teacollection.com

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About teA collectionTwice a year, designers from the the globally-inspired children’s and

women’s clothing company Tea Collection head to a different part

of the world, immersing themselves in the culture of the destination.

The company now offers clothing lines based on local fashion through

its website, 300 high-end children’s boutiques, and retailers like

Nordstrom.

“Tea Collection shares stories from unique parts of the world,” says

Michael Stearns, the company’s E-Commerce Manager. “Whether you

live in a small town in the Midwest, or New York or Los Angeles, we

want to bring you a global experience, and that’s ingrained in our

clothes and company culture.”

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Tea Collection wanted to enhance and improve its website. But the

company didn’t want to lose focus on its core competency. “We try to be

a leader with technology and analytics, because we are very analytics-

focused,” says Stearns. “At the same time, we’re not a technology

company. We’re a fashion company.”

Last year, while Tea Collection was replatforming its website, the

company wanted to provide an even better online experience to

visitors.

“Replatforming is challenging,” says Stearns, “So we really started

looking for tools that would allow us to test and personalize features

on the website, as well as make sure any changes we made were done

for the right reason.”

It’s pretty cool to see what our visitors really want to do, and understand how they are behaving.- Michael Stearns, E-Commerce Manager, Tea Collection

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the chAllenge of growing, growing, growingTea Collection never had a formal approach to testing. In fact, the

company would frequently conduct some minor user testing on a

feature, and then implement it if the results seemed positive. “We

didn’t have a true A/B testing platform, so we couldn’t see what was

working and what wasn’t,” Stearns says. “It was more of us talking ideas

out among ourselves instead of turning to our customers.”

With great growth comes challenges, and as Tea Collection generated

more customers and clicks, it became harder to figure out what visitors

wanted during their website experience.

“When you start reaching into new markets and new customers, it’s

harder to know exactly who you are talking to,” Stearns says. “We

needed a solution to help us simply and quickly implement these

testing efforts, so that’s why we chose Monetate.”

Tea Collection works with Monetate to execute marketing campaigns

quickly and easily, as well as see results from those efforts. “As we’re

planning for our campaigns, or just general strategic growth, we think

of Monetate as more of a partner than just a tool,” Stearns says. “Now,

when we develop a holiday campaign, for example, we ask ourselves

how Monetate can help us make those plans even better before we run

the campaign.”

And that mindset really helped the company when it launched a new

email acquisition campaign.

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A unique effort combining emAil And SociAlWhen Tea Collection wanted to ramp up its email acquisition efforts,

the retailer decided to test lightboxes on its home page. And there

was another twist. Tea Collection has a robust Facebook community of

more than 60,000 fans who post pictures of their children outfitted in

the company’s unique clothes.

“We were originally just going to do a basic lightbox that asked visitors

to sign up for our email,” Stearns says. “But over time, that idea evolved

with different messaging. For us, getting a user on our email list or

getting someone to like us on Facebook is very valuable. It doesn’t have

to be one or the other.”

The company didn’t want to let its engaged social network presence

fall to the wayside, since there might be an opportunity to grow

that, too. Tea Collection conducted a three-way split test of different

lightbox creative. During the test, one group of visitors saw no lightbox

at all when they visited the website. The second group of visitors saw

a lightbox asking for their email address, and the third group saw a

lightbox asking for their email and suggesting they “Like” Tea Collection

on Facebook. And the results were surprising.

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Tea Collection saw an 8% lift in conversions for visitors who saw the

lightbox versus those who saw no lightbox at all, and a 4% higher

conversion rate for visitors who saw the email lightbox that also

promoted the company’s Facebook page.

“We really wanted to find out whether promoting our social presence

was going to help or hurt our email capture efforts,” Stearns says.

“Distracting a visitor is always a concern when you’re trying to get

a user’s attention, or telling them to leave your website and go

somewhere else, so we wanted to be sure it made sense. And it did.”

Tea Collection is now capturing more email addresses, boosting the

number of likes within its Facebook community, and discovering new

ways to reach prospects and loyal customers.

“It’s pretty cool to see what our visitors really want to do and understand

how they are behaving,” Stearns says. “Also, it allows us to customize

our messages to these different groups and people. In the future, I’m

sure we’ll start doing more targeted offers specifically for our email list

and our Facebook fans.”

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continued growth, effective PromotionSBeyond the success of the email lightbox campaign, Tea Collection is

moving full-speed ahead with new website optimization campaigns to

further other marketing efforts.

“The next step for us is a little more personalization and geotargeting,”

Stearns says. “We’re able to understand our customers better now and

target certain messages or products to them, so the next phase will be

using that to serve the most relevant content we can.”

As the company continues to grow, it hopes to better understand

its loyal customers and new prospects. And now, testing is now at

the forefront of the company’s marketing mission, helping make Tea

Collection’s website as unique as its customers.

“Without a tool like Monetate, we wouldn’t have the resources to test

and learn on our website,” Stearns says. “It’s so easy to use and the

impact is huge. Monetate allows us to make our promotions effective.”

We needed a solution to help us simply and quickly implement these testing efforts. That’s why we chose Monetate.- Michael Stearns, E-Commerce Manager, Tea Collection

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