Out-of-stocks (OOS) cost North American retailers roughly $130 billion each year, according to the IHL Group. To combat this problem, Sportsman’s Warehouse, an omnichannel sporting goods and outdoor products retailer, has deployed a solution that allows shoppers to sign up for an email alert that lets them know when the item they’re seeking is back in stock.
Sportsman’s Warehouse went live with the MyAlerts solution in November 2017. Since then, the company has seen a “significant lift” in sales, with high open rates for the back-in-stock emails. “This demonstrates our consumers are very engaged and excited to know when our merchandise is available,” said Mike Van Orden, CTO of Sportsman’s Warehouse in an interview with Retail TouchPoints.
He added that Sportsman’s Warehouse was “pleasantly surprised at the high open and click-through rates of the emails. The overall usage of the feature is higher than we anticipated.”
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Sportsman’s Warehouse operates stores in 22 states in the South and West, including Alaska. The MyAlerts dashboard gave merchants the information they needed to reach out to customers when the OOS products they wanted were available in a store.
In addition, MyAlerts has helped generate customer leads. “We have been able to determine that approximately 20% of the emails we gather from the MyAlerts program were unique,” said Van Orden. “Because we receive permission from these users to include them in future marketing, it has been a very cost effective and efficient way to acquire new customers.”
The data from MyAlerts also has informed purchasing decisions at Sportsman’s Warehouse. “Our merchandising teams are using the data on a weekly basis to determine the key products within their categories that are most in demand,” Van Orden explained.
Based on its success with the OOS alerts, Sportsman’s Warehouse is considering expanding its use of MyAlerts functionalities. “We are considering leveraging the MyAlerts platform through a variety of use cases, including price drops and new product debuts,” Van Orden noted. “Timing will be determined based on internal resource availability.”
Retail clients of MyAlerts, which was launched in 2014, include Macy’s, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Cars.com, Target and JCPenney. The company recently announced that its number of consumer users has surpassed 10 million, with more than 250,000 people signing up to receive personalized product alerts every month.
