CDW Offers Something for Everybody

You wouldn’t send a special report on small business tax relief to government clients, would you? Nor would you expect civil servants to be interested in the latest white papers on educational products.

That’s why CDW, a technology solutions provider, sends out separate weekly e-newsletters—CDW for businesses, and CDW-G for government and education recipients, says Kurt Baldassari, director of e-commerce.

The newsletter program, which began in 1997, now has 100,000 recipients. Initially, segmentation is based upon the recipient’s area of need–business, government and education. Then the company drills down even further, classifying businesses as small, medium or large, and governments as federal, state or local. Educational clients are split into K-12 or higher education.

That’s not the only difference between the e-zines: Another is that each uses verbiage applicable to the market segment. And each has its own logo. But they also have similarities.

“To be efficient, you need to leverage what you can across the e-mails,” says Baldassari. “We can profile in our database so we may send one appropriate e-mail to 5000 recipients and another appropriate e-mail to other recipients.”

CDW’s breakdown doesn’t stop there. It also distinguishes between new clients and loyal customers, and it culls its customer database to determine the recipient’s life cycle.

“We know that customers have different needs at different parts of their life cycle,” says Baldassari. “So our newsletters get savvier and different as we continue to engage with the customer.”

For example, Baldassari can segment the database based on the types of products a customer has purchased. He then can send them information, such as research guides or links to white papers that will help them in future purchases. Other tools available to help customers through their life cycles are CDW assessments and ROI tools available via the newsletter that link to the CDW site.

Building upon previous purchases moves the customer forward in their life cycle by prodding the customer to their next purchase and establishes CDW as not only the place to purchase but also a knowledgeable point of contact.

“It’s a switch in strategy from an all in one e-newsletter to a more defined communication that is appropriate to the individual customer,” Baldassari says. “But we’re here to sell products. If we have a new wireless reference guide, we may merchandise the e-mail with the latest wireless router and link to the reference guide to provide more of a solution and information on how a customer may set up a wireless network.”

This strategy fits into CDW’s marketing strategy in two ways. It is providing the right technology to its customers while continuing a dialogue with them.

Baldassari continues: “There are three stages where we earn a customer’s business, then we’re looking to grow their business and move them into a loyalty stage. In different stages, we may or may not send them different types of communication.

When a customer is new, their purchases are monitored and communications are more promotional to prod them into another purchase. Early e-mails consist of thanking the purchaser for their business—and making some product offers. Then the customer is moved on to the next stage. Although some product may be the same as those for established customer, the editorial will differ. Established clients may be offered service solutions or profiling tools such as the security profile network in which they can register and take a survey to receive information back, based on their specific answers.

“Like any marketing driven efforts we do overlays of data to acquire more information about a company and then we use that to market to them better,” Baldassari says.

Anyone can sign up for it on the CDW Web site and a sign-up link is provided in all transactions. But Baldassari isn’t aggressive in growing the newsletter database for this b-to-b company. “More consumer based businesses might be more aggressive,” he says. “But we’re more on the conservative camp.”

The biggest challenge is the complexity that develops with the number of newsletters produced. “It takes more resources to build out the different e-mails,” Baldassari continues. “And when you start tailoring them it takes more effort.”

A non-disclosed “third party” manages CDW’s e-mail programs from the blast to tracking. Overall, the newsletters are logging an open rate greater than 25 percent.

In as much as Baldassari considers the e-newsletter program to be successful, he notes that CDW has a variety of programs, which include a healthy catalog program and direct marketing pieces, which the newsletters will never replace.

“The newsletters are complimentary to our other programs,” he says. “When you think about it, with a large customer database you can’t reach out to everyone through any one medium. You need a rich assortment of marketing vehicles.”