CalendarClub.co.uk

CalendarClub.co.uk Ltd was launched in the summer of 2003 as the online arm of Calendar Club Ltd. The UK high street has seen Calendar Club seasonal stores opening between September and January for the last 12 years with over 280 shops opening their doors to the public for the coming 2010 season. As the name suggests, the stores offer hundreds of calendar and diary titles with such diverse subject matter as dog breeds, mum’s planners, sport, models, humour and spirituality.

The online shop carries more than double the average store calendar titles and it is this extended range – 2,600+ titles for 2011 – that enables the company to boast that they are Europe’s biggest online calendar store. During their 7 seasons of trading, CalendarClub.co.uk (CCUK) have seen solid growth through the implementation of 3 crucial marketing programmes – email, paid search and affiliates. Each of these programmes contributes roughly 50% of total sales revenue for the online company, with the remaining coming from natural search, direct load, telephone sales, 3rd party and referring sites.

At the end of July 2009, Calendar Club launched a brand new website using Maginus as their e-commerce platform provider. The project was completed from start to finish within 4 months with relatively few issues for such a tight deadline. The site now features zoomify functionality which allows customers to zoom in on calendar front and back covers, providing more of an ‘in-store’ experience. The design has been simplified as has the navigation and layout. As a result sales were up by 14% on the previous year, with orders up 17%.

Opt-in Email Marketing

All online start-ups must spend time building up a customer database which includes, at the very least, basic name, address and email address details and CCUK was no different. Calendar Club in-store promotions, including free delivery for online orders and competitions with online entry, enabled the collection of email addresses and customer permission to mail them with future online offers. The email list now stands at over 150,000. In season, customers are sent weekly promotional emails exclusive to the online shop, which include discount and free shipping offers. Customers can, of course, opt-out of these emails at any time.

All online customer sales activity is tagged enabling CCUK to collect data on past purchases, which in turn is used to segment customers by category and personalise emails according to those historic purchases. For example if a customer bought a West Highland White Terrier Wall Calendar in 2009, they will have received an email featuring the West Highland White Terrier Wall Calendar for 2010. Obviously this level of personalisation allows for a much higher conversion rate. Whilst customer taste can change from year to year we know that calendar purchasers often want the same calendar year in and year out, particularly for example, those in the dog and mum’s planners segments. The Bestsellers offering at the bottom of each email showcases the CCUK product range and is consistent across all segments offering something alternative to customers over their previous purchase choice.

The 2008/9 season saw the introduction of brand new creative bringing the email design further up to date in an effort to increase both the appeal to the customer and conversion. The overhaul included a decluttering of the email through the reduction of links, a stronger emphasis on images & graphics over text, plus an ‘improved’ bestsellers list allowing customers to preview the extensive range they will find on the site. With the new site build in 2009 came a new email design, but the importance of the category, top navigation and personalised product links was carried through. Images were increased in size and the Bestsellers lost their vertical layout meaning less scrolling for customers. For 2010/11 further tweaks, to include Facebook & Twitter links and a Forward to a Friend option, will be made to the layout and A/B tested against the previous season’s design to guage success. Fresh design is important to maintain customer interest each season as emails are not sent between February and July. The creative needs to evolve and develop, but be recognisable. After 5 months of little contact you must immediately engage with customers to ensure the relationship does not lose ground.

See below for examples of the old and new designs.

• Old Email Template - Large View
• New Email Template - Large View

Key metrics: (2009/10)

• Email sales up 44%
• 6% reduction in number of emails sent – saving on delivery costs
• Email List growth of 5%
• Conversion rate (click to sale) up 11%
• Average Order Value up 9%
• 28% reduction in opt outs

Natural & Paid Search Campaigns

CCUK began using Google for paid search in 2004 and quickly saw fantastic results such as an ROI of 710% at the peak of the season for 2007, but with an increase in competition and a complicated Google ranking criteria this has been challenging to maintain, particularly as CCUK is a company retailing such a seasonal product. That said, the ROI and conversion rates remain very good in season and this is still a viable and financially rewarding acquisition channel when integrated successfully with all other marketing channels, including natural search and affiliates. In 2008/9 the campaign size hit a peak with CCUK running a campaign that consisted of over 19,000 keywords and over 1,000 text ads. This has since been reduced with a focus on the main categories and key, popular titles and ad groups themes are very much led by search results from the site, the Google UK market and natural search.

Yahoo! and MSN campaigns have been run in conjunction with the main Google campaign in previous years, but MSN was removed from the mix due to poor ROI and revenue generation and Yahoo! contributed just 10% of the overall paid search revenue in 2008/9. With a growth in Bing’s market share seen since it’s launch in the summer of 2009 – currently at over 9% - there will be value in running a test campaign with them for the coming season, paprticularly if the merge with Yahoo! takes place soon. Once again budgeted ROI will be the measurement and if this can’t be met in November/December the campaign will be paused.

Keyword selection is based on web analytics reporting on natural search and onsite search results as well as bestseller information. The generic keyword campaign is run year round and includes such terms as ‘calendar’, ‘calendars’, ‘calendars 2009’, ‘buy 2009 calendar’, ‘calendar club’ and ‘calendar shop’. In season this foundation campaign is expanded with the inclusion of more specific search terms such as ‘border collie calendar’, ‘keeley calendar’, ‘mum’s planner’ and variations on these depending on the popularity of the calendar. Originally we experimented with the inclusion of every conceivable calendar title in a bid to give exposure to our more unique and unusual calendars, but these proved difficult to manage and costly, so the focus is now largely on category searches such as ‘dog calendars’, ‘model calendars’ and ‘humour calendars’ which convert at a much higher rate. Click throughs without sales conversion are monitored closely throughout the season to ensure that budgeted ROI on any one ad group is met.

Keyword selection is based on web analytics reporting on natural search and onsite search results as well as bestseller information. The main keyword campaign has been traditionally run year round to include such important brand related terms as ‘calendar’, ‘calendars’, ‘calendars 2010’, ‘buy 2010 calendar’, ‘calendar club’ and ‘calendar shop’. Due to an increase in natural search peformance, following the new site build in 2009, this out of season campaign has now been dropped due to increasingly poor conversion as you might expect. Alongside the brand campaign sits the generic campaign with the inclusion of more specific search terms such as ‘border collie calendar’, ‘keeley calendar’, ‘mum’s planner’ and variations on these depending on the popularity of the calendar. Originally CCUK experimented with the creation of an ad group for every possible calendar title in a bid to give exposure to the more unique and unusual calendars, but these proved difficult to manage with a low ROI, so the focus is now largely on category searches such as ‘dog calendars’, ‘model calendars’ and ‘humour calendars’ which convert at a much higher rate. Click throughs without sales conversion are monitored closely throughout the season to ensure that budgeted ROI on both the overall campaign and individual ad groups is met.

In February 2009 it was decided that a new ecommerce platform was urgently needed. The site was over 10 years old and the code was dated, giving poor natural search results and subsequent sales conversion. On July 27th 2009 the new site was launched and natural search sales for the season were up by a staggering 150%. Paid search investment was pulled back considerably as a result and contributed only 5% of total sales compared to 25% the previous year. Natural search sales contributed 31.5% against 17% in 2008/9.

For 2010/11 the paid search strategy will be geared towards supporting natural search sales where necessary, e.g. at the beginning of the new season when fresh content negatively affects organic search results & to promote on-site offers.

Key metrics: (2009/10)

• Paid search spend reduced by 78%
• Paid search sales contribution 5% (LY 25%)
• Natural search sales up 150%
• Natural search sales contribution 31.5% (LY 16.8%)

Affiliate Programme

The affiliate programme for CCUK was started in 2005 working with the US based network MyAP (Kowabunga). The network allowed for affiliate tracking and management, but did not offer sophisticated recruitment or payment options particularly as we were in the UK. After 2 years of manual recruitment which involved searching the net for relevant affiliates across very broad subject matter – for example dogs, models, football, animals, entertainment & hobbies – CCUK moved to work with TradeDoubler in December 2007. TradeDoubler are one of the biggest networks in the UK and a serious upgrade from MyAP. With over 125,000 affiliates registered across the world, and many based in the UK, the appeal of immediate access to such a pool of potential new affiliates was obvious.

CCUK required any network to provide the following services:

• Large bank of affiliates
• Secure, regular payment of affiliates
• Tiered commissions to allow high sales generators to be rewarded
• Promotional functionality - extensive range of banners and links
• Link library download facility - search by product, by category, etc
• Sales & commissions reporting
• High standard of merchant support

TradeDoubler was able to meet all of these requirements and have provided guidance on growing the programme throughout the relationship to date.

The 2009/10 season was exceptional for the affiliate programme with sales up 161%, much of this due to conversion improvements and strong super-affiliate promotions.

Key metrics:

• Sales up 161%
• Conversion Rate (Click to Sale) up by 5%
• Affiliate member growth 74%
• Channel sales growth to 20% (LY 8.7%)