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Happiness is a Shining Car

Because it is so easy for Web shoppers to find your competitor's products, online retailers must find ways of deepening the relationship and building brand loyalty. Autopia Car Care had built a substantial database of customers, but with competition online rapidly increasing, they realized they needed to do more to hold on to those customers.

I recommended a new strategy to bring more value to the customer's relationship with Autopia by creating an informative newsletter providing solutions to every day car care problems. The newsletter would take a different problem every month such as preserving and protecting a classic car's paintwork or how to prepare your car for winter and teach the reader how to solve these problems in a step-by-step manner using Autopia Car Care products.

Although the concept met with some initial skepticism at the idea of cutting the hard sell email campaign down to once a month and replacing half of it with a newsletter, the results spoke for themselves with a solid 20% increase in sales, and a very high click-through rate from the email newsletter teaser to the full article landing page. Results clearly show a direct relationship between customer education about the products and them making a purchase.

You have about 3 seconds for your email to engage the reader before he decides to dump it. So it's vital the typographic design and copy pulls the reader in with an easy-to-read headline and reading line, and a sneak-peek of the article enticing them to click to the Website landing page where the real cross-selling happens. The monthly follow-up email is a hard-sell piece offering a deep discount or a new product.

Click Below to View Campaign Creative


Joffrey's Coffee 2.0


Competing online in the highly competitive world of coffee requires out-of-the-box thinking. While Joffrey's has had an online presence for over a year, it had not become the Webs favorite online brand, or anything like it. The question was: how do you break through the online clutter and get the attention of bloggers who will help spread your message - for free.

I thought that if Joffrey's could create custom roasts for small supermarkets and deli chains, then why not create a custom roast for the blogosphere? I floated the idea past Joffrey's Roastmast, Chris Demezzo, who loved the idea. Chris always loves a chance at creating something new. Anything that gets him out of his office chair and firing up the roaster makes his day.

Adam Singer, the head of technology and social media at Pierson Grant in Fort Lauderdale loved the idea too, and it turned out he had been thinking along similar lines himself. So before long we had a plan drafted and presented to Ted Abrams, CEO at Joffrey's. The initial campaign was designed like a new software release:

Joffrey’s Coffee 2.0 java update includes:

  • Upgraded flavor and taste featuring smooth caramel and smoky overtones
  • Increased focus power for less distraction
  • Faster, more efficient mental processing
  • Amplified energy for blogging, coding or gaming output
  • Regular drip coffee and espresso capabilities

We mailed a targeted list of 1,000 bloggers a free one-pot sample of the new brew, wrapped in it's 'beta-test' silver packaging along with a cool tongue-in-cheek flyer with instructions on how to install the new release. The results were overwhelming with literally thousands of blog entries and a major spike in online sales!

Check Out the Flyer

The flyer that came with the single-pot sample bag presents the product tongue-in-cheek as a Web 2.0 style software update!


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