Right Out of the Banner

For the Mother’s Day selling season, 1-800-Flowers and Godiva Chocolatier launched Internet ads that allow consumers to order a limited number of products right from the banner.

The new technology-tested by Eddie Bauer beginning in February-was created by Narrative Communications Corp., Waltham, MA, to bring impulse buying to the Web.

1-800-Flowers started placing its ad using the Enliven/Impulse technology April 24 on major sites like Switchboard (www. switchboard.com) and iVillage (www.ivillage. com) to promote two popular bouquets, Spring Inspiration and Bloomin’ Love Azalea. The consumer chooses the gift and enters shipping and credit card information-all without having to go to 1-800-Flowers’ Web site. The company, whose busiest season is Mother’s Day, guarantees same-day delivery; while testing the ad, one bouquet arrived 75 minutes after ordering.

“Our goal is to increase conversion,” says Rebecca Kovrlija, marketing manager, interactive services for 1-800 Flowers. “In everything we’ve done, we’ve found the closer customers are to the product, the higher the chance that they’ll buy.”

There are certain good practices for the transactional banners, says Lori Dustin, vice president of marketing at Narrative, which works closely with the ad agencies and marketers. For example, merchants should offer a limited choice of products and require minimal information to be entered. “It takes about a minute to order the flowers,” she says.

Godiva was selling two Mother’s Day items, the Lily Surprise keepsake box and its 1-pound Signature ballotin. Eddie Bauer has been offering men’s jeans, for which customers enter color, size, shipping and credit card information.

Results from the Mother’s Day campaigns were not available at press time.

Narrative recently brought out another product, Enliven HardCopy, which allows users to print information from banner ads, such as the orderconfirmation number.

1-800-Flowers also gave an additional push for Mother’s Da y in the physical world.

The week of May 3, just before the May 10 holiday, white-jumpsuited company pitchpersons handed out fliers-at locales such as Penn Station and the World Trade Center in New York-inviting consumers to enter a sweepstakes to win a year of flowers for their favorite mom.