For all print and direct marketing campaigns, Kristi recommended adding “Sees.com” or holiday-specific vanity URLs directing customers to a custom landing page, such as Sees.com/Valentines. Kristi also insisted that the website URL be printed on the retail shop bags, as well as on the doors of the shops. Many people who went into the retail shops didn’t realize See’s Candies had a website, until they started doing this, which in turn increased online channel sales.
Kristi led the initiative to acquire and add the anonymous retail customers into the marketing database utilizing an ongoing promotion to win free See’s Candy for a year, which was wildly popular. See’s retail shops had a traditional drawing box setup in the retail stores, where customers could fill out an entry form, which had an email opt-in checkbox. This traditional method was used because a segment of the retail customers were older and more comfortable with this method. Kristi recommended including an insert in the product packaging that highlighted the promotion, which included a vanity URL for a landing page to sign up for the sweepstakes online, again including an email opt-in.
“Kristi drove many innovative multi-channel ideas and projects for See’s and has a great passion for marketing. She has keen eye for new trends and marketing opportunities that will generate results. It was a joy working with Kristi and it would be a welcome opportunity to work with her again.”
Van Tran
VP, Strategy and Digital Services, KERN – an Omnicom agency
Additionally, Kristi launched an email referral program, which would “send to a friend” the sweepstakes, and each sender would get additional entries. These combined efforts helped to grow the customer database significantly, and allowed a better view into customer buying patterns. This new data confirmed Kristi’s theory that See’s customers were indeed multi-channel customers, and not purchasers limited to siloed channels. This data allowed the Marketing department to conduct more sophisticated segmented marketing campaigns, including driving online customers to retail shops for events, and encouraging retail customers to order gifts online and have them shipped to their recipients. All channels had increased touchpoints, which improved the value of average orders and retail purchases, customer retention and repeat purchases, customer lifetime value, and overall revenue growth, including a 52% email opt-in rate, increasing email revenue by $4.8M in 18 months.
