An e-mail campaign to publicize Moen Inc.'s new Revolution Massaging Showerhead in early November to 220,000 consumers attracted a 15 percent click-through, more than 17,000 viral forwards and 16,000-plus new registrations to Moen's online database.
“We felt it was a cost-effective way to get our message out to a number of consumers who would have interest in our product,” said Ginny Long, director of public affairs at Moen, North Olmstead, OH.
The Flash-based viral effort featured a Chill Out Sweepstakes. The promotion included three $5,000 online shopping sprees through prepaid Visa cards and assisted by a personal shopper, product giveaways and a dancing penguin.
Created by interactive agency Optiem LLC, the e-mail sought to position the Revolution Massaging Showerhead as a fun product. The dancing penguin aided that cause.
“The penguin obviously represents a temperature feeling, because one of the attributes of the product itself is the actual spinning of the water, which creates warmer water as well as higher water pressure,” said Clyde Miles, executive vice president of business development at Optiem, Cleveland.
“So, we're using the penguin to be kind of a fun animation that people would want to send to their friends to create a buzz around the product as well as create a viral effect,” he said.
Costing $49.95 to $66 for different models, the showerhead is aimed at homeowners and renters looking to upgrade their bathrooms.
But the e-mails went beyond Moen's typical user base.
“The traditional market for Moen's products are homeowners, with women traditionally in the decision-making role, and this product is kind of mass-market, almost an impulse-type item,” Miles said.
In addition to e-mailing 16,000 Moen.com registrants, the agency sent e-mails to 40,000 warranty registrants on the Moen database and 164,000 prospects whose names were rented from outside lists.
Inhouse lists were e-mailed Nov. 13, 15 and 16. Purchased lists were e-mailed Nov. 16, 19 and 20. A drop to warranty registrants went Nov. 20.
Proper profiling of prospects was key.
“We also did it based on geography, because of the unique kind of retail distribution of the product,” Miles said. “We were looking for areas where we had shoppers to Target, Lowe's and Bed Bath and Beyond, which were the three mass-market retailers where the product is available.”
And since the e-mail did not aim for e-commerce, its role was limited to branding, database-building and lead generation. Of course, this makes it even harder to measure whether the e-mail directly led to a lift in sales.
“That's a hard thing for us to measure,” Long said. “The reason is that we don't sell most of our products online, so were hoping that the impression that people got from these e-mails would drive them to a Lowe's or a Target and purchase the product. So, we can't directly correlate the e-mail to sales.”
Still, the e-mail garnered 33,000 click-throughs either to view the Flash piece or see the product itself online.
More important, it helped add names to the Moen.com database for less than $3.61 per registration, or less than one-tenth the cost using traditional direct marketing methods, Miles said.
In a way, Moen's experience with this push for the showerhead has reaffirmed its faith in e-mail marketing. The Fortune Brands-owned company has dabbled with e-mail since early last year.
“We're looking to do other similar types of programs in 2002,” Long said. “We have a pretty robust plan – consumer promotions as well as to trade, that is, professional or channel partners.”
