W.L. Gore scaled new marketing heights by capturing customer data while driving sales and brand awareness
By Natalie Engler
Just before Christmas 2007, Sharon Cook, retail marketing manager at W.L. Gore & Associates in Newark, Del., sat in her home office watching her latest direct mail marketing campaign unfold in near real time.
As she looked on, outdoor adventure enthusiasts who had recently received postcards and e-mails clicked on personalized URLs (PURLs) and completed a survey about purchasing habits and travel plans.
“There was immediate gratification in seeing evidence that the campaign was working,” Cook recalls. “It gave me a clear window into the consumer activity.”
The campaign — titled “Take Me to Everest” — was designed to achieve three goals: to sell more Merrell-brand hiking shoes made with Gore’s waterproof GORE-TEX® fabric, to collect data for future marketing efforts and to build brand awareness.
“The idea originated because we had done direct mail in the past using a database to do a GPS location for someone’s address, and saying ‘Dear X, Come to the store closest to you,’” Cook explains. “Those mailings were successful for redemption and tracking.”
She’d heard that PURLs could make the connection between direct mail and the Web even stronger, and wanted to see if they could help her achieve her marketing goals and generate shoe sales during the busy holiday season.
As it turned out, the results surpassed her expectations. “Take Me to Everest” generated a 16-percent average increase in sales of GORE-TEX® footwear during the two-week campaign timeframe compared to the same period the previous year.
To develop the campaign, Cook enlisted Associates Graphic Services (AGS), a graphic communication company in Wilmington, Del. Because Gore sells its products directly to manufacturers, the company didn’t have direct relationships with end-user consumers. So Gore brought in a retail partner, Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS). EMS had a targeted database of outdoor-shoe consumers a perfect fit for the campaign.
Cook worked with Karen Keenan, director of marketing at AGS, to determine the best approach for the campaign, which ultimately included postcards and an e-blast, each with a PURL. The postcards, e-mail messages and PURLs all had a consistent graphical look and feel. Each piece featured a Merrell hiking shoe and a youthful climber (both male and female) standing before a majestic mountain rising out of the clouds. The campaign featured 30,000 postcards and 30,000 e-mail messages sent to EMS customers.
The visuals were customized based on the recipient’s gender: women received postcards and e-mails showing a female climber (“Catherine”) and a woman’s hiking shoe, while men received materials displaying a male climber (“Anthony”) and a man’s hiking shoe. The text included two different incentives. One was a free gift of an aluminum water bottle or pedometer with the purchase of any shoe containing GORE-TEX.® The second — which was much more effective — was a chance to enter an online sweepstakes to win a free trip for two to Everest Base Camp in Nepal.
The postcards and e-mails also contained PURLs with the recipient’s name followed by TakeMeToEverest.com (e.g., www.JohnASample.TakeMeToEverest.com). When customers clicked on the PURL, or typed it into their browsers, they were greeted with a welcome screen displaying their first names in large outlined letters in the sky over the mountains and the tagline “One small step could take you all the way to Nepal.” Additional text explained how they could enter a random drawing for a trip to Everest Base Camp.
After registering, visitors received a three-question, multiple-choice survey (“Do you own any of the following types of footwear that use GORE-TEX® fabric or technology?”, “Which of the following [activities] did you do in the last 12 months?” and “Thinking about the last trip you took for your own pleasure (not business), how would you best describe it?”). These questions were designed to both measure and build brand awareness and to test whether the category of casual-but-rugged shoes for adventure travel was worth the companies’ continued investment.
For additional personalization, the contest entry screen was pre-populated with the customer’s contact information. If anything had changed or was incorrect, the customers made corrections. “I loved that we could switch images based on gender and customize the site by using the consumers’ names,” Cook says. “That resonated well with customers. It was targeted without being intrusive.”
It can be difficult to reach people during the holiday season, a time of heavy retail marketing traffic, AGS’s Keenan notes. And yet, despite the competition for consumers’ attention, many customers found the chance for a trip to Everest Base Camp well worth the effort required to complete the short survey. In fact, the campaign received an 8.6-percent total response rate (5,160 visitors) with 73 percent (3,766 visitors) completing the survey and updating their profiles — giving EMS the added benefit of a cleaner database.
Keenan says that adding a PURL to the marketing mix makes it easier to measure the success of an individual campaign. With the PURLs, Cook was able to sit back and watch as a backend “dashboard” revealed moment-by-moment how the campaign was faring. Tucked away in her home office, Cook measured the number of people clicking through, reviewed their answers to the survey questions and even collected additional data, such as the number of people who came because they had received an e-mail vs. direct mail, what time people logged in, how long they stayed and what browser they were using, among other things.
Through the answers to the survey questions, Cook also learned of people’s preferred outdoor activities and their favorite types of vacations. She also could determine how many knew whether shoes they had previously purchased contained GORE-TEX® fabric. The results showed that more than half of the customers who responded were familiar with the GORE-TEX® brand and confirmed that travel-appropriate footwear continued to be a promising category. Thanks to these results, Gore’s wholesale brand partners, such as Merrell, are continuing to develop the adventure-travel shoes.
The dashboard also let Cook measure the campaign’s ROI in real time, helping her demonstrate a direct return on every dollar she spent. “The back end of a PURL campaign is a measurement powerhouse,” Keenan says. “You can track whatever you choose, including sales, cost per visit, cost per completed survey, cost per closed opportunity and gross profit.”
What made the “Take Me to Everest” marketing expedition such a success, according to Keenan, was the combination of a targeted database, good creative and a great call to action. The Nepal trip was an enticing incentive. And results of the “Take Me to Everest” contest were the best holiday gift Cook could have hoped for, she says.
The entire promotion cost only around $20,000. And for that investment, Gore was able not only to capture useful metrics directly from consumers, but also present a holiday gift to EMS and Merrell: important retail and wholesale customers. EMS saw increased traffic in its stores and got its database scrubbed. And Merrell saw a lift in sales of hiking shoes.
“The success of the campaign has given us credibility to try new things and present new opportunities to our customers,” Cook says.
And in so doing, Gore has proven that it’s a company that can take its partners to new heights.
Campaign Synopsis
Company Name: W.L. Gore & Assoc.
Marketing technology solution: Personalized URLs
Number of items mailed: 30,000 postcards and 30,000 e-mails
Target audience: Purchasers of outdoor footwear
Total cost: $20,000
Impact of solution: Generated a 16-percent average increase in sales of GORE-TEX® footwear made by Merrell compared to the same period the previous year.
Don’t use PURLs when:
1. You’re doing prospecting or lead generation
2. You don’t have a targeted database of customers
3. You don’t have a good incentive or call to action
4. Your survey has more than five questions
5. Your landing page is hard to navigate
6. Your survey questions are overly aggressive
(As mentioned in a previous 
The Power of Personalization: The Impact + Influence of Individualized Content Delivery
