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Our panel of gift registry retail experts from Sur La Table, Cook's Emporium, and The Gourmet Pantry have led us through their service and sales techniques for attracting, working with, and retaining gift registry guests. This final installment of our three-part series on gift registry looks at what to do when the party is over to maximize the benefits of a gift registry.


You've delivered all the presents. The bridal couple has said their "I dos." Another wedding is over and so, you imagine, is the gift registry process. Think again.

Gift registry is one of the best marketing tools in your arsenal and if you're not maximizing it to its full potential, you're missing a great opportunity to turn a possibly one-time guest registrant into a loyal, lifelong customer.

Gift registry does not end when the celebration is over. In fact, it's just beginning. Throughout the registry process, you've gathered information and created a customer profile that is more detailed than that of most other store customers. How you use this information and the additional service touches you apply at this point will separate your store from the masses.

Completion Programs

Oftentimes, when a special event or wedding concludes, unpurchased items remain on the gift registry. The majority of large retailers have developed completion programs in which they offer gift registrants 'specials,' opportunities to purchase those items at a discount. While you don't want to make a habit of copying the competition, this is one area in which joining the crowd is an excellent idea. Completion programs average the offering of a 10-percent discount to help guests purchase any items remaining on their registries. Each store should individually tailor this figure and be cognizant of manufacturers' requirements.

Just as with every other detail of your gift registry service, completion programs must be well planned, thoroughly researched, and succinctly marketed. Each of our registry experts agreed this is a program they'd like to consider implementing, but they have not yet done so for various reasons.
Carol Nockold, Sur La Table area manager and registry team leader, said their current focus is on making the registry program easier for customers to work both in-store and online. The past year has been filled with fine-tuning Sur La Table's services so that fewer mistakes are made in the registry process. Now, Nockold hopes to focus her team on the installation of new gift registry services.

"Completion programs are definitely something I'd like to get to," she said. "We don't do it now, but people expect it and it's a great way to create a customer for the long term. We just aren't actually there yet."

Jane Fowler, co-owner of Lubbock, Texas-based The Gourmet Pantry agreed.
"We have some good ideas," she explained. "I'm not so sure we're implementing all of them. We learned about completion programs during a seminar we took at the Gourmet Products Show. It's a great idea and we need to implement that as well."

At Ames, Iowa-based Cook's Emporium, registrants are encouraged to return duplicate merchandise and items they may have changed their minds about after the celebration is over. Manager Vicky Flaws said bridal couples often return with money from their weddings and complete their registries, even without a completion program, leaving this particular service a bit lower on the to-do list for Cook's Emporium.

"We're really focused right now on making the Web component of our registry work smoothly," Flaws said. "We've made a lot of progress in the past two years, but there's still much more we could be doing."

Examples of completion programs include Kitchen Etc.'s offering of a 10-percent discount that excludes Calphalon, Cuisinart, small appliances, sterling silver, Weber grills, and Waterford merchandise and Bed, Bath & Beyond mailing (or e-mailing) out a 10% Completion Certificate around the wedding date as a one-time offer. Bed, Bath & Beyond also offers a Referral Award valid for $25 off any purchase of $50 or more at any Bed, Bath & Beyond store for any friend who registers due to a referral from a registered guest.

New York City-based Michael C. Fina offers a registry completion discount of 10 percent, but goes a step further with its Registry Advantage Membership. The membership provides a 10-percent discount for one year from the time guests list with them. The discount is offered anytime and every time the registrant needs a gift, or for times when they just want to buy something special. This discount is only applicable after the first purchase has been made from the couple's registry and other exceptions do apply. In addition, after the wedding, guests receive a 10-percent savings on all purchases during the month of their birthday.

Simply offering a completion program isn't enough. As with any other part of your gift registry program, make sure your guests understand the service and remind them of it when the celebration is over via a follow-up postcard or phone call. This should constitute just the beginning of the postcards and phone calls you can tailor to this couple in the ensuing years.
Exit Poll

With the myriad of opportunities you could offer your gift registry guests, it's hard to decide where to begin. One suggestion is to start with your guests themselves. To discern what you're currently doing right, areas in which you need improvement, and discover what your customers might like to see from you in the future, conduct an exit poll. Survey your current registrants, asking them what they liked and didn't like about your registry process. They may just point out things you never considered and thereby, help you improve your program.

"One thing that we need to do is a follow-up survey," Fowler said. "I'd like our brides to complete a survey for us. We could mail it to them after the honeymoon. It would be great feedback."
Offering a free gift or a special discount might encourage registrants to complete the survey. Be sure to include questions about why they selected your store, what the registry process itself was like, the ease of or lack of tracking their registry, as well as what they would have liked to have been offered. Ask them whether they would like to receive an anniversary discount, be alerted about discontinued items, or be invited to special invitation-only events.

For stores offering online registry, a follow-up survey could be just a click away. Send an e-mail to gift registrants once their event dates have passed. Offer an incentive - such as an entry into a drawing for a free gift - for them to complete an online survey about your registry. Be sure to ask specific questions about such parameters as photo quality, site navigation, product descriptions, tracking, and in-store coordination.

"We've talked about it, but we still haven't yet done a customer service review," Nockold said. "We are new enough to the business that we can learn a lot."

Customer Profiles

Generally, stores keep registries on file for at least one year after the premier event to provide customers with opportunities to also make birthday and anniversary purchases. One of the best marketing tools that emerges from your registry program is all the information you can glean from the information your customers provided when they completed their registry profiles.

Names, street and e-mail addresses, product preferences, and color schemes are all available at your fingertips. Oftentimes, gift registry information sits idly in boxes for years or even worse, is thrown away. Not many specialty retailers, however, have tossed this valuable text. Knowing its worth, they store it away, awaiting the moment they can make it work for them. Now's the time to dust off the lid and discover the treasures inside.

"They always stay in our database. I have bridal registry forms from the very beginning," Fowler said. "It's amazing how many people come in a year or two later and ask for their daughter's list and we retrieve it. We get to be good friends with these brides and their mothers and they become good customers. They come back because we have good gift items, decorative runners, clocks, lamps, and we even have an armoire with baby items in there."

Over the past four years, The Gourmet Pantry has refocused its registry. The store - in business for 20 years - has always offered gift registry, but Fowler said the registry wasn't really noticed until they doubled their square footage a few years back and began offering tabletop. Now even the store's new logo - Gift, Gourmet, and Registry - illustrates its offerings.

"We're known for our registry. We're pretty much the place and we're giving Dillard's a run for their money," Fowler said. "Still, I know we're not doing enough."

What Fowler wants to do is what specialty retailers everywhere should strive for. Her goal is to generate an e-mail address list using the registry guests as a base to advertise sales on items they've registered for and encourage additional sales of items they know these customers want.
"We're creating the e-mail lists, but we just don't have an easy format to convert their lists," she said. "Eventually, we'll get there."

Fowler wants to encourage gift registrants to revisit the store long after their events by using the e-mail invitations and creating additional incentives. Currently, most customers return to use gift certificates germinated by their registries.

"They may come back at Christmas or birthdays, but I think we need to be encouraging them to come back with cards on their wedding anniversaries, reminding them we're here," Fowler said. "We do send a thank you note for registering with us, but that's usually done at the time the registry is opened."

Anniversary notes are a proactive approach to getting customers back into your store. Instead of hoping they remember you when their anniversary approaches, some stores send out one-year anniversary notes offering a 10-percent discount coupon that may be used on any cookware or dinnerware purchases.

Another great promotional idea is to hold monthly anniversary parties. Schedule invitation-only events at which bridal couples celebrate their anniversaries in your store during a champagne reception. Whether they've been married one year or five, you can help them celebrate their anniversaries and while doing so, introduce them to new products.

Nockold said Sur La Table's registry team is also considering the anniversary option.
"We keep the registries on file for five years just for that kind of opportunity. We didn't implement many ideas because we needed this site to become more robust," Nockold explained. "Now that that's actually happening, we can follow through on many more of them. There are so many marketing opportunities that you can implement with your gift registry operation, it's amazing. Some stores even send you a postcard when you've registered for something that's going to be discontinued."

Cook's Emporium already offers a discontinuation service to their gift registrants who sign up for dinnerware patterns. Flaws said manufacturers like Denby notify the store a year in advance of their discontinuations, providing store personnel ample opportunity to inform the registrants.
Cook's Emporium saves all its registries, making it easy for relatives to come in and purchase Valentine's Day, birthday, or anniversary gifts from the old registries. Even if the items are no longer available, it serves as a great guideline for future purchases.

"The people I see coming back are mostly the mothers. Oftentimes, they say they know their child wants something else from the registry, so they return for anniversaries and other events," Nockold said. "I have a feeling it's more the case in tabletop so that over a period of years, you end up getting the full 12 settings you wanted."

Opportunities literally ooze from "retired" registry lists - from anniversary specials to personalized event invitations to discontinued item notifications. Clearly, they comprise an untapped marketing opportunity for many retailers. While creating a database from the materials you already have on hand may take time, it's well worth the effort. As more and more specialty retailers turn to the Web to increase registry opportunities, further prospects exist for long-term promotion as your customers' profiles are fed directly into a database.

"We've talked about all sorts of things since we've upgraded our Web site. Ninety percent of our registrants provide e-mails, so there's a lot of opportunity," Nockold said. "Some of the 'big guys' do it better than we do, but I think that it's a place for the specialty retailer to take the bull by the horns and go for it."