Database Analysis Exercise

Open the Snappos email database. (you can also access the email database in the Student Resources section in Stukent for Chapter 8)

Snappos is a hypothetical online shoe retailer (like Zappos). Snappos has only recently begun their email marketing efforts. They have collected 250 email addresses and have been sending bi-weekly emails to their entire email list for the last eight weeks. They have made no efforts to clean, segment, or optimize their email list in any way. The database provides information about the 16 sent emails and the resulting action of each of the 250 members of the email list.

Information About the Emails

The coding key for the emails is as follows:

Key

Time of Day

Offer

Category

1

Early Morning

BOGO

Women's athletic shoes

2

Late Afternoon

20% off

Women's dress flats

3

Afternoon

30% off

Women's high heels

4

Evening

50% off

Women's sandals

5

New products

Women's slippers

6

Free shipping

Women's boots

7

Men's athletic shoes

8

Men's sandals

9

Men's dress shoes

10

Men's boots

Each of the 16 emails had the same layout with three visual fields:

Each field featured one of ten possible shoe categories. Emails were sent at various times of the day. The subject line of each email featured an offer and highlighted the product category in field 1. Email 1 has the following properties:

Time of Day

4

Offer

5

F1

3

F2

1

F3

6

This means this email was sent in the evening. The subject line talked about new products, specifically new women's high heels. Women's high heels were pictured in field 1; women's athletic shoes were pictured in field 2; and women's boots were pictured in field 3.

Email Response

Below is the response key.

0

Delivered, unopened

1

Hard bounce

2

Soft bounce

3

Delivered, opened

4

Field 1 clicked

5

Field 2 clicked

6

Field 3 clicked

Most emails were delivered, but unopened (which is typical of email lists). Emails could also bounce via hard or soft bounce, or be delivered (but result in no clicks). Recipients who opened the email and clicked on one of the fields are coded 4, 5, or 6 to indicate which field they clicked.

Analyze the email data to answer the following questions.

1. Which respondents should be removed from the email list?
2. What is the best time of day to send emails?
3. Which offers generate the best response?
4. Snappos is looking to segment this email list. Should it put men in one segment and women in the other and only send emails featuring the proper gendered shoe to those lists?
5. Snappos will soon be running a sale on women's high heels. Which recipients on the list should receive this email?