For many in the drapery industry, the final curtain began to fall not long after the U.S. housing crisis erupted in 2006. As new home sales declined, companies that had thrived for years selling shades and other drapery products to newly minted homeowners were forced to watch helplessly as revenues dried up and customers went away. But at Blinds.com, one of the nation’s leading online drapery retailers, company officials continued looking for ways to turn the crisis into a window of opportunity. In an effort to win over new customers, the company rolled out new products, explored new ad channels and even employed a series of new marketing techniques, like posting dry-cleaning hangers on doors. But the results weren’t what the Houston company was seeking. After one particular $60,000 campaign flopped two years ago, company officials decided to recalibrate their marketing efforts. Changing course The overhaul began in 2008, when Blinds.com dumped its old lists and began using different databases for customer acquisition. Although the company relied on mail in the past, Blinds.com executives decided to get more aggressive and smarter. “When you have a small business, every cent counts as far as your marketing spend,” says Esther Steinfeld, public relations manager. “Direct mail is something we can always count on to bring in revenue and be profitable.” Also key to the company’s recalibrated efforts was an expansion of its target audience. Research showed that the company didn’t have to depend on new customers as much as previously believed. Working from new mailing lists, the company found that the list that worked best was actually made up of customers who had requested a free blind sample or e-mail newsletter. Past customers were easier to reach than new ones, the company found. “There was a premise internally that there is a limited amount of retention-type mailing you can do when mailing to your own customer base,” says Daniel Cotlar, Blinds.com CMO. “How many times are customers who have already made a purchase going to keep buying? But that was the one sale that worked well.” Blinds.com also began its current practice of sending different cards to various audiences on a rolling basis to see how they respond. Thus, three times a year, marketing sends oversized postcards to a list of 200,000 previous customers and those who ordered a free blind swatch. The mailing style is similar each send, including a proven combination of elements, but with different offers. Each message focuses on a different theme: “limited time,” “save money” and “great offers.” The challenge is ensuring the conversion rate actually rises. Cotlar says those who order a free sample convert to sales 40 percent of the time. As a result, he tries to make sure they’re offered products that they might not buy otherwise. “It’s such a prime group that you don’t want to just add costs and give them a new offer in direct mail for a product that they were going to buy without the offer anyway,” he states. Promo codes help the organization track purchases from direct mail. All postcards feature copy that encourages recipients to “use these yourself or give them to a friend.” The overhauled marketing efforts are proving successful. The company, which started in 1994, saw its profits rise by 17 percent this year. And company estimates suggest that the marketing campaign has generated as much as $1 million in revenue annually. As even further proof of the power of the reworked marketing plan, the American Marketing Association named Blinds.com its AMA Houston Marketer of the Year in 2009. Experimenting as a way of life Blinds.com’s marketing metamorphosis is in keeping with the company’s values. When CEO Jay Steinfeld started the company 16 years ago, he preached three central tenets to employees: Experiment with new ideas, don’t be afraid to fail and continue to improve. Not only do these ideas infuse the company’s marketing strategy, they’re also painted on the walls of its new office complex, where the company moved after spending nine years in offices above a sandwich shop. The staff — which has grown from 29 to 110 in the past five years — seems more than happy to embrace Steinfeld’s edicts. Cotlar says the staff’s willingness to take chances compels the company to continually adjust its messages to customers. “Without the tweaks, we’d certainly see a decline in the profitability of a list,” he says. Blinds.com has its own analytics team to see which segments of its lists do better and how people respond to various offers. The organization tests each mailing with several different cards. The piece with the best response carries over to the next mailing for a different test. “With custom in-house analytics, we’re able to dig down deeper and refer back to data more easily than we would if we were relying on a third party,” says Abraham Israel, analytics manager at Blinds.com. “We’ve been able to maximize our spend by taking a deeper dive into the analytics.” The deep dive helps save money by eliminating people who won’t convert and grow revenue by providing a deeper understanding of customers. That, in turn, enables the company to reach further in the list and tune its message more accurately. The deep dive also improves the company’s chances of winning over a customer who might not be as profitable otherwise. “We felt a lot of pressure to really work on profitability of things like direct mail,” Cotlar says. “And it was everything: Tighten down, find ways to work more efficiently and spend less but achieve the same results or better. And that’s helped us now when things are starting to pick up.” The science behind marketing The “experimentation” theme carries over in other ways, too. The marketers at Blinds.com have dubbed themselves “The Idea Laboratory” — occasionally sporting white lab coats and posting a “Periodic Table of Marketing Elements” on one wall. “Our experiments don’t involve test tubes and beakers, but we do experiments all the time,” says Steinfeld. “We’re also very analytical, so when things don’t work you can quickly tell.” Even playful items like the periodic table help Blinds.com marketing experts. The variety of elements on the chart — such as direct mail, viral marketing and CEO letter — help define more clearly certain business goals, such as attracting prospects, converting them into customers, securing customer feedback and wowing customers enough to get them to spread the word about Blinds.com. The company is still waiting for more new homeowners to return amid an improving economy, but Cotlar feels its mail marketing endeavors have given the business an edge by enabling it to craft more engaging, relevant offers and to better understand the potential of existing customers as a source of new revenue. Like any good experiment, the Blinds.com marketing overhaul has the company now thinking of what else could be. “With the success we’ve had, we know now what’s possible with mail,” Cotlar says. Looking for ways to keep your customers coming back? Download our “Build Repeat Business” white paper at delivermagazine.com/strategy. Brand Marketing, Case Studies, Large Business, List Management, Targeting