Few serious cyclists would buy a bike online; it's just one of those purchases you need to try out first. However, that doesn't mean that bike shops can't take advantage of online tools to reach new customers, promote sales, and generate buzz. That's exactly what Mike's Bikes, a chain of stores in the San Francisco area, is doing. Though few brick-and-mortar bike shops use email to connect their limited Web presence with their stores, Mike's Bikes' Web marketing manager Kyle Stone made it a priority.

"In the past email was primarily an unused platform," he says. "Now whenever a customer signs up for a newsletter, they immediately get a discount on an online order, or they can bring that coupon into the store. We use that opportunity to be cross channel between the Web and our six retail locations."

Customers are responding to the increase in activity; those new-customer emails enjoy an open rate of 70 percent. Mike's also sends biweekly newsletters containing content that is primarily event-driven. They include information about local cycling events, as well as articles about trends, safety, and other cycling issues. Mike's also segments non-local customers and sends them only promotional emails with coupons, new product information, and other online shopping content. Stone says a number of cycling organizations forward the emails to their member lists as well. 

Prior to last fall, when Mike's began working with StreamSend's email platform for list management and reporting, the company didn't track any metrics to see if its promotions were gaining traction. Today Stone watches open rates, click-throughs, and an in-house program that tags emails to gauge how many purchases are made through the newsletters. "Our deliverability is at 98 percent and our open rates are over 40 percent, without making any significant changes to the content of our emails or subject lines," Stone says. "Email is by far our least expensive communications channel, and it's been our highest ROI for a while."

While Stone says it's a challenge to track how many people are coming into the store because of an email message, the newsletter promotions drive at least 10 percent of Mike's revenue online. "If it's driving half as much in our stores, that's significant," Stone says. Earlier this year, during Mike's Bikes' annual sale, Stone says online profit was the highest it's ever been, despite the economy. "We've just added a digital catalog that can be downloaded as a PDF, so those numbers should continue to increase as we offer more products online," he says.

Driving revenue isn't the goal of every newsletter. "At the moment we're working on a bike drive for our sister store in Africa," Stone says. "We've donated several hundred bikes so far, and we're hoping to open a second location this year."