selected a regional area of stores from Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. A total of 20,029 postcards were sent out to its customer database. Customers were instructed to log on to their Personalized URL to access and print their offer and be entered into the sweepstakes to win a $1,000 shopping spree.

Upon logging on to their PURL, customers were walked through a simple offer validation process. Customers validated their information on the first page, answered a question about how often they shop at Stein Mart and were given the opportunity to share the offer on Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS, (our recommendation from the 287 social sites avalaible) so their friends could redeem the same offer. All customers who shared the offer with friends were immediately entered into a sweepstakes to win a $1,000 shopping spree at Stein Mart. Customers were then able to print their offer and bring it into the store for redemption.

The Campaign Summary

This direct mail campaign gained national exposure and response due to Dukky’s Viral Peer Sharing™, one of several technologies used by AMP™ to produce results. A little more than twenty thousand postcards were sent out, and due to the integration of social sharing the campaign gained a total response of 30,068 – a 150.58% RESPONSE on the direct mail campaign. That’s the power of social sharing.
The direct mail piece alone gained a 7.8% response, with 1,571 users logging on to their PURL to activate their mail piece. This combined with the integration of Viral Peer Sharing™ gave this campaign the ability to reach far more than the initial customer database and store locations, causing the campaign reach to increase tremendously, leading to in-store redemptions on a national level.

What the Analytics Told Us

Target Market
Stein Mart was able to not only reach its primary demographic of customers, but was also able to extend its marketing reach beyond its traditional database. The analytics identified its primary demographic as women between the ages of 41 and 50. Although the demographics of women between the ages of 31 and 40 and women over 50 were close in response, the 41 and 50 age range had the greatest response. Customer data reported that of the 2,188 users who visited the site, over 7% were over the age of 60, with the oldest user being 92 years old. The campaign spread across 11 decades, seriously damaging the notion that social sharing is reserved only for a younger demographic.

Which Social Networks Users Shared and Which Had the Most Response
Stein Mart customers’ primary sharing outlet was email with 2,564 emails being sent to peers, bringing in an additional 22,155 users to the Stein Mart site. This accounted for 73% of the total response of the campaign. Customers also shared on Facebook, Twitter and through SMS. An additional 2,623 users came into the site through 880 posts on Facebook. Twitter also brought in an additional 675 users, from only 89 tweets, a 1-to-7 response.

When They Shared
The analytics identified that the primary time users shared the offer was during the afternoon hours. Overall numbers were very close amongst sharing times, showing the campaign maintained a very consistent share rate throughout the entire life of the campaign.

Poll Results
Users were asked a simple question during the activation process: How often do you shop at Stein Mart? Stein Mart was able to expand its campaign reach to a wider database of customers, with 37% of all users reporting they rarely shop at Stein Mart.

The customer data can be used for future target marketing to personalize campaigns specific to the current status of the leads generated. The simple poll feature opened the lines of communication between Stein Mart and its new customers in order to establish a personalized marketing strategy to retain the growth, delivering on the promise of social media marketing’s ability to “listen” to our customers.

Who Are The Social Influencers
We used our PURL-based tracking tecnology to identify the brand evangelizers in this campaign and provide Stein Mart with the reporting data to track the impact of influencers on their campaign. These influencers are valuable for future marketing strategies to ensure the right users get the offer in their hands to extend reach the furthest.

Overall Results

AMP™ combined direct mail and social media sharing bringing a new level of opportunity, potential and ultimately,  success to Stein Mart’s bi-annual direct mail campaign. Stein Mart experienced a remarkable increase in their response and bottom line redemption rate.

Establishing a Customer Database
Stein Mart was able to expand its customer database to a wide range of customers by leveraging the influence of its current database. It also obtained valuable customer data through this campaign for future marketing strategies.

Increasing Store Traffic
Stein Mart, based on previous campaigns, expected a 2-3% redemption rate for this campaign, representing about 400-600 redemptions. Store owners reported over 8,000 redemptions from this direct mail campaign to 20,029. That is more than 13 times their expectation. Based on the initial customer database of 20,029, this campaign produced 8,000 redemptions resulting in an unheard of redemption rate of 40%.