Harmonize Your Sales Strategies

The merchant sends about 18 e-mail campaigns to a database of 100,000 catalog customers per year. “Timing varies,” says Kiss. “We may have a concentration of two to three drops up to once a week around key holidays.”

Such a strategy has so far been successful for HoneyBaked Ham: E-mail campaign revenue has been 15 percent above plan, and growth was 98 percent over prior year sales. However, aggressive database growth led to an increase in broadcast fees that put expenses slightly over budget, says Kiss.