Dot Foods increases e-mail segmentation, sees improved response

Dot Foods, a food redistributor, previously used very little segmentation in its marketing e-mails. It received complaints from customers who said they received too many messages from the company, which was seeing limited success with its e-mail marketing program.

After hiring ExactTarget, the company began sending e-mails to subscribers based on job department and geographic location. The company is also sending triggered e-mail order confirmations, and working to streamline the ordering process and provide real-time order status updates.

Strategy: “The main thing that we did before was that if we sent out an e-mail, we sent to out to everyone. There wasn't any targeting, but we may have done some business segmenting within our own system,” said Bri Shaw, e-business project manager at Dot Foods. “It didn't matter if you were a buyer or worked with meat, you got everything.” ExactTarget helped the company segment its e-mails by business group and geography.

Results: Dot saw an increase in both open rates and pounds of food sold, both of which it attributed to improved segmentation. Open rates jumped from 17.1% to 25.5% for one e-mail campaign. For certain types of e-mails, the company previously saw click through rates of .87%, which increased to 2.36% after hiring ExactTarget. “Month over month for 2010, we saw an average 25% improvement in open rates for the mailings we track,” said Shaw.