About Newegg
Newegg Inc. is one of the top e-retailers in the United States. It owns and operates Newegg.com (www.newegg.com)
which was founded in 2001 and regularly earns industry-leading customer service
ratings. The award-winning website has more than 25 million registered users
and offers customers a comprehensive selection of the latest consumer
electronics products, detailed product descriptions and images,
"how-to" information and customer reviews. Using the site's online
community, customers have the opportunity to interact with other like-minded
enthusiasts. Newegg Inc. is headquartered in City of Industry, California.
Newegg also runs a B2B product website at http://www.neweggbusiness.com(Newegg-Info, 2015). With more than 10.5 million products, Newegg proudly earns the loyalty of tech-enthusiasts and mainstream e-shoppers alike.
(Newegg-About Us, 2015)
1. Computer Systems
2. Components
3. Electronics
4. Gaming
5. Networking
6. Office Solutions
7. Software &
Services
8. Automotive &
Industrial
9. Home & Tools
11. Apparel
& Accessories
12. Hobbies & Toys
(Newegg-Info, 2015)
In addition to the diverse line of products on the Newegg
website, Newegg also offers a deals and services section on the website. This
section features the following:
Shell Shocker - The jaw-dropping savings we offer will leave you in shock!
Email Deals - Our latest email deals.
Daily Deals - New deals everyday!
Marketplace Spotlight - Every week, the Newegg deals team hand-picks intriguing products for you.
Outlet - Open box, clearance, refurbished and recertified PCs , electronics and more (Newegg-Info, 2015)
This section also provides URL’s for sales events, what’s new at Newegg.com and a more at Newegg section, which provides links to premier membership participants, student store, gift cards, subscription to e-mail communications and last but not least, Gamecrate – an affiliate, editorial website dedicated to gaming culture and everything it entails. (Barajas, 2014) Newegg has long been a destination for gamers. This marks Newegg’s foray into content publishing and enriches the Newegg.com experience with editorial content to educate readers about the latest gaming-related news, products and media. (Barjas, 2014)
“Gamers represent a significant and
very active segment of our customer base. GameCrate gives these tech-savvy
individuals a place where they can stay current on gaming news and voice their
opinions. We want to be more than a shopping destination for our customers and
GameCrate is an innovative addition to our community.” — Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer for
Newegg North America (Barjas, 2014)
Catering to PC, console and mobile
gamers, GameCrate includes:
- News & reviews featuring the latest games, consoles, PCs and accessories
- Live coverage of e-Sports events, including expert-written editorial and video analysis
- Professional advice and opinions focused on the world of hardware and technology
- Original video content and trailers from the latest games
- An intuitive forum that allows readers to join the discussion
- Exclusive deals and promotions on the latest gaming gear (Barjas, 2014)
As you can see, there are a lot of features to the Newegg
website. Not to mention the affiliate
websites of GameGrate and Neweggbusiness.com. What one can pull away from this information at
this point is that Newegg customers are people interested in electronics and
gaming. The next section will discuss
the findings that were documented through this small study.
Findings
One thing that Newegg has done extremely well is immerse
itself in a combination of marketing tools and metrics, which include some of
the leading analytics software in the industry. Newegg believes that service
truly begins after the product is delivered to the customer. Newegg follows through on this commitment with
exceptional customer service. Their team of service associates is available via
phone, e-mail and online chat to help ensure the utmost satisfaction. (Newegg-About
Us, 2015)
A large part of Newegg's growth has to
do with its continuous customer acquisition. At Adobe Summit 2014 the head of
the company's marketing management office, Aaron Yin, sat down with AdExchanger
to discuss how Newegg divides its customers and prospects into segments and
strategically messages them across channels. (Joe, 2014)
Newegg has assembled its digital
marketing tools, which include four Adobe Marketing Cloud products (Analytics,
Target, Media Optimizer and the website asset manager Scene7), along with a
handful of solutions from other vendors. (Joe, 2014)
The Newegg customer base is more
tech-savvy and male, and kind of young. Twenty-five to 45 is the average age.
When Newegg targets, they analyze their customer segmentation. They map their
data to Acxiom data, which provides good analysis of the customer base. They
have more than 100 segments, which are merged into five super segments. These
include gaming, digital life, seasonal shopper, deal junkies and some B2B
customers. Newegg uses different strategies to target each segment. Deal
junkies come from email marketing or affiliate marketing and we try to give
them the best price to get them into our website and convert. (Joe, 2014)
In order to properly segment their audience, Newegg uses Acxiom, an enterprise data, analytics and software as a service company. For more than 40 years, Acxiom has been a leader in harnessing the powerful potential of data to strengthen connections between people, businesses and their partners. (Acxiom) Other than Acxiom, no other data providers are used. (Joe, 2014)
When Newegg measures the efficiency of
their customer acquisition efforts, they look at the conversions and the
traffic and the cost of sales. They like to look at top line and bottom line.
Top line is traffic and sales, and bottom line is cost of sales – how much they
spend to acquire those customers. A good cost of acquisition varies per
channel. The affiliate channel is very price-sensitive and the customer
acquisition cost there is low. The cost of sale is a little higher for paid
search. (Joe, 2014)
It also depends who they are to target.
For B2B customers, they have the business dot-com site. The customer
acquisition costs are higher because it’s a little difficult to get them to
convert, but once they do they have better loyalty. That’s the value: the
overall lifetime. So Newegg can afford to spend more on those customers. (Joe,
2014)
Newegg traces customer lifetime value
by repeat buying and the attrition rate. For B2C customers, of the customers they
acquire this year, maybe 30% will stay through next year. But with B2B
customers, they’re on the other side. Seventy percent stay. So the retention
rate is higher and they buy more and more often. That’s the lifetime value
model Newegg uses to determine customer acquisition costs. (Joe, 2014)
Newegg really likes the tools at Adobe
when it comes to tracing cross-channel customer journeys. It’s innate nature
for people to jump from one channel to the other. Some customers just come to the
website and buy, but many go to affiliates to look for deals or coupons. And
some might go to shopper comparisons. And others don’t buy. Then Newegg uses
retargeting ads to drive them back. So we have all these channels that
contribute to the purchase. (Joe, 2014)
Adobe Analytics has a report called
Campaign Stacking. Every time Newegg goes to their website, they can see where
someone clicked on an affiliate marketing link before they went to search. That
helps Newegg understand the touchpoints before the purchase. Under Adobe, they get
a first-touch, last-touch report, which helps Newegg better understand the
customer journey. (Joe, 2014)
Recommendations
As far as recommendations for Newegg are concerned, I am
hard-pressed to come up with any suggestion that is going to be more beneficial
than what they are currently doing.
Adobe Analytics is like Google Analytics on steroids. It covers a lot of ground and you can see that
from the sections above. Newegg has
analytics down to a science. Not only is
their audience segmented, but their analytics are segmented as well. If there is a marketing channel open, there
is some type of system in place to capture the metrics and report them. This is a well-oiled machine and it has to
be. When one looks at the size of this
company and the depth of its websites, it is very apparent that a lot of steps,
precautions and best practices have been enacted in all of Newegg’s digital
marketing efforts.
Conclusion
I would consider myself one of the prime targets/customers,
considering my interests and needs meet the criteria of the Newegg target
audience. I’ve built the past three desktop
computers that I’ve owned and have used Newegg to acquire the parts so I could
construct it. I have specific needs as a web designer and those needs require a lot of RAM, a very
high-end graphics card and a processor that can keep up with running multiple
software applications and not lose any speed. I’m impatient and always trying to improve my
machine’s performance at every upgrade.
Newegg helps in delivering resources through reviews and the online
community. I truly feel that this
company is concerned with my happiness in every purchase because that builds
relationships and Newegg understands this through all of its methods of
obtaining analytics from a number of sources.
In short, Newegg has done its homework and that is what contributes most
to this company’s online presence and success.
References:
Acxiom (2015). About-Acxiom. Acxiom.com. Retrieved, December
6, 2015 from http://www.acxiom.com/about-acxiom/
Barajas, I. (2014). Newegg Launches GameCrate: A New Website Dedicated to Gaming. Blog.Newegg.com. Retrieved, December 6, 2015 from http://blog.newegg.com/newegg-launches-gamecrate-a-new-website-dedicated-to-gaming/
Joe, R. (2014). How Newegg eggs on new cistomers. Adexchanger.com. Retrieved, December 6, 2015 from http://adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/how-newegg-eggs-on-new-customers/
Newegg-About Us (2015). Corporate Summary. Newegg.com.
Retrieved, December 6, 2015 from http://www.newegg.com/Info/AboutUs.aspx
Newegg – Info (2015). Fact Sheet. Newegg.com. Retrieved,
December 6, 2015 from http://www.newegg.com/Info/FactSheet.aspx
SimilarWeb (2015). Newegg.com Analysis. Similiaweb.com.
Retrieved, December 6, 2015 from http://www.similarweb.com/website/newegg.com
