Danish Internet Awards 2015: eTilbudsavis

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Every week, millions of print commercial catalogs are sent to mailboxes across Denmark. In the following, we will just call them “print catalogs”; a big environmental waste, producing 60 kilos of waste per household per year — the weight of a stove! We are attacking the problem in many ways and this year, we have decided to nominate two major projects (each in multiple categories). We describe the general problem, solution and results for each project and we then provide motivation for each category.

Happy reading!

Project 1: Catalog Subscription Service (Oct ‘14)

PROBLEM: With 1,3 million downloads, hundreds of thousands of people have already turned to eTilbudsavis to read catalogs digitally but many people are still reluctant to turn to digital catalogs. And they told us why: Receiving print catalogs in the mailbox is a notification for people. If they say no to print catalogs, they will have to regularly check for themselves if new, digital ones are available since it has not been possible to get notified before.

SOLUTION: We have created Denmark’s first, digital opt-in service. The service will notify users immediately via push notifications when new, favorite catalogs become available—and it is not just a general newsletter, like many services provided before; the subscription service is tailored to each user, receiving only the catalogs he/she wants.

RESULTS: More than 74,000 catalog subscriptions in just four months. Users subscribe to 6.2 catalogs on average. And this is iOS only! Very soon, we are launching the service for Android and web, too. We expect to at least double the figures (or even triple them) and it has already had a great, environmental impact. Consider the following:

• At least 74,000 catalogs are pushed every week.
• If they were to be printed and sent to the mailboxes, they would weigh approximately 40 g each.
• 74,000 print catalogs at 40 g each = 2,960,000 g of waste.
• That is approximately 3 tons of waste a week.

On a yearly basis, that is 154 tons of waste—or the weight of three fully loaded 7 axle trucks (approx. 50 tons within the EU regulation):

Craft—UX

Before our subscription service, users needed to pull catalogs themselves. Therefore, we thought the idea of pushing catalogs needed a nifty introduction. And so, we created this tour:

We made it simple to manage subscriptions:

And simple to subscribe to new catalogs from around the app, e.g.:

All by reusing the bell where it makes sense. Ring, Ring!

Technology—Use of App Technology

From 2009 to 2014, users of eTilbudsavis always had to pull catalogs themselves. When push notifications became available on iOS and Android, we were reluctant to implement them because we wanted to do it just right. Finally, we saw a clear purpose with the catalog subscription service which is now creating huge traffic spikes as we push new catalogs:

Strategy—Data Driven Marketing

To drive more catalog subscriptions, we make sure that users get relevant catalogs to subscribe to. For the service, we build a recommendation engine that looks at what catalogs the user is interested in. Then, in near real-time, the engine finds clusters of users with the same interests and suggests interesting catalogs to the user, based on users alike.

Project 2. The “eTilbudsavis” App

PROBLEM: Throughout 2014, we have continually been releasing new features for our eTilbudsavis app which provides a solution to a very basic but very general problem: The enormous hassle of print catalogs (see the forewords). Also, we want to be the best shopping buddy and give users to possibility to search for items and plan their shopping but for this year’s nominations, we are focusing on the catalogs.

SOLUTION: The solution can be greatly reduced to the following:

1. Collect PDFs of all print catalogs; and
2. Publish them in an app, called “eTilbudsavis”; and
3. Build a nice, digital experience around them.

RESULTS:

• 1,3 million downloads since 2010 (one of Denmark’s most popular apps).
• Average rating of 4,1 (and also one of the best rated ones).
• +100 million catalog page views in 2011.
• +400 million catalog page views in 2012.
• +750 million catalog page views in 2013.
• +1,3 billion catalog page views in 2014.

… and those are yearly page views so in total, we have had more than 2,5 billion page views. And hmm, what kind of trend does this look like?

… yeah, you’re right—an exponential trend! Growing with the same factor (approximately 1.8 in our case), period after period.

Platforms—Mobile Platform

When designing eTilbudsavis, we wanted to KISS! And so we did; people usually tell us how simple and efficient our design is.

eTilbudsavis is a tool for searching, getting inspired to shop, and planning shopping. Therefore, we build our app based on nifty functionality with tools such as searching for offers nearby, reading catalogs in a nice way and creating shopping lists that are shared across devices and people.

We believe that content is king and so, we strive to have all catalogs available in our service. Since we started, we have also started to provide infrastructure for retailers to provide offers that are not within catalogs.

We also believe the results speak for themselves; check them out above.

Platforms—Branded Utility & New Platform

eTilbudsavis is meant to give users a branded experience of doing good for nature. And in fact, the users are doing good for nature: When using eTilbudsavis, users save the environment for enormous amounts of waste. Referring to the results above, we have had 2.5 billion page views since 2011:

1. 2.5 billion page views.
2. A physical page may be 0.5 mm tall.
3. That would be 1.25 billion mm of catalog pages.
4. 1.25 billion mm = 1,250 km.
5. That means we could stack catalog pages more than three times to the International Space Station, located 400 km above the earth’s surface.