Slippery Slopes: How Web Analytics Brought One Man A Mountain Of Success

Daniel ran a moderately successful business, Ski Sales and More. He loved skiing — but even more, he loved outfitting other people for the slopes, AND earning a good living at it, so that he could pay for his own ski vacations.

He had a decent website that drew a fair amount of traffic, thanks to the fact that he’d bought his domain name through a company that gave him great advice on getting the name right. But with the economy being what it was, Daniel realized he needed to be a go-getter if he was going to fund this year’s trip to Vail. He didn’t want to spend his holiday break sitting in his shop pushing ski helmets. So what to do?

One thing Daniel had going for him was a great email list of former and potential customers. Long before it was standard practice, he’d been collecting email addresses from visitors to his store. Daniel decided to use this database to launch an early seasonal promotion. He got some responses, and even a sale or two. But the campaign was not nearly as successful as he’d hoped.

Daniel worried over how to better target his audience and tailor the sale to their interests. He didn’t want to offer an across-the-board discount. But what were people looking for? What would bring them in, to the site or the store, and get them buying? His guesswork so far had missed the mark.

Then Daniel came across some information from the folks who’d sold him his store’s domain name. It talked about tracking your email campaign with software you could download free on the Web. He installed Google Analytics — it was surprisingly easy — and started planning another campaign.

This time, when Daniel hit send, he could literally see who opened his email, and when, and what they actually clicked on. He found that many people were ignoring or overlooking the discounts on skis and poles. But a surprising number, more than half of those who opened the email, checked out the sale on snowboards. Daniel also noted that many of those potential customers had email addresses at the nearby college, and that — kids being kids — they were online checking out the sale at quirky hours.

Daniel’s years of experience, coupled with these new, priceless gems of information, led him to a plan that would help him hit the jackpot — or the slopes, as it were. He crafted a snowboarder’s email campaign, complete with additional discounts for students and a cut-rate, two a.m. special for night owls.

Through Google Analytics, Daniel learned the future was snowboards. The future was students. And the future, for Daniel, was a week in Vail, because he soon found himself with a mountain of sales on snowboards.

By: Jen Tanzi

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Jen Tanzi is a Marketing Communications Manager at BuyDomains. In addition to premium domain name sales, BuyDomains offers exclusive services for website hosting, design and marketing as well as registration of domain names for sale that are not currently owned. To view currently owned domains, visit Afternic’s Domain Listing Service to buy or sell domain names at AfternicDLS.