Personalized, Targeted E-mail Catalogs - (1,209 words)

If you have a minimum of 30,000 opt-in e-mail customer addresses and can pay a $5,000 set-up fee, Shop2U.com will use your customer list and detailed product transaction history to build a statistical model of the products that each customer will likely be attracted to and ultimately buy. It then tailors an electronic offering of products most likely to be associated with past purchase activity—in effect, a targeted product offering to customers. Furthermore, every e-mail catalog communication can be personalized to customers by name. Rather than sending every product in every product category to every customer hoping to find something that may catch their eye, the e-mailed mini-catalog contains 12 to 20 of the items (or up to several hundred items, if you desire) most related to the customer's last or most recent purchase. By the way, Shop2U.com also takes a percent of net sales on the back end.