Success story: Walla! Shops
Israel’s leader in online shopping transformed its existing customer mailing lists into new revenues and sales
Walla! Shops (Walla Shopmind ltd.) is the operator of Israel’s leading virtual mall. It offers auctions, group and personal sales, from a range of over 20 different product categories, from books and musical instruments, through computers, electronics and sports equipment. Walla! Shops also operate additional services such as “Shops! Photo” offering printed photo albums production, “Walla! Print” offering print materials and “Walla! Tours” an online travel agency. Walla! Shops is owned by Walla! Communications ltd.
“In the beginning we were sending a weekly newsletter ourselves using a software we bought on the internet” says Uri Laish assistant director of development at Walla! Shops “This software wasn’t providing us with any statistical data about the effectiveness of our mailing campaign, so we were basically sending out messages blindly and hoping for the best”. In addition to the lack of feedback Laish states other problems: “Our mailing list contains over half a million subscribers, the software we bought had major difficulties dealing with such a large list – it was just too much for it”.
In order to increase the efficiency of their mailing campaign and to manage their out of control subscribers list, Walla! Shops decided that they need a professional ESP, “We’re experts in sales, not in sending email” says Laish. “Because there are so many anti-spam mechanisms out there – which many times block legitimate messages, we realized that we require the help of a company whose expertise is email deliverability, and who also has a good reputation as a legitimate ESP. That is exactly the impression ActiveTrail gave us and the reason we choose them. We checked a few other ESP’s, but ActiveTrail appeared to be more professional than the others and they were also able to show us the broadest client base”.
Walla! Shops use the ActiveTrail platform to send-out email marketing campaigns packed with special offers (with personal data using the personalization engine) and to email specific groups. According to Laish they frequently use the detailed reports offered by ActiveTrail (Such as “campaign rating” and the heat map) and compare the effectiveness of different positions in their mail in terms of click through rates. “You can clearly see an improvement” says Laish, “The most obvious parameter is the open rate: the ratio between the number of emails we send and the number of opened emails has greatly improved. We were able to clean our lists of old and defective addresses and make it much more effective”
Would you recommend ActiveTrail to others?
“Yes! Whoever asked got a strong recommendation. From my own personal experience ActiveTrail is a professional company which delivers our needs, and even more. They are good professionals, and it’s great to work with them.”
