Business Challenge
The Online Marketing department of a major publisher undertook an initiative to increase subscriptions by purchasing email lists and sending subscription offers to the addressees. These email campaigns had a number of requirements and goals, including:
- Increasing subscriptions by ‘cold’ emailing addressees
- Determining which of a number of strategies was most effective
- Tracking and capturing all information relating to the campaign in the Online Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
- Providing reports on an hourly, daily and weekly basis on campaign progress
Solution
The model described in the Refer a Friend case study could be implemented with a number of refinements. The project involved the sending of HTML emails to each addressee. These emails linked to a series of micro websites which provided details of the Marketing ‘offer’. When the addressee clicked on the email link, they were taken to the micro website containing details of the offer. The prospect was tracked around the micro website and eventually to online registration.
During this campaign, all information was captured in the online CRM including all prospects receiving emails and bounces; prospects who opened the email or did not open the email; prospects who viewed the micro website; prospects who gave up during registration, etc.
We managed the delivery of the full solution from project initiation through to the end of the campaign. Our specific contribution included:
- Project managing from initiation through to end of campaign
- Wrote the technical specifications and defined technical interfaces requirements
- Defined reporting requirements and ensured delivery of daily, weekly and monthly reports
- Managed the graphical design and coding of the micro website and HTML emails
- Defined, managed and tested security and ensured that Data Protection Act requirements were met
- Acted as interface between Marketing and Technical to ensure correct delivery
- Cleaned the email list, e.g. removed duplicates, incorrectly formatted emails, etc.
- Wrote testing strategy and carried out testing from unit through to full end-to-end testing
- Managed the sending out of the emails, etc.
- Ensured the tracking of individual visitors and the website pages viewed
Business Benefits
A number of business benefits resulted from this campaign, including:
- Campaign Effectiveness - Significant increase in the number of subscriptions
- Marketing Model Validation - Proof that the online CRM met all Marketing's requirements for email campaigns
- User Experience Understanding - Clear understanding gained of user behaviour when viewing micro websites – enabling refinements and improvements for future campaigns
- Information Availability - Marketing campaign information readily available for analysis
- New Insights - Gained on online marketing
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