MY INBOX: Paul Kendrick, general manager, GUS

Revolution UK 27-Nov-02

Paul Kendrick general manager of channel and business development at GUS, likes the sense of immediacy given by email to bargains

How many commercial emails do you receive a week? Is this too many? I get about 300 emails a week, but most are work-related, so I have to actually do something with them. I get 50 or so marketing or commercial emails, which is far too many, but I've signed up with lots of sites' mailing lists to keep up to date with what's happening in the industry and make sure that we have our finger on the pulse.

How many email addresses do you have? Three: one at work, my main one at home - which gets most of the marketing messages - and a Yahoo! mail, which I use when away on holiday. I check my work email three to four times a day, and at home I normally log in quickly most nights to see whether anything interesting has come through.

What is the best marketing email you have received recently? I love getting a good deal or a bargain - or at least think I am getting one - so emails that have really good special offers attract me. The best I have ever received was from Air Miles, which made its special offers available online the weekend before being offered generally - the immediacy and the ability to actually get a great offer worked for me.

What is the best attachment you have received recently?

I thought the Argentine footballers with their handbags which went around during the World Cup was great. I asked my team for any that they had received and immediately was sent the video clip of Ricky Gervais as David Brent from The Office, which is a classic.

What was the last email you received that caused you to click through? I think it was one from CD WOW! (www.cd-wow.com), which had a special discount offer attached.

What's the worst piece of spam you received recently? How do you define spam? I keep getting a weekly email from a car retail site, but I only change my car every three years, so the frequency of this is a bit much. To me, any email which has not been requested or is irrelevant - be it either in timing or subject matter - is spam.

Which newsletters and news groups have you signed up for? I try to keep these to a minimum, otherwise you end up with an inbox full of news updates that you never read. I get an update on the fashion industry every day, which is useful for work. I used to work at Thomson Travel Group and I still get travel industry updates from e-tid (www.e-tid.com), which is a good way to see where old colleagues are popping up. The best newsletters have short and punchy messages, but make it easy for you to go through to a web site for more if you are interested.

How does GUS use email? Will this change over the next 12 months? As we are the UK's biggest online fashion retailer, with forecasts of online sales of £100 million in 2002 to 2003, we have a huge number of customer email addresses - and it's growing. We used to send out updates every month to customers, but we are moving to communicate with customers only when we have something relevant to tell them, such as a special offer or announcing a new fashion range. Our email list is now significant enough for us to start applying many of the customer segmentation techniques we have used offline to further increase the relevancy of our offers, and so improve our conversion rates. Customer segmentation is just as important online as it is offline.