USA: inshop.com And Elle Magazine Promotion Boosts New Members

inshop.com (AOL keyword: inshop), the online guide to fashion, style and shopping events and infomediary partner for retailers to drive consumers into their stores, has just completed its first "tell-a-friend" marketing promotion exclusively with ELLE magazine. The promotion, which launched in mid-April, invited consumers to enter to win a $5,000 Share the Scoop Shopping Spree with their friend when they signed them up to become an inshop member - and resulted in the acquisition of 100,000 new members. Over the course of eight weeks, three out of 10 referred consumers converted to inshop members, resulting in a new member conversion rate of 30%. Additionally, during the course of the promotion, nearly 20% of inshop's membership base actively participated in the promotion, proving that inshop members are loyal to the shopping information service and want to spread the word to their friends. The program, which was promoted in the May and June issues of ELLE and its premier edition of eELLE, was part of inshop's "spiral marketing" initiative to acquire new members. "Viral marketing sounds like something that's very distasteful and so we took the opportunity to put our own personal spin on it with our Share the Scoop promotion," said Veronique Bardach, CEO and Founder of inshop. "We wanted to make the promotion fun for ELLE readers and for our members. We never fully realized the power of viral marketing until we gave it a spin--hence the term "spiral marketing." ELLE's Senior VP/publisher Carl Portale added: "By working exclusively with inshop, ELLE demonstrated the power of its readership by responding to this innovative program, "Share the Scoop," especially through the magazine's first edition of eELLE--which was specifically designed by ELLE's editors to provide modern, affluent women with the ultimate guide to the Web."