Gift Basket E-Marketer Gets Babyish
Over the past six years, Terri Seilheimer has built the Gift Basket Delivery Network into a $500,000 per year online operation catering primarily to female corporate clients.
Now, she’s looking to tap into the baby gift market with a new Web site (http://www.babygiftbasketsfordelivery.com), offering products for moms and personalized baby gifts.
“We had a small line of baby gifts on our premier site www.basketsforher.com but the demand became too much for this Web site to handle,” Seilheimer says.
In past lives, Seilheimer was a former executive at another online company and also a call center manager in Florida. In 2001, she launched the Gift Basket Delivery Network, which provides corporate clients with gifts like flowers, chocolates, fruit and other products. She now has more than 10,000 business-to-business customers around the country.
The Fort Lauderdale, FL firm relies heavily on search engine marketing to promote itself, although it has sometimes turned to Web banner advertising, she says.
The firm is locatable through such key words as “gifts’ “gift baskets,” and “gift baskets for women.” On Google, or example, the company had the top unpaid ranking under the key words “gift baskets for her” earlier this week.
Just the same, Seilheimer says she finds better results on online comparison-shopping sites. “That’s where you find the truly committed online shoppers,” she says.
Seilheimer originally tried to market outside the U.S. but ran into problems shipping perishable goods after Sept. 11, 2001.
“Sometimes our products would rot in customs,” she recalls.
