Straight-on e-mail

And how do you replenish your e-mail list? Bickel offers a three-step plan.

First, make sure you select a good e-mail vendor — one focused on service. “All of these vendors are capable of targeting and tracking, and all of them can provide the technology,” she says. “But they need the experience to send over daily feeds to your database. You can work with your IT department to set it up.”

Second, be aggressive about soliciting names. Start a campaign that explains the benefits of receiving your e-mail. And make an offer in exchange of that address.

“Coldwater Creek has been successful, giving consumers $5 off their order,” Bickel says. “You can also run a sweepstakes. You may not want to give away a car, but Omaha Steaks has been successful with a $100 gift card as its prize.”

But Bliss feels that giving away coupons is bribing the customer. He prefers something without a set monetary value. “Give the customer something with value — like membership in an insider's club, advance notice of a sale, an e-mail newsletter, or a recipe,” he says. “Marketers are getting a lot better about asking for e-mail addresses, although they may not be as articulate about it,” he adds.

Lenox has had more luck getting addresses both at its store and the call center, and it has also grown its file with better hygiene. It now has 1 million addresses, compared with 200,000 in 2004.

“People are more willing to give us their e-mail address than in the past,” Mohr says. “Now they know they will receive coupons from us, or that they will hear about our sales and offers more quickly.”

But beware of invalid addresses. One client came to Loyalty Lab with a list in which 50% of the records were no good, Greenberg says. But when the client added a loyalty program, “the address quality went up. Providing an incentive to give them their address helped boost that rate.”

Don't make the mistake of asking for addresses only online. “If you have retail stores, spiff the employees for getting their customers' e-mail addresses,” Bickel says. “This is also something you should promote in your catalog — if not on the cover, then with a blow-in to support it.”

But what if you have bad addresses? Bliss says vendors routinely run files against e-mail change of address files. But the cost to send customers a postcard to verify an address can be “staggering.” A cheaper method is to send an e-mail to the new address and ask the consumer to confirm it.

“But you need to make it an opt-out e-mail,” Bliss says. “No marketer should ever e-mail someone who doesn't want to hear from them.”