Emailing for luxury

In this article I will introduce you to the concept of emailing for the luxury industry.

1. Content of your emailing campaign
When creating an emailing campaign you need to pay attention to:
The From: for a Luxury Brand it is easy, using its name will be ussually efficient to have a good Open Rate.
The "Subject" of the message: you need to give the message and have people wanted to open it in 3 or 4 words. Why ? because on most of the email browsers, the end of the message is cut. People will not open an email if they don't understand the purpose of it.
The content of your emailing: again, here follows adequate ergonomy rules: people will look after and read the text first to understand the purpose of the message. Second they will look for the Hypertext links to understand where the message is going to and validate the purpose of it. Third, and only third they will pay attention to the image and then will go back to the hypertext links. So even if you want to make a beautiful images, and you have to because it is a Luxury emailing campaign, pay attention that the text is easy to find/to read and the same for the hypertext links.
Here is an example of what you can do. It is an "old" example but you will see the main principles.

2. Newsletter of event/product emailing campaigns ?
The main difference between a newsletter and a product/event emailing campaign is that the newsletter will talk about several and differents events, products, actions. It is written as an article. An event/product emailing campaign will only focus on one event or one product/collection.
In fact you should use a mix of the two: the Subject of your message should focus on one event or one product only in order to attract people and to make them quickly understand what it is about. However in the emailing you can talk about several events/products... if you want to promote or talk about several actions that your Company is doing. Just place the product/event you have promoted in the Subject of your message at the best place so that people see it first.
If you have the capacity to create personalized emailings, you can target your customer and have a better ROI if you adapt the Subject of your emailing and the content to each group of customers. The overall content will be the same for each group but what is going to be highlighted will be personalized.

You can also tell a story with your emailing campaigns. It will invite people to open it to follow the story of your character, it is another way to promote your products. Look for these 3 emails below, it was an emailing campaign we sent few years ago in the USA. People received one email per week, each one announcing the launch of a new LV pochette.

3. Efficiency of the emailing campaigns.
First of all, to analyze the efficiency of your emailing campaign you need to capture all the actions in a Database. So be sure all the links are propely tagged to measure efficiently your actions and being able to segment your database. If you have several links in your emailing, you should tagg them differently so know where the customer have clicked. Afterwards, it will help you to make a segmentation of your database using CHAID, RFM,... (I will make an article dedicated to segmentations rules soon).
Now, to measure the sales generated by the emailing campaign, but it is true for all your Direct Marketing actions, you need to create a Control Group. A Control Group is a group of customers that you will never send any emailing campaigns to. At the end of the year you will measure the total sales of the control group compared to the ones who receive your campaigns. It is, for me, the only way to measure efficiently the impact of your Direct Communication.
But, of course to have a quicker ROI, you will observe the Click Through Rate (CTR) of your campaigns (numbers of orders/numbers of clicks on the emails) and measure the attitude of the Control Group during the emailign campaigns period impact (usually one week). You will also have a look on the Opening Rate to know how many people have look at your message.
At the beginning you will see amazing opening and CTR, a 50% CTR at the beginning is very common. But, with the time, you will see that the CTR will stabilize to around 15% to 20% and you will also have bad results: 4% - 5%.

I cannot give you the number but I can assure you that the people who receive our emailing campaigns spend more than the ones who did not. It is the most powerful communication tool if you use it properly.

4. Frequency of emailing campaigns
When we see the drop of a CTR some people can wonder if the frequency of the emailing campaign is not too high.
Few years ago we made a test at LV: for 3 motnhs we have sent emailing campaigns to a group every month, to another group every 2 weeks and to a third group every week. And for us, the best Frequency Rate was every 2 weeks. Every month, we lose turtnover, every week, the unscription rate is too high. I will add that you should increase to every week during commercial events: Valentine's, Mother's Day, and of course ThanksGiving and Christmas

5. A little bit of technology
Unfortunately some emailing browsers still not read the HTML very well or do not display the images. It is the case for one of the most common Web mail platform used within Business Company: Lotus Notes. It is the reason why for all of you using this platform, you will often see big squares on your screen when opening a message. Now Emailing Companies uses the "sniffingé technology, it is a technology which allows the Emailing Compagnies to know if your Webmail can read the images/HTML or not. They will then send the appropriate format, but unfortunately this technology is not 100% reliable yet, even if it improves every year.
So really pay attention to the text of your message, because if the customer cannot see the images, it will be the only content he will be able to see.

Sales or Communication ?

One of the big debate in the luxury Company is to arbitrate on the purpose of their Web site : is it an e-commerce site or is it a communication Web site ? How to conciliate the 2 which use different rules. Here is the solution...

First of all, why do we ask this question ? What is the difference between an e-commerce Web site and a Communication Web site.

An e-commerce Web site caracteristics is:

• Easy to browse: customer have to find the right product very fast and be able to purchase very easily. We know that having a customer lost on a Web site is the first cause of a bad conversion rate (number of orders/number of visits).
• Fast to download: you know why you came for on this site, you want this product quickly, now !
• Display only selling products: even if there is a debate on do we have to show or not a product which is out of stock (and if yes do we have the technical and logistic capacity to propose reservation), at least you show only the product you sell
• Merchandising sections: to promote a product and increase its sales

A communication Website caracteristics is:

• A navigation based on discovery: you don't know necesseraly where you are on the Web site or the meaning of each title, you want to be surprised, to make a ballad on the site.
• Beautiful images/videos/animation which are heavy to download and you will have to wait a little bit.
• Show all your products to make people discover your wide product offer. You can even want to show the products online before they reach your stores or want to show some very limited editions available in a few pieces around the world: one of the ultimate desire is to have a product that nobody has, rarety is part of luxury. So you will diplay your limited edition product on your Communication Website to create desire for your Brand and then for your other products which are not allocated.
• And of course on a Communciation Web site you want to show and explain your History, the craftmanship, the sponsoring of your Company. Unfortunately you will see that it is a very smal l part of your visits as people come on your Website, as any other Website, to have information on....your products. Yet, these sections are expensive to create and maintain as the quality must be perfect because you show the DNA of your Brand.

So we see here that there is an issue: how to conciliate a Communication Website of which ultimate goal is to make us dream and which uses a "not straight to the point" navigation, beautiful but heavy images to load and an e-commerce Website which must be more focus.

First of all, I am not for having 2 Websites: a communication one and an e-commerce one. Even if you create some bridges between the 2 the only thing you will have at the end is a lost Websurfer or a frustrated one because he will not have access to everything.

My position is to try to create the good balance between Communication and E-shopping on your unique Web site. It is not easy but we are on the luxury industry and we are here to demonstrate that what seems not to be possible, we do it. When you see luxury Website on the Web now, I think I am almost the only one to think that it is worthwile trying to conciliate the 2.

How to do it ?

You can create a catalog section where you will have all your products, the one you sell and the one you do not sell. The only thing you have to be care of is to make your customer understand immediately if the product can be purchased online or not. If it is at the Product Category level, put a text or icon beside the title to explain the category cannot be purchased online. If it is at the product category level, indicate clearly that the product cannot be purchased online. In any case, put a Customer Service Center telephone number to invite your customer to call your agent to know in which store they can buy the product.

In your animations, you could have the idea to mix sellable and non sellable products online. But the customer will be frustrated and will not understand why he can buy some products and not the other ones, he does not know about your logistic issue or online merchandising policy, and he does not care of. So I suggest you to make animation with product you sell and other animation to show product which are not sellable online. After all, if you decide not to sell some products online there is a reason, and you should be able to explain this reason. For example you can tell your customer that this product is so special that you need a one to one physical ceremony to explain all the specificity of the products. T hen you can make people understand why you have 2 animations even if products belongs to the same collection (you can create a separate section within the animation if you don't want to have a separation at a higher level).

Even if you also present your History, Sponsoring Activity etc on other sections of the site, you should create links from the Catalog section (it can be from the product sheet for example) to the communication section of your site and invite your customer to get a part of the dream. But you need to play the animation within the product sheet frame otherwise, if your customer is leaving the product sheet you have good chance that he will have trouble to come back to the product sheet. Worse, he can get lost on your site and decides not to purchase the product anymore. And he will also be upset by your Website meaning by your Brand of having doing such a poor Web site.

It is a difficult exercice to achieve, but, by experience, I can tell it is doeable.

Atmosphere...atmosphere...est-ce que j'ai une gueule d'atmosphere ?

• The title of this article is a famous word said by Arletti in the French movie "Hotel du Nord".
  One of the difficulty of the luxury online Web site is to make the customer feel the atmosphere of the brand. I will explain you how to create the atmosphere of luxury online and the limit of it.
  
  First of all, you need to understand that browsing a web site cannot be like visiting a store. The Internet will never, or at least until we reach another level of technology, be in competition with the store in terms of feelings. Why ? because when you enter a store all your 5 senses are stroke:
  
  1. Your eyes by the beauty of the store and the product displayed,
  2. Your ears by a delicious and smooth melody,
  3. The touch when you carry the handle of your dreaming bag or when you feel the gentle texture of a cashmere cardiggan.
  4. Even your noise is in contribution thanks to the odor broadcaster which are hidden every where and make you feel the smell of the tanned leather.
  5. And, if you are an important customer, they offer you a little glass of Champagne, so even the taste is in contribution.
  Each brand in a store will use those 5 senses to give you the feeling of something unique, their DNA which is different from their competitor.
  
  How to make the people feel the same on line ?
  Again, it is not possible because we have only 2 senses which can be used in front of a screen: the eyes and the ears. So, needless to say that you will not make the customer feel like in a store.
  BUT you can make him feel watching a luxury web site in comparison with a "middle brand" web site, like you make him feel being in a luxury store in the physical world and not in a "supermarket".
  What does matter here is the comparison. Luxury is at the top of what exists and so it has to be on the Web as well.
  Luxury must create its standard on the Web , as it has created his own standard on the physical world, using the best architects and the best location in the street for its stores.
  
  How to do it ?
  First of all, like in real stores there are some rules to follow not to lose (and upset) your customers. It is the ergonomy of your Web site, and as in a physical store some standards must be followed:
  Put your key elements on the center of the page. For the other ones, some area of a screen are less see than other ones: the bottom in general and especially the bottom left etc.
  Use explicit titles: even if you are here to make people dream, use the dream into your animation or the visual you will use not in the title to go to it. Like in the real life, people will not open a door and lose their time if they are not sure of what they will find.
  Use short titles: people read in a different way on the internet. They read the title and the first 2 lines of the article. And if the content seems interesting, then they will continue to read. So do not hesitate to make a summary of your article in the first 2 lines.
  Becareful of the downloading time. On luxury web sites, we need to have beautiful images and videos which are heavy to download. Here, we recommand that you use technical tricks to make the user experience good enough:
  
• give an order to the downloading of all the elements of the page: customer will start to read them while the heaviest ones are downloaded. They will not have the impression that it is long: remember that there is not the perfect downloading time. Only the impression of the downloading time of the websurfers matters. You can have a page which takes 20 secondes to be completely downoaded and the Websurfer will consider it fast because he will start to read something at the first second. In the opposite you can have a downloading time of your page of 10 seconds and people will consider it as very heavy because they will see all the page at once after 10 seconds.
• use Akamai technology. Akamai is a Company which has thousands of servers all around the globe and cach the pictures and videos (the static elements) of your Website on all its servers. Each time you connect to a site, you connect on the closest Akamai server of your home/office and you need less time.

Once you have respected some basic ergonomic rules, then you need to make the difference with the other Web sites. How ? the answer is easy but could be hard to manage: make a graphical chart and use very qualitative visuals or video. The basis of a graphical chart is easy to make, usually each brand has a dominant color in its stores or advertising etc. It can be the color of the moment, usually used to create a mental link between all the advertising visuals of the brand (like Kenzo) or a more permanent color like dark brown for LV, red for Cartier etc. After it is more complex to include in the Graphical Chart Visual Merchandising rules: visual product associations for instance.
For the use of very qualitative images and videos the issue is that it is expensive to make because you need to have a great (and expensive) photographer or movie maker. You have 2 solutions:
You use what you have created for other purpose: off line advertising, brochures, catalogs, press release...
You have not enough materials or it shows only product you do not sell online (which is often the case) and you need to create them especially for the Web. And here it is expensive, as expensive as could be the shot of a photo for a brochure an online advertising etc.

But you do not have other choice: having cheap picture, photo or video on its Website will have a bad impact of your Brand, on the Web but also on the physical world.
52% of the Brick & Mortar buyers go on the Web site of the Brand before buying. You need to have this figure in mind before putting any bad picture on your Web site.

It is better to have a Web site which is not update too often and have great pictures/photos/videos than to update your Website every week and have a bad result. The average visit frequency rate is one visit every 2 months. It is a lot when you compare with the average purchase rate: one every year and a half.

For sure, if you manage to have beautiful pictures/animations/videos on your Web site you will manage to re-create an eluxury atmosphere on your Web site, it will not be the same as in a physical store but it will be luxury in comparison of what is done on the online world.

My experience

Hello everyone and welcome,

First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Gilles de La Portbarré, i am a frenchman of 35 years old, living in Paris.
I have been working for Louis Vuitton Malletier for 8 years now on the Internet Department.
At the beginning of my career I was in charge of developping the e-commerce in the USA for Louis Vuitton on the multi brand website http://www.eluxury.com/ which belongs to the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Group (LVMH). It was the very beginning of the sale of luxury products on the Web, even Neiman Marcus was not selling on the Web when we started ! We had to think about our product assortment, iconic products or very fashion items ?, our online communication: it is expensive and does it worth it ? (same question than today isnt'it). How can we attract new customers etc. Well the very basic questions and we had no pros to help us at that time. And yet we did it: our shop online becomes one of the most important stores in the USA within 3 years. I will explain in another article how we achieved that performance.

After I launched the new version of the Louis Vuitton Web site which is still online today. You can have a look on http://www.vuitton.com/. It was our 3rd Web site version and after the success of our shop in the shop on eluxury.com we decided to launch the e-commerce on our own site and manage it by ourselves. We starting by France which is the native country of our Company. The real challenge of this Web site was to balance the efficiency of an ecommerce Website and the necessary dream of luxury, I think we managed it even if you can still see some tricky things on our Web site due to some internal political issues... Again I will explain you how we did it on a coming article.

2 years ago I have been asked to roll out our e-commerce platform worldwide, starting with Japan and then USA (yes on our Website, a direct competition with our shop in the shop on elux). And what an experience to work with such different cultures than ours: Japan, US and Europe have all their way of managing a project, you need to be quiet flexible to jump from one to the other. It will be the subject of a coming article.

And now I am working on a confidential project... I will let you know in the coming weeks.