Hobby Lobby Masters The Art and Craft of Bulk Email

Arts and Craft retail giant sees deliverability rates soar under VerticalResponse

Background

While growing from a tiny picture frame manufacturing business in the early 1970s to an arts and crafts retail giant with 362 stores in 28 states, Hobby Lobby developed a large following and a massive customer list. These signs of corporate prosperity were welcome, but not without challenges – particularly where email deliverability was concerned.

Problem

Hobby Lobby discovered that compiling an impressive email list and leveraging it effectively are two very different things. Until 2004, the $1.5 billion retailer used its own bulk email server to deliver weekly specials and coupons for the parent corporation and its six affiliated companies, which sell products ranging from hobby merchandise, to home furnishings, to educational products, to religious literature. Coordinating and managing these campaigns proved to be a time-consuming chore, one made more frustrating when messages failed to reach their intended recipients, wasting time, effort and money.

Discovery

Disheartened by an inability to make it past the ISP gatekeepers, Hobby Lobby looked outside for help with its message deliverability issues. The resulting search led to an ill-fated engagement with an Email Service Provider that couldn’t sufficiently improve deliverability. Chastened by this experience, Hobby Lobby undertook another industry-wide review before settling on VerticalResponse, a San Francisco-based email marketing firm.”

Solution

Initially, Hobby Lobby retained VerticalResponse’s services on an extended trial basis, but the company was ultimately won over by four factors:

1. A deliverability rate exceeding 98 percent in test campaigns
2. An on-demand, no-contract pricing model
3. The option of purchasing email credits in bulk
4. The ability to control campaigns launched by various affiliate companies from a single administrative account.

In contrast, Hobby Lobby executives described their previous bulk email campaign systems as less useful and less efficient, although the lack of sophisticated internal tracking metrics made it difficult to determine exactly how much fat was trimmed.

Results
Nevertheless, company executives contend that the consolidation and improved deliverability offered by VerticalResponse has slashed the amount of time Hobby Lobby devotes to its email marketing program while boosting the results. The company’s campaigns, which utilize a basic, text-only format are simple, yet effective.

A recent mailing promoting the company’s weekly specials was sent to 187,139 discrete email addresses and opened by 84,554 recipients – a robust 45 percent, while a mere 643 or .34 percent of the messages bounced. This represents a dramatic departure from the days when Hobby Lobby handled its mailing internally and would often experience failure rates approaching 25 percent.

The turn in the company’s fortunes has reinforced its belief in email as an important vehicle for updating consumers on product information and store openings, cross-marketing among the company’s different affiliates and luring shoppers to its retail outlets. As a result, Hobby Lobby has redoubled its commitment to email campaigns and to the marketing specialists who make deliverability the core focus of their business, not just one consideration among many.