Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - FindGift.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

Last week, eTaildTail had a great interview with consumer shopping engine Street Prices.com as part of our 2009 ongoing series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, the weeks before that we had great conversations with several other marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with Find Gift and its VP of Technology, Gary Wolf.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact Find Gift and Gary Wolf you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

  Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – FindGift.com

 Find Gift Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Gary Wolf by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author ... and check out the photo below and the wonderful, helpful, and "cool" team at FindGifts.com! We love them!

1. When was FindGift.com founded and by whom?

FindGift.com was initially started as Registry Online in August of 1997 by husband and wife co-founders Bob and Carolyn Zakrzewski.  In September of 1998, the web service was re-launched as FindGift.com, which today has grown to over 1200 merchant partners and more than 1 million shoppers a month.

2. What sets FindGift.com apart from the other consumer shopping engines?

The biggest difference is that most gift sites are comparison shopping sites. FindGift.com's focus is to provide unique gift ideas to those gift givers who seek advice, or don't know what gift to give.  In essence, we're a search engine for gift ideas, giving shoppers their own personal gift adviser that understands the latest trends.  That is why FindGift.com is organized by occasion and recipient, this helps inspire revelation rather than comparison shopping approach which tends to focus on key word searches for brand, model and price.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on FindGift.com?

This is a subject we could discuss in some length, so I will keep it to the top five:

1. Accurate Data – Too often data is incorrect.  Having data that accurately reflects the current price as well as inventory is critical.
2. Static Product Identifiers - Being popularity driven, merchants should avoid resetting their rankings by rotating in new Product IDs for the same product.  Retailers who do change their SKUs for tracking purposes can, as long as they 're able to provide another Product ID field in their feed that doesn't change.  This gives us something to lock onto over the long haul.
3. Robust Tracking - Make sure it sets a cookie, so you can see if they come back within a few days to make the purchase.  Many times a shopper will want to ponder their purchase for a while.
4. Use of our free Broad Message Service – Some merchants overlook this gem.  This is a message that can be displayed with every product advertised.  It's a great way to educate shoppers about promotional offers.
5. Providing Details on Best Sellers or Hot Items – By providing our FindGift.com representatives with a hot items list, each of our merchants can work with our editorial staff to efficiently build a targeted campaign.

4. Who is using FindGift.com and why?

Woman and men of all age groups show up at our site; however, the largest demographic gravitates toward the ages of 21-40, college educated, affluent, and about 60% female. This demographic is Internet educated and wants to optimize their time.  They find using FindGift.com to be a fast and efficient method by which to both organize and obtain their gifts.  The main attraction is our Gift Wizard.  Shoppers like its quick and easy interface, as well as the ability to hone in on combinations of categories they find interesting.  Our registry service is also a strong repeat visitor magnet for us.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

Our conversions are holding up pretty well in this environment.  What has changed is gift givers are spending less per purchase.  Thus, people still have gifts to buy, but they're being more price conscious about their purchase.  

Additionally, in the 9 years since we launched our CPC program, our rates have never been raised, thereby making it easier in times of tight credit for merchants to keep their products live on FindGift.com.  That, and good ROI figures, make for a winning combination in any environment.

In an effort to help both our shoppers and our retail partners, we recently launched a “Deal of the Week” feature.  Our gift experts select one retailer each week who they feel has an excellent promotion.  The featured retailer essentially gets free advertising here. There's absolutely no cost to the merchant  -  they just have to provide an attractive offer that we believe is promotable on our site.

And, last but not least, maintaining a quality service is always our primary initiative.  The better and more relevant we can build FindGift.com technology and the campaigns of our merchants, the higher the consumer confidence will be, and the more likely they are to make a purchase.  Therefore, FindGift.com is constantly working to improve the gift shopper experience.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with FindGift.com as an ecommerce merchant?

Retailers can sign up online via this link.  Or they can call us at (877) BE-GIFTY that is (877) 234-4389.  New data feed accounts can be set up starting $500 level, non-data feed accounts start at $100.  Our click-through rates range from 11-20 cents for product listings depending on deposit level.

FindGift.com does not require data feeds for participation.  Merchants also have the option of opening a non-data feed, (manual data entry account).  We support an easy to use interface that provides the merchants with the same features our data feed clients experience.  Of course the primary difference between the account types being that non-feed users manually supply and update their product information.  Manual accounts can be converted to feed accounts when the merchant is ready.

 Chip: Thank you so much Gary for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with FindGift.com

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt