Contact: Sally Ross (January 3, 2013) – The Parable Group announced today that nearly 14.1 million consumer emails were sent in 2013 by independent Christian retailers through SnapRetail—a 79% increase in emails sent over the same time period in 2012. The Parable Group and SnapRetail partnership, launched in March 2012 to CBA, is a comprehensive email and social-marketing solution for the industry with over 115,000 Christian product images from over 80 Christian publishers, music companies and gift companies. “It’s exciting to see store owners realizing the potential they have for traffic growth and increased sales using SnapRetail. It’s an easy and effective marketing solution that provides stores an affordable and workable way to engage customers through email marketing and various social media channels,” said Steve Potratz, President of The Parable Group. Participating stores select ready-to-use email templates including newsletters, special events, new arrivals, sales and holiday emails complete with messaging. Ready-to-send vendor emails are also available. Stores customize, schedule, send and simultaneously post emails to Facebook and Twitter. Email images can also be set for customers to pin to Pinterest. Over the last 7 months, ready-to-send email usage increased 37.4% over the prior year. “In December, nearly 50% of all SnapRetail emails sent by Christian retailers were ready-to-send emails, much to the excitement of our vendor partners whose products were featured in them,” Potratz added. In response to growing vendor interest, The Parable Group launched an email reimbursement package for ready-to-send emails within SnapRetail in October 2013. For vendors, this provides an opportunity to incentivize retailers to send their product and promotional ready-to-send emails, build brand equity and ramp up sales at the local level. For retailers, the reimbursement program rewards them for sending select ready-to-send vendor emails, which can help off-set their monthly SnapRetail program fee. “MarketingSherpa recently found that 64% of companies planned to increase their 2013 investment in email marketing this year because email is effective in generating high quality leads,” said Erik Ernstrom, Manager of Business Intelligence for The Parable Group. “Now is the time for Christian Retailers to take advantage of SnapRetail’s easy-to-use email platform, build a strategy to connect to customers, and grow their customer list size in time for Easter.” 158 Independent Christian stores across all marketing groups currently use SnapRetail, including Catholic stores, Munce stores, and the majority of Covenant stores. The Parable Group currently provides multi-channel service options that allow any Christian store in the industry to select the service mix that is right for their business—whether it be data services, digital/email services and print/mail services. Stores can be part of any marketing group, or not affiliated with one at all, to receive services.
For nearly 30 years The Parable Group has helped independent stores buy, promote and sell products using data, technology and marketing expertise in the Christian market. The Parable Group is a leading retail services provider specializing in print and digital marketingfor independent Christian stores, and delivering innovative, industry-leading marketing solutions connecting products and services to Christian consumers. For more information, contact Sally Ross (sally.ross@parable.com) or visit www.parablegroup.com. The Parable Group is based in San Luis Obispo, CA. |