“Email marketing has proved to be invaluable – we now have 18,000 customers on our database."

Quick Facts The Sleep Store offers solutions to help babies and toddlers sleep through the night, making parenthood an enjoyable experience The E-Commerce website has seen steady growth in visitors with an average of 30,000 visitors each month Through Zeald's Email Marketing Manager, the company has built a database of 18,000 customers The Sleep Store has won the Marketing Excellence Award in the BNZ Waitakere Business Awards in 2008 www.thesleepstore.co.nz

Overview

A website that would become a one stop shop for tired parents and serve as an effective sales platform was the vision of The Sleep Store.

While the E-Commerce website by Zeald successfully met the objective, the results were largely enhanced by a few add-on modules as well as the Email Marketing Manager - a powerful marketing tool which propelled the “pocket money” generating business into a full time operation that won the Marketing Excellence Award in the BNZ Waitakere Business Awards in 2008.

Background

Mum of three Louise Tanguay discovered Dr Harvey Karp's book 'The Happiest Baby' which provided effective techniques to calm babies and help them sleep through the night.

Inspired by her research and the positive effects the techniques had on her first born son, Louise started The Sleep Store in 2006. The aim of the home run business was to create an online educational resource that would offer solutions to calm crying children.

Solution

Louise enlisted the help of a Zeald E-Business Consultant who worked with her to develop a website which showcases a wide portfolio of products and information for parents, helping create the primary sales channel for her business.

“I was impressed by Zeald and our E-Business Consultant's knowledge of the baby sector. Right from the start, the focus was on generating sales rather than creating flashy websites that are not user friendly.”

“I also saw great value in the reporting and back-end functionality that Zeald offers.”

Email Marketing

After setting up the E-Commerce website, Louise looked for other ways to improve business results. She found that Email Marketing is one of the most effective and low-cost tools available and used it to grow her business significantly.

She proactively sends a newsletter to her database twice a month to engage her customers. “I try to make it a valuable and useful tool for my customers, not just a sales push.”

Using the added functionality of Zeald modules such as Wishlists, Loyalty Points and Coupons, Louise includes promotions and special offers in the newsletter to encourage repeat sales.

“The email newsletter has become our main way to drive sales and communicate with our customers. It has increased visits, referrals and sales, proving to be invaluable for our business.”

 

Results

Louise concludes: “A lot of information and products that we sell are not generally available in New Zealand. And being an E-Commerce business it is very important that our website answers all the questions that our customers have and eliminates any doubts.”

“The Zeald website along with the email newsletter does just that. We have seen steady increase in our visitors each month. Last year we had around 17,000 visitors a month, now we get about 30,000, largely due to our email marketing. Our customer database has now grown to 18,000 helping us run targeted campaigns that have been very successful.”

“I think Zeald provides an affordable and effective solution for start-up e-commerce businesses, giving you the tools to really drive a return on your investment from the start. Our Zeald website has served us really well in our first 3 years.”

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