This running gear super store boosted its customer base by targeting ads, emails and a blog to a niche audience.

Three months into an online marketing program that included display ads, customized emails and a Shoe Blog -- all tightly targeted to an athletic audience -- running gear superstore Road Runner Sports had increased its new customer base substantially and was well on its way to achieving desired conversion rates on roadrunnersports.com.

With a go-to-market plan focused on getting runners into the right gear to run injury free, Director of Ecommerce Peter Taylor and his team sought an agency’s expertise to align Road Runner Sports more closely with its target customer -- recreational runners. The team turned to Active Marketing Group for its direct access to active consumers, its consultative approach and its ability to execute engaging promotions.

Active Marketing Group is a division of The Active Network, a technology provider to sports and activities organizers and operators of active.com and eteamz.com. The agency offers access to millions of active Americans involved in sports and activities, an understanding of consumer behavior and a portfolio of consumer promotional services.

Identifying the target

With a marketing mix that included catalog and web marketing, Road Runner Sports wanted its online effort to drive new customers and increase brand presence. The result was a monthly online advertising program that drove direct sales by serving online display ads and customized emails to a very targeted audience.

“Our goal was to capture new customers and reach a younger set of runners who were using ecommerce more often,” explains Taylor. “We felt we may not have been reaching these runners through our print catalog and they weren’t showing up in our data segmentation, but we knew they were out there.”

Display ads provided a good foundation for building the brand, while the email component was critical to driving conversion percentages and sales. Early results from the email program revealed a very direct fit for the company’s products among the target, and as Taylor notes, “the early metrics have been encouraging.”

Media channel for active consumers

Active Marketing Group chose Active.com as the online medium for the display ads, placing ads on the running and triathlon pages of www.active.com. The site is an online community for active lifestyle consumers and one of two active consumer media channels the agency has direct access to. Active.com attracts active consumers involved in multiple sports and activities, offering activity-specific content and services such as online event search via a database of more than 100,000 events and activities in more than 5,000 cities, and online event registration. Active.com also offers specialized web pages dedicated to individual sports with local event calendars, health and fitness information and training tools.

Active Marketing developed custom Road Runner Sports emails promoting free shipping offers and product discounts. For the email component, the agency tapped Active.com’s audience of registered members, specifically active consumers, ages 25 to 55, who participate in running activities three to five days a week and have a history of online registration transactions for community events and activities. The site has signed up over six million members -- 1.5 million of those have opted-in to receive a variety of enewsletters specific to their participation interests -- offering database segmentation opportunities by gender, age, income, and sport or activity to reach a number of direct marketing goals.

“We especially liked the diversity of the content we had access to -- the runner web pages, enewsletters and opportunities for other innovation. We could change the format and focus, and experiment with a specific email offer or look at expanding the brand presence through advertisements on the runner pages,” says Taylor.

As part of its database marketing services, Active Marketing Group also provides demographic targeting, matching specific product offers with a specific audience. Depending on Road Runner Sports’ plans, the agency could match a racing flat shoe offer to active consumers who are training or competing in shorter distance and fast events such as 5Ks, or shoes geared to marathon trainers. 

“We’re now able to talk to a group of people who are very much in our target audience and through a collaborative relationship with Active Marketing Group, we’re able to explore multiple possibilities,” explains Taylor.

Driving sales conversion

While the Road Runner Sports products were a direct fit for the Active.com audience, the challenge was leveraging opportunities within the media channel to make meaningful connections with active consumers and drive conversion percentages. Throughout the email program, the agency team continued to experiment with creative and messaging, looking at the consumer experience on certain web pages and ensuring the message was clear.

“By working collaboratively with Active Marketing Group, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to explore possibilities and experiment with the creative, the messaging and the offer types,” says Taylor. “We can optimize our communications and we’re not locked into a strategy like so many other advertising deals.”

Engaging consumers through innovation

In November, Active Marketing Group leveraged Road Runner Sports’ branded running guru Super Dave to launch a Shoe Blog on the Active.com site. The Shoe Blog offers runners the opportunity to interact with the Road Runner Sports products. Runners can read shoe reviews, post their comments or questions, and click a “Buy Now” button that will take them to the Road Runner Sports site to purchase the shoe.