A retail client recently decided they'd like to delete some past wedding registries to "save money." This raises the question, "Does deleting old registries save money?" We assessed the question and found that deleting old registries likely doesn’t save a retailer money. The reason is that it costs more to replicate our automated marketing efforts with more costly manual efforts.
Let's cover some basics:
You can store two registries for free in your Shop Local Store.
This can be two couples, such as Mary and Mark and Jamie and Joe.
The registries only count as a registry towards your plan with us if they have one or more products in them. For example, if they just have a gift card, there is no charge to store this registry, and it doesn't count as one of your two free ones.
If you have three more registries and each has 2 or more products in it, then they qualify for your our first paid registry plan which is $14/month.
Let's imagine you graduate to a paid plan: you have three registries. This means you'd be in the "Up to 4 registries" plan, which costs $14/month. Once you start paying a subscription each month, you may wish to know what we do for your business before, during, and after each registry event. For the purpose of this post, we'll concentrate on what we do after the registry event (i.e. wedding) has passed because that is the topic at hand ("Why keep old registries and not delete them to save money?").
After the registry event, Shop Local does many things that make these old registries "work" for your business. We make past registries perform marketing services for your business. One marketing function we perform is sending emails to registrants and gift givers.
Let's imagine a registry event has passed. Let's imagine:
The registry had 20 gift givers.
Five of those gift givers gave a nice review (4 or 5 stars).
Your Shop Local software will do this for that registry:
Your software will send the registrant one email asking them to refer your business to friends and family.
Each year, the 20 gift givers will receive an anniversary reminder email with the couple's registry picture.
To the five customers that gave a nice review, your software will email them a request to refer your registry service.
In all, the software will send 26 emails in the year after the registry event. The registry listing (for the year after the event) will cost your store about $42. Therefore, for $42, you'll be able to send 26 marketing emails. That's just $1.61 per marketing email. Your store doesn't have to think about or plan a campaign. It's effortless marketing for your store.
We offer a discount, which may reach up to 28% off, to your retail business when it offers more registries. Instead of you paying $42 per year per registry per year, you may pay just $30. When that is the case, the email just costs your store $1.15. (The store that wanted to delete registries was paying $36 per registry so the email cost it $1.38.)
Whether a store is paying $1.15 or $1.61 per email using our software, it’s unlikely the store can hire someone to manually run a campaign for less money than that. Why? Labor is very expensive. Therefore, assuming the store does want to do marketing, it will pay more than these Shop Local amounts. As such, deleting old registries doesn’t save you money—it actually costs you more since replicating our marketing efforts will cost more using other manual avenues.
The more registries you have, the more affordable and attractive our email marketing becomes.
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Wish to review which emails your software sends to registrants and gift givers? Visit your Marketing Manager.
Wish to review your registry plan and other plan choices? Visit Settings > Billing & Subscriptions.