Retailers use email to reach customers at their desktops to try and get them to return to the store to buy. The effectiveness of this tactic is on the decline, largely because:
- Consumers are deluged with email spam
- Every other retailer is using the same approach
- Email is often blocked in junk folders
- Email spam is ignored
- The few word offer is not compelling enough to open
But retailers keep spamming because they are unaware of an alternative. Wouldn’t it be great if there was something else on a customer’s desktop that she used nearly as frequently as email but had no competition for attention and no junk folders? Well there is – the calendar. Calendar marketing has the following advantages:
- Completely free of advertising and competition
- Event reminders that automatically alert customers to your event message
- Automated sync for updates, new events
- 100% opt-in by the customer
- Less likely to delete
How it Works
Customer Experience
A customer learns of the option to add special events to their calendar via an email offer or by seeing it on the retailer’s site next to newsletter and RSS information. She simply clicks on the “Add to Calendar” option and the event information is sync’d, which sets up a calendar specific to the retailer. (See the calendar in green above) After that, all information is sync’d automatically and she doesn’t need to anything. When an event is coming near, a reminder can alert her and she can view html branded content in the event information with links to the retailer’s site.
Retailer Management
On the retailer side, things are quite simple as well since all of the functionality is provided by the OView service. OView takes in a feed of events/sale information or information can be entered directly in a calendar. The sync leverages a standard industry protocol and analytics are provided to track usage. Once the event information is in OView it can also be leveraged to reach other channels such as Facebook, iGoogle, affiliates, etc.
