Selling Jewels from Sydney to London

When your headquarters are in Hong Kong and most of your customers are in Australia, London, and Canada, it takes smart marketing to retain their loyalty. For Bijoux Mart International Co., a fashion jewelry wholesaler, that smart marketing depends heavily on Constant Contact.

Bijoux, an Internet–based business that began operations in late 2005, sells jewelry to the wholesale marketplace, primarily to accessory stores, boutiques, party planners, and other small vendors.

Challenge: Customers Can Compare—and Switch—Instantly

Explains Marketing Director Grace Chan, "Fashion jewelry is a highly competitive industry. Today's Internet shoppers can compare products, prices, features, and services in seconds—and they can switch suppliers just as fast."

In order to succeed, the company must not only offer the highest quality products, excellent service, and competitive prices, but it must build and maintain a loyal base of customers.

When Bijoux Mart first opened, the company relied solely on its website to announce the arrival of new merchandise—and then waited for prospective customers to visit and make purchases. The results were disappointing.

Feedback from existing customers indicated that they liked Bijoux Mart's merchandise. But few could be counted on to make return purchases.

When determined customers began emailing the company to ask when new merchandise would be in, says Grace, "we realized we had to be more proactive."

Solution: Email Marketing Makes the Difference

At about that time, Bijoux Mart received a newsletter from ProStores, a Constant Contact global partner, introducing the concept of email marketing—and knew they had found the answer.

Our revenue from return customers has increased about 30% since we began sending out our 'New Arrivals' email campaign. Grace considered several email marketing vendors, but chose Constant Contact almost immediately because of its ease of use and reasonable cost.

Grace distributes promotional emails once a week to announce new arrivals and restock availability.

Bijoux's email campaigns emphasize photos over copy, but twice a year they include tips on hot trends in jewelry, along with suggestions about Bijoux products that are examples of the trends. Sometimes, they include information about how to use new features on Bijoux's website. And once a month, they also includes incentive coupons.

Result: Return Customer Rate Up 30%

From the start, Bijoux's email marketing strategy has proved successful. With Constant Contact's reporting feature, Grace can see that 46.5% of her 233 email list members are opening her emails. And she knows for a fact that her email campaigns are affecting the bottom-line.

Says Grace, "Our revenue from return customers has increased about 30% since we began sending out our 'New Arrivals' email campaign, and we've found that a number of customers who have never purchased from us before, will buy after we send out an email campaign."