Virtual worlds are hugely popular online but retailers still often struggle with how to market via these worlds. As marketing budgets are being cut, retailers need to make an ever stronger case for new initiatives. The recent promotion that Kohls has run with Stardoll offers an interesting example of how to tap into this audience.

Kohls has partnered with Stardoll, the virtual world frequented by teens and tweens, to sell apparel for virtual characters. Last week, Kohls ranked #9 among Department Stores and Stardoll.com ranked #28 in the Entertainment - Games category.

As illustrated below, Kohls.com was the #1 downstream Shopping and Classifieds website from Stardoll last week indicating that the promotion is driving traffic to the Kohls website.

Also, overall visits to Kohls seem to have seen a boost, in particular during the critical back to school shopping period. I charted visits to Kohls.com and searches for "back to school" and both peaked in the week ending 16th August 2008. In the peak week (week to 16th August) visits from Stardoll accounted for .26% of visits to Kohls.com, just behind Ask.com.

Retailers considering this type of promotion need to do their homework. The Kohls-Stardoll partnership was a good fit as the clothing line being promoted on Stardoll was a new line designed by Avril Lavigne. Much of the activity on Stardoll is celebrity worship making this tie in particularly relevant to Stardoll members. Firms looking to establish such partnerships can analyze clickstream data to understand relationships and to find appropriate promotions, thereby reducing the risk of a flop.

Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins is VP of Research for Hitwise UK. This piece was originally posted on Hitwise Analyst blog here.

Image by Cosas de dos