e-Dialog Empowers PETCO to Create and Send Highly Relevant and Automated E-mail Marketing Campaigns

SEATTLE & BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--e-Dialog, a proven provider of advanced e-mail marketing solutions, today announced that PETCO now employs e-Dialog’s strategic services and Precision Central suite of campaign management, analysis, segmentation, data integration and reporting tools, to deploy its e-mail campaigns. As an e-Dialog client, PETCO has been able to deliver more targeted content in its e-mail newsletter, doubling the number of editions and incorporating additional dynamic content to drive increased sales conversions. PETCO has also realized increased campaign production efficiencies by using e-Dialog’s tools.

“Whereas it used to be very challenging to get a relevant e-mail newsletter out to all segments of our audience in a timely fashion, with e-Dialog we're able to reach our customers in much more personal, efficient and cost-effective ways.”

PETCO’s e-mail program is comprised of numerous behaviorally triggered, sequenced and ongoing e-mail campaigns for promotional, goodwill, educational and transactional purposes. With e-Dialog’s tools, PETCO marketers have immediate access to customer data for analysis and segmentation, as well as advanced dynamic publishing capabilities. This easy-to-use functionality enables them to build highly targeted, sophisticated segmentation models – without assistance from their IT or analytics departments – that can be automated and scheduled to run at any time.

"E-mail enables us to effectively communicate with our customers, and we are committed to extending our use of the channel to further foster customer engagement and loyalty - and to helping our customers be the best pet parents possible," said John Lazarchic, vice president of e-commerce, PETCO. "Whereas it used to be very challenging to get a relevant e-mail newsletter out to all segments of our audience in a timely fashion, with e-Dialog we're able to reach our customers in much more personal, efficient and cost-effective ways."

In the September 2009 report, “The ROI of Email Relevance, 2009,” Forrester Research finds that “marketers who use a combination of segmentation and content targeting tactics reap far greater revenue and net profit gains over marketers who fail to embrace segmentation.” The report also finds that “the small percentage of marketers using product review data, including those who contributed and viewed reviews and other social behavior such as social sharing as a segmentation attribute, have reported higher response rates as compared with those who are not.”

PETCO also uses product reviews and social contribution in its e-mail marketing, enabled by a robust integration between e-Dialog and Bazaarvoice.

“We are proud to support PETCO, a retailer who provides an amazing customer experience,” said John Rizzi, president and CEO of e-Dialog. “Our focus on making data and content actionable enables PETCO to develop complex segmentations and then build their marketing strategies and campaigns around those segments, leading to a healthy, high-performing database. And, since the marketer is able to do these things themselves, they are empowered to test and strategize, ultimately leading to further program and resource optimization.”

About e-Dialog

Established in 1997, e-Dialog is a proven provider of intelligent e-mail marketing solutions. Through a unique combination of strategic services and relevance enabling technologies, e-Dialog empowers marketers to take meaningful action on their data in order to deliver contextually targeted communications to customers. Some of the world’s most recognized brands, including AirTran Airways, American Eagle Outfitters, Avis Budget Group, Boots, British Airways, CBS, CVS/pharmacy, Nintendo, the NFL, PETCO, Reuters, the Royal Bank of Scotland group of companies, and The TJX Companies, have partnered with e-Dialog to enhance their permission-based e-mail marketing efforts and maximize long-term customer value.

e-Dialog is one of the only e-mail service providers consistently recognized by the top analyst firms for both outstanding service and first-class technology. In September 2006, e-Dialog was the first e-mail service provider to achieve certification for ISO 27001:2005, the global information security standard. e-Dialog, with offices in Boston, London, New York, and Seattle, is a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq: GSIC). For more information, visit www.e-dialog.com.

About PETCO

PETCO is a privately held specialty retailer that provides products, services and advice that make it easier for our customers to be great pet parents. We operate more than 950 stores in 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as a leading pet products and information destination at www.petco.com. Our nonprofit organization, The PETCO Foundation, has raised more than $55 million since its inception in 1999 to help promote and improve the welfare of companion animals. In conjunction with the Foundation, we work with and support approximately 6,200 local animal welfare groups across the country to help find homes for more than 200,000 adoptable animals every year.