Check out this story of an early adopter ShoppeSimple customer!
Out in Front: Botanic Choice Uses ShoppeSimple to Connect to Customers
Get out in front. That’s the name of the game in e-commerce. Get out in front with your strategies, and the ways you connect with customers. That way, you always meet them where they are, and where they are going to be.
Botanic Choice knows. An Indiana-based direct retailer of herbal supplements and natural remedies that celebrates 100 years in business in 2010, Botanic Choice began using ShoppeSimple’s TransactionalRSS™ (TRSS) tools as a new way to connect to their customers in June 2009.
“ShoppeSimple is an easy, effective tool to get product offers into customers’ hands every day without being overbearing,” says Suzanne Pirowski, acquisition manager at Botanic Choice.
Suzanne says that their focus is on being ahead of the curve in how they use social media and technology to reach their customers. While Botanic’s base is primarily over 50, that doesn’t limit what they do online – quite the opposite, in fact. The 35-54 demographic is one of the fastest growing on Facebook this year, and that growth is expected to continue.
“We are expanding our online efforts and see ShoppeSimple as a way to get out ahead of the market — and to be sure we aren’t left behind. It was an easy decision to try ShoppeSimple,” Pirowski says.
Opening the TransactionalRSS channel was seamless, with no IT involvement required. “The ShoppeSimple tool is simple and easy to use and a great fit from that perspective. It took “about a minute to our marketing intern on how to push the feeds, and now she just handles it.”
Botanic offers “deal of the day” through the ShoppeSimple TRSS feed, pricing those deals to be the best available. Customers discover the Botanic ShoppeSimple deal feed through a bright green ShoppeSimple icon on their website. They also link customers to the feeds via a ShoppeSimple icon in their email footers. Email subscribers can get the TRSS feed in their RSS readers, in online portals like iGoogle or MyYahoo, or on their mobile device browsers.
This way, Suzanne says, they can reach customers more often, and bring in new customers who would rather follow a deal feed than get emails. “You have to balance ShoppeSimple feeds with email. With ShoppeSimple, they requested it,” she says.
“One thing that has been interesting is that we’ve had strong sales from products that aren’t usually big sellers,” Suzanne says. “For example, we had good sales from an offer for a pancreas product which sells, but is not a top product.”
Botanic Choice is experimenting with new ways to market in the TRSS channel, analyzing what is similar and different between sales through their ShoppeSimple feeds and email, and what kinds of offers grow subscribers and sales.
No matter what happens, you can be sure that Botanic Choice will stay out in front.
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