Improving HoR - Day 23 - Updates
One of the more significant things is I recently sent out the first real House Of Rave Newsletter which went over pretty well. Open rates were in the 20% range and click-through rates were on average 10-14% which is quite good. So far this initial email has been sent to about 2,000 people.
I wrote about attending a Vertical Response event and ended up going this past Thursday. It was more of a low-level introduction to email marketing, but I must admit Vertical Response did a bang up job of presenting their product. Some people were already existing customers, but I almost garauntee at least 90% of the people at the free event will soon start using their service. That event really helped associate a "face" with the company, and they even had the CEO and top engineers at the event so you could ask difficult questions about their service. I also got free breakfast, lunch and 500 email credits.
Posted 4th of July Thing:
HouseOfRave started getting into seasonal retailing to capitalize on the increased spending during those times. I added this seasonal Uncle Sam "thing" that looks like it's peeking out of the website to attract attention to the 4th Of July section:
It looks a little cheesy, but it seems to do the job!
Updated Shipping Prices:
This was another big step. My supplier has some shipping formulas which my Shopsite shopping cart system doesn't allow me to perform. I've been struggling trying to keep my shipping prices consistent with the supplier but so far to no avail. I finally took a good look at my shopping cart system and found a way to be within just cents of their shipping prices.
So far it's working well. This is good news for me because I don't have to absorb the cost of higher shipping anymore. Unfortunately this does raise customer shipping prices (which have gone up a lot with gas prices).
Labels: house of rave
posted by Neville @ 10:39 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
-Nev
Well done...
Hard to quantify how many DIRECT sales came from the email. Often people look at the email, click through, then leave the page. Sometimes they come back and purchase, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they may purchase several days later.
Very hard to quantify. I have been having higher sales though simply through all the other changes I've been making. It's just hard to tell which particular ones make the most impact. I think they all work together.
Anon & U1st,
Austin is a GREAT place for young entrepreneurs. Of course any place is what you make of it.
Humidty isn't bad here, in fact most of the year we have absolutely beautiful weather...although it can get pretty hot in the summer months.
Austin is a really young place, and you'll find a lot of young entrepreneurs here. If you want to move where all the big-BIG companies are, go to Houston or Dallas. However those cities are older, MUCH larger (lots more driving for anything) and don't have much personality.
If you tell someone, "This place is really Austin-y" they'll know what you mean.
I still haven't left this place by choice!
-Nev
I'd like to leave a comment to tell you how much I enjoy your blog after reading Adam's post. Keep up the good work. You guys have motivated me to start my own.
Jay's Blog
Take a look at it if you have some time. Thanks!
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