The Situation
Allume Systems, Inc. develops and publishes award-winning business and consumer products. Their software helps people increase the efficiency of security, Internet distribution, and information access, removal, and recovery. StuffIt, their most famous product, is the de facto standard for sending files across modems and networks.
They face three ongoing challenges: 1) Expand their install base 2) generate
repeat buyers by promoting and selling a new versions of their software, and
3) Generate incremental income with a limited product line.
The Solution
Allume began working with Digital River over five years ago. They have an intense dedication to e-marketing and are willing try anything: international stores, third-party partner-ships, private sites for repeat customers, e-mail marketing…the works. They turn to Digital River for support, implementation, and new e-marketing strategies.
Their mantra: contact customers often, but be smart about it. This means testing.
Digital River helps them launch every marketing initiative with extensive testing
of price points, offers, subject lines, copy lengths, messages, and graphics.
If a small test run doesn’t pull results, they tweak it or move on until they
get the results they want. Only then do they roll it out to their entire list.
Their
StuffIt Deluxe 7.0 for Mac product launch is a perfect example. Every year
they test response rates, e-mail, co-market, and cross-sell bundled products
from other companies—fine-tuning along the way. And, it pays off: the 2002
launch generated 143% more income and sold 168% more units than the 2001 launch.
Allume Systems e-mails extensively—as much as 1.2 million a week—to generate
revenue. The type or subject of e-mail varies greatly from purchase confirmation
letters, third-party products offers, and more. One essential criteria; they
need a reason to contact their customers.
According to their president and CEO, Jonathan Kahn, the Digital River Network
is the key source for the reasons. “Drawing from Digital River’s global online
distribution network of 34,000 companies, we’ve established important third-party
co-marketing relationships and generated an infinite number of reasons to converse
with customers. Allume Systems, Inc. The Leader in Access Management
Through our network relationships, we’ve significantly expanded our market reach,
offered our customers a wider variety of software titles, and created more attractive
promotions.”
They offer third-party products in cross-sells, bounce backs, and bundles.
They do independent mailings just for third-party offers. They cross mail with
other
Digital River Network customers. They also ask third-party partners to add
an Allume product to their product mix. Again, they use extensive testing
to make
sure their customer base will respond favorably to any third-party product
offer.
The Results
The strategy works. In the
first quarter of 2003, 9.25% of total revenue
was generated from third-party products. In
the second quarter of 2003, third-party products
generated 27% of promotional sales. In the
third quarter, this increased to 37%.
Leveraging
the Digital River Network gives
them an infinite number of reasons to contact their customers:
each contact a potential revenue
generating event. In fact, over one third of their e-mail
offers may be third-party product
offers. This consistent communication establishes
an important buying relationship.
Allume’s
customers learn that they can rely on Allume
to provide interesting, compelling and relevant
offers. This helps Allume retain its customers
by offering them these exceptional offers
an advantage that comes from interacting with
other comes in the Digital River’s network.
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