Circuit City’s Email Communication Strategy
In many of my articles which you can find at www.stevereports.com and www.stevepohlit.com I detail examples of companies who make it harder to do business or alienate customers by their failure to pay attention to common sense fundamentals.
I this series I present examples of business practices that are obviously head and shoulders above the crowd. Each example illustrates action in support of a business principle proven to increase sales and profits.
Circuit City:
Circuit City does and excellent job of communicating with people who have opted in for information by email. Each week a message is sent to promote product specials and Circuit City also offers Internet Only specials as one technique to build on line loyalty.
Does this work? This past week I was helping a client select a new laptop. I directed him to the most recent Circuit City promotion that I had received. After he made his selection I showed him how to check on stock status and also pointed to their 24 minute or $24 payment guarantee. Essentially Circuit City will pay you $24 if a product you ordered on line and is shown to be available in the store you select is not ready in 24 minutes. From a practical standpoint you would practically have to live next to the store to arrive in 24 minutes. Nevertheless, the bold headlines on their site do a couple things: First they convey the message that Circuit City is committed to speed of service; Second: the guarantee is backed by a valuable offer so you know it is credible.
Let’s look at possibly the most important lesson in this example: Circuit City’s systems for the retail store and on line website are integrated so you receive accurate stock status information plus they can track response rates to their offers by email.
Can this process be improved? Probably but there are no apparent missteps from what I can tell in the buying process. I did notice quite a few products either out of stock or only
Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevepohlit.com
