E-Catalog-Web Traffic, Drivers Needed (307 words)
By Melissa Sepos
Loyalty Program Takes to the Road
The Web's third-largest shopping portal, AltaVista's Shopping.com, launched a new rewards program in July, to reward site users for browsing as well as shopping.
While the loyalty program will help raise AltaVista's ranking among portals and pad its wallet through increased affiliate and partner marketing programs, it will also make having a presence at the site more useful for catalogers. Already signed on are Sundance, L.L. Bean, J. Crew and Fingerhut.
AltaVista Rewards' members earn points for researching and comparing products, browsing, purchasing items after using the site's objective comparison shopping guide or visiting Shopping.com's 700 partner retailers' online stores.
Using a little direct marketing, AltaVista promoted the loyalty program with the "Smart Shopping is Rewarding" Sweepstakes. The sweeps awarded more than 1,200 AltaVista Rewards' members with a variety of daily and weekly "prize experiences," such as the Autobahn experience where the winner received a brand new Mercedes-Benz SLK230 convertible, a drive on the Autobahn, a ticket to the Formula One World Championship auto race in Hockenheim, Germany, and a trip to the Mercedes-Benz Stuttgart automobile facility.
According to Ken Neibaur, vice president of marketing for AltaVista, unusual prize experiences tend to attract attention in the highly competitive portal world.
"We wanted to align the prizes with our brand identity, i.e. smart, celebrating the interactive pursuit of knowledge," says Neibaur.
AltaVista also created an online rewards catalog where members can redeem points for products, convert them to frequent flyer miles or even donate them to charity. Netcentives, an e-promotions company, provided the rewards-redemption catalog and fulfillment.
" … We have seen a loyalty program sign-up rate that has by far exceeded our expectations. We have achieved a very substantial increase in overall page views, page views per visitor, as well as click-throughs to our merchant partners," says Neibaur.
