Case Studies: IKEA

IKEA, a leading international home furnishings retailer, began an online registration program for customers visiting the company's Website in early 1999. In particular, visitors requesting catalog delivery were given the opportunity to add their email address to the firm's growing database for future contact regarding special sales and promotional programs. The program was warmly embraced by prospective customers, as more than 100,000 individuals chose to provide IKEA with their email addresses.

With an extensive database of email addresses established, IKEA then needed to publicize its July 8th - August 8th "Work At Home" promotion aimed at boosting sales of home office-related merchandise. According to Garret Glaser, a marketing spokesperson for IKEA, "We wanted to notify our customers of the sale and provide them with a coupon for use during this event. Realizing the potential of our online database, the decision was made to utilize electronic mail as the primary medium of communication with the public, which required that we identify and utilize the optimum email list management solution."

After an extensive search and evaluation of alternatives, L-Soft, the premier email list management solution provider, was selected as the option of choice for its LISTSERV-based EASE email list hosting services.

Roy Black of The ScreenHouse, IKEA's Web-site developer, said, "We were looking for a product which allowed us to do one-time mailings without setting up our own list server. After assessing the situation and the available solutions, we chose the LISTSERV-supported EASE alternative because it was very simple for us to provide the addresses and the email messages, and then L-Soft took care of virtually everything else. We were also attracted to LISTSERV because of its mail-merge capabilities, which would enable high throughput of personalized messages in bulk quantities. The fact that L-Soft's EASE services are built on top of their industry-leading LISTSERV software made us very comfortable with this solution."

The final format designed for this mailing consisted of a three-step process for recipients of the offer. First, customers had to open the new email message, and then click on a link to the site where the coupon was located. Finally, the coupon had to be downloaded and printed for redemption at local retail facilities.

By utilizing L-Soft's LISTSERV, IKEA succeeded in conducting one of its most successful promotional campaigns to date. Out of the 140,000 email notifications sent, more than 25% of recipients clicked on the link to the coupon site, and half of those individuals then downloaded the coupon. The net result was a success rate of over 12%, significantly higher than that offered by traditional distribution methods.

"We are very pleased with the performance of the LISTSERV-based service in this campaign," said Garret Glaser. "What is particularly interesting is that this task only utilized a fraction of the program's capabilities, a fact that will definitely lead us back to L-Soft for our email list management needs in the future."

Case study written in October 1999 with the assistance of Garret Glaser, Marketing Spokesperson, IKEA.

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