Stride Rite Shoes

Stride Rite Children’s Division had approximately 135 corporate retail stores nationwide. Stride Rite’s marketing director, Julie Lehman, turned to her account team at PreVision Marketing, LLC, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, to create a strategy for filling the stores with customers during the pre-Easter (traditionally a peak sales period) and April (historically an off-peak selling season) time frames. The goal of the strategy was not only to drive sales during these two periods, but also to understand the impact of a second communication on the targeted households reached.

The campaign consisted of two direct-mail pieces: a March peak catalog and an April sandals postcard. The catalog was designed to display the depth and breadth of Stride Rite’s product offerings and to drive the key pre-Easter store sales. The follow-up April sandals postcard was designed to increase store sales during the off-peak selling season by focusing on a particular shoe product, sandals, to drive incremental sales at the company’s retail stores.

For the campaign, PreVision used the Stride Rite customer database for 70 percent of the households mailed and compiled prospect lists for the remaining 30 percent to support newly opened Stride Rite stores. The March peak catalog’s performance was measured over a 5-week period during which a special offer featured in the catalog was valid (“Buy two pairs, save 15 percent; buy three or more, save 30 percent”). The April sandals postcard had no special offer, but its performance was also measured for a 5-week period to ensure comparable results.

To test the effectiveness of each communication alone as well as the incremental impact of the second communication, PreVision set up a test design to enable the following comparisons:

• Compare those who received only the catalog to a no-contact control group.

• Compare those who received only the sandals postcard to a no-contact control group.

• Compare those who received both mailings to those who received only the catalog.

The no-contact control groups matched the audience selection criteria of the mailed households, but did not get any of the communications.

To know who responded, each customer was tracked through name and address capture at point of sale. These point-of-sale data were loaded into the Stride Rite customer database and subsequently matched to the outgoing mailing files. In this way, PreVision was able to identify which of the purchasers had received one communication, which had received two communications, and which had received nothing.

The results, shown in Table 6-2, were very interesting. What do these results tell us? First, both the catalog and the postcard as stand-alone pieces successfully increased both shopping rate and sales, resulting in a positive return on investment (ROI). It is important to note that the ROI for the March peak catalog was not as great as that for the April sandals postcard, as the cost to produce the catalog was significantly higher than the cost of the postcard.

Table 6-2: Stride Rite Results

	March peak catalog vs. no contact	April sandals postcard vs. no contact	Dual contact vs. catalog only
Number of households in mail group	354,000	86,000	220,000
Number of households in control group	25,000	20,000	17,000
Lift in shopping rates	9.12%	20.93%	4.53%
Lift in sales	15.16%	20.82%	3.27%
Lift in average basket size	6.12%	NA	NA
Return on investment	1.28:1	1.91:1	1.22:1

The March peak catalog capitalized on a historically strong season for selling shoes, as evidenced by a high natural shopping rate during that time period. The catalog, which featured a large selection of shoes and showcased new styles, effectively increased the average basket size of those who received the mailing compared to those who did not. In addition, the catalog successfully drove additional customers to shop at Stride Rite. The April sandals postcard drove additional traffic during a typically slower shoe-selling period but did not significantly increase average basket size.

The dual-contact strategy was also successful. The second contact drove additional households to shop, especially if they had not shopped after receiving the first communication. The lift in sales and traffic came primarily from households that had not previously shopped. Because the cost per piece for the postcard was low, there was a positive return on the investment. The second communication paid off because it was a cost-efficient piece.

Because of the success of this program, PreVision has recommended dual-contact communication strategies during other selling seasons as well, so that Stride Rite could maximize the effectiveness of its marketing dollars and communicate effectively with its customers.