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While most business-to-consumer marketers are figuring out how best to augment holiday sales with e-mail, Bare Necessities is leading with it.

The undergarment merchant was a boutique brick-and-mortar retailer until 1998 when it launched BareNecessities.com and began building an e-mail file. Today, the Avenel, NJ-based firm's e-mail address count runs into six figures. And e-mail is its main customer-retention vehicle.

The company — whose tagline is “Your fit. Your style. Your necessities” — prides itself on personalized service and a wide selection of undergarments, especially hard-to-find sizes.

“If you're a hard-to-find size, it's very difficult to go to a local store,” says director of marketing David Wauters. “If you come to us and type your size into our search box, you'll find lots of styles in lots of colors. That's a godsend to many women.”

Bare Necessities generally sends customers two e-mails a week using Responsys Interact on-demand software. To ensure customers get relevant e-mails, about a year and a half ago the company divided its database into six segments and began tailoring content based on shopping history.

Two of the segments are everyday shoppers — those who buy brands that are fairly easy to find in local department stores — and luxury shoppers, who buy expensive undergarments that are tough to find offline.

A third segment includes people who buy men's underwear from the site. Though the majority of Bare Necessities' customers are women, a significant number use the site to purchase products for the men in their lives and the company communicates with them accordingly.

“We've done a much better job of speaking to that segment lately,” Wauters says.

Unlike many merchants, Bare Necessities doesn't plan to increase its e-mail frequency to boost holiday sales; instead it'll use merchandising. For example, an unspecified amount of messages will push stocking stuffers like slippers and silk robes.

The company also plans to promote the Christmas-themed nightwear shown on this page.

“We don't have a lot of sexy things; we have a lot of basics,” Wauters says. “This is about as sexy as we get.”

And speaking of basics, Bare Necessities' executives won't neglect their core business during the holidays.

“We're a basics business, and we don't forget that,” Wauters says. “One of the things we've learned is that during the holidays people generally have their credit cards out. So we make a conscious effort to promote our basics business in at least one e-mail per week. We'll have holiday elements in everything we do, but it might not be the main focus in every e-mail.”

He adds that Bare Necessities makes sure products featured in its e-mails are prominent on landing pages, and that the models used in its creative are people message recipients can relate to. A plus-size model would be shown in an e-mail to plus-size customers, to give just one instance.

The company uses current events to drive e-mailings. When Oprah Winfrey recently discussed a holiday wish list on her show, two items were products Bare Necessities sells. The company immediately worked up an e-mail pitch noting that Oprah's recommendations could be found at BareNecessities.com.

“They're using outside events and news to help promote products to their customers, which is a really smart way to market,” says Scott Olrich, Responsys' chief marketing officer.

Bare Necessities also set up a system that alerts customers when an out-of-stock item becomes available. “Our customers love that service,” Wauters says. “One of the requirements of our e-mail program is that each message have value.”

Bare Necessities did no direct mail other than occasional fliers for its stores and package inserts until a test postcard campaign last month. Some 30,000 names were selected from its file to receive cards announcing a sale. The drop was timed to coincide with an e-mailing.

According to Wauters, the company saw a 15% lift in revenue from customers who got the card and the e-mail, compared with the control group which received only the e-mail.

“There was a nice bump in response, not only during the sale, but after it as well. We'd never done direct mail to our Internet customers before. This was our first experiment using the two media and I'm sure there'll be more.”

Magilla Marketing, Ken Magill's weekly e-mail newsletter, is archived at http://directmag.com/magill/.