Understand Subscriber Engagement:

When A&W began their email marketing program,they wanted to take a deep dive into their subscriber engagement. Subscribers receive a monthly coupon or special offer along with a free Root Beer Float during their birthday month. Almost always, the monthly campaign includes an intriguing video to support.

RootedELM, A&W and Team Cornett, their agency of record, analyze their email marketing program through a metrics dashboard using Klipfolio. A trend line incorporating data displays an average open rate of 32% and a unique click-through rate of 6%. These metrics may sound pretty good compared to industry standards, however, when broken down by year we found a different story – a decline.  More importantly, although we change content each month, acquire and churn subscribers, the average click-to-open rate (CTOR), or sometimes referred to as the “effective rate,” basically remained the same at 18%.

CTOR: unique clicks ÷ unique opens × 100

To identify how many subscribers were unengaged, we ran a report in their Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) account. Our criteria was the subscriber had to have received a minimum of three emails over the past 90 days, but did not open or click once. This gave us about 44% of our audience — YIKES!

Now let me step back a bit. A&W ONLY obtains subscribers that have opted-in on their website to join the Mug Club and, on average, experience active subscriber growth of 4% each month. So, you can see why this number was a little shocking to us.

Time for a study:

During one month, the unengaged audience received the same monthly Mug Club email as the engaged audience, however each had a unique tracking and analytic code added to study their behavior.  We use Litmus for this.

Here’s what we found in SFMC – the engaged audience had a unique open rate of 42% and 6% unique click-through rate and the unengaged audience — a whopping 6% open rate and 1% unique click-through.  What a difference.

However, when we went into Litmus their engagement seemed very similar. As shown in the chart below, of the 42% engaged audience that opened the email, 67% spent greater than eight seconds reading the campaign. The majority used a mobile device. The unengaged audience had 72% (of the 6% that opened the campaign) spend greater than eight seconds reading. Even more interesting, we repeated this segmentation & send process over the next three months and found similar results.

What does this tell us?

Those that open the monthly Mug Club email spend time reading, but getting them to convert is a challenge. We can do better with the call-to-action and content. This outcome is also reflective where the average CTOR has remained at 18% for all three years.

Where to go from here?

A&W is taking an active approach to listening to their audience through engagement metrics as well as online surveys to determine interest. As a team, we’re working on an updated plan to nudge those unengaged back to life.

RESOURCES FOR YOU TO GROW ON:

• Measuring Email Effectiveness with CTOR

• Email Marketing Metrics Report – Click to Open Rates – October 2015 Edition

• Email marketing: how to tempt back the emotionally unsubscribed

Lexington Podiatry learned the value of the A/B split test on a recent holiday sale email campaign, where they tested two subject lines:

A: Save 20, 15, 10% – see details

B: Shop SOON, Save MORE!

The results were a surprise. Subject line B was the winner with 9.98% open rate compared to 9.5% for subject line A. 

“We were just sure that the 20%, 15%, 10% – see details was going to be a more customer-centric subject line, but the mysterious immediacy of the Shop SOON, save MORE subject line was more intriguing to the patient,” says Elise Hinchman, Marketing Director at Lexington Podiatry. “Combine that with the fact that some of the % off subject line emails may have landed square in the spam filter, I’m glad we ended up relying on data driven results and not our incorrect hunches.”

The lesson: It never hurts to run an A/B split test, even when you’re confident about your subject line. The results just may surprise you!

There is nothing the BBN loves more than to proudly wear the blue and white team colors on game day and our client, Wildcat Wearhouse, is one of the top suppliers of game day attire.

Team loyalty aside, customers need to receive the message that you’re offering what they want. So Wildcat Wearhouse sent out targeted campaigns offering the latest t-shirt must have for every Wildcat fan.

“Email is direct and allows us to reach 13,000 potential customers who may not follow us on social media and see our campaigns there,” says Nick Child, Marketing Director at Wildcat Wearhouse. “I know that if I send out an email at 6:30 on a Monday morning that a lot of people are going to see it when they get to work.”

One email featured a video showing the latest shirt being launched into space hot off the press. The results for engagement metrics were out of this world (pun intended). In total, Wildcat Wearhouse sent five March Madness campaigns. When compared to campaigns sent previously, including the 2014 holiday season, they saw an average of 50% increase in open rate with the space shirt showing the greatest.

Average unique click-through rate (UCTR) for these five March Madness campaigns increased 4% over all previous campaigns, which is 6% greater than the industry average UCTR for the retail / wholesale industry, according to an article published by MarketingProfs.

Best of all, the space shirt email campaign alone led to a 3% conversion rate of sales. However, that rate only accounts for the customers who buy online after viewing the email. It does not account for those who see the message and then come directly to the store to make a purchase.

“Most businesses are looking for direct conversions to a website, but our customers like to get their hands on the gear immediately, so that may mean seeing the message and coming directly to the store,” says Nick.

Using the Litmus Email Analytics, we were able to take a deep dive into subscriber behavior and discovered that Wildcat fans are forwarding the campaigns without using a forward to a friend link. In fact, new online subscriber registration has doubled since February 1, 2015. In looking at an analytic report in particular, the SEC Championship email campaign, 75% of their audience that opened the email, spent greater than seven seconds reading the campaign. 67% of these engaged subscribers were on a mobile device, specifically an Apple iPhone which is 15% greater than the email marketing client share data published by Litmus.

“We’ve seen above average conversion rates and click through rates because we are niche market,” says Nick. “We sell UK gear to avid UK fans and they are already out looking for that so as soon as an email comes through that has what they are looking for, they are going to react. We are able to deliver what they need through email marketing.“

So, what does this tell us moving forward?  As an audience, BBN tends to be mobile and yes, they really love their Wildcat basketball!

If you’re looking to boost your email results, give us a call, and check out these resources from Litmus and the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

We’ve also pulled together a list of resources to help you and your team audit where you are now and ways to implement change to maximize deliverability.

ExactTarget

• [blog] Top 10 Deliverability Series
• [blog] The Path to 1:1 Customer Journey Success #Infographic
• [blog] Anti-Spam at ExactTarget
• [blog] Answering Questions about Consent and CASL
• [blog] More of Your CASL Questions Answered
• [Wiki] Email Deliverability
• [Wiki] Bounce Mail Management
• [Wiki] 3Sixty : Back to Basics Email Deliverability Tips

Marketing Sherpa

• [blog] Email Deliverability: 9 lessons about Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation
• [blog] Email Deliverability – Can you spot a scrub?

• Proactive List Hygiene: How a software company overcame a 23% soft bounce rate

• [case study] Email Deliverability

Other Resources

• [blog] Best Practice: Confirm Every Opt-In Via COI Or COIL
• [book] Email Marketing Rules by Chad White

Elise Menold, Marketing Director at Lexington Podiatry, has put this theory to the test using responsive design in email campaigns. “After last year’s luck with holiday sends, I was more inclined to test out different holidays to see if the same held true,” she says. Lexington Podiatry aims to send emails on a monthly basis, but with no hard deadline. “This allows us to be more flexible and send when the information is truly relevant,” says Elise. “Sometimes, that just happens to be right on a holiday.”

Is anyone paying attention?

Elise says they were not disappointed in the campaign results. “The phones were ringing off the hook and we learned that maybe we ought to have more than just a skeleton crew manning the phones on New Year’s Eve if we’ve sent an extended hours campaign the day before,” she says. “It was excellent to see the conversion – the open rate was high quickly and the call-to-action worked. Some clicked through to make an online appointment, but many more picked up the phone to call and make an appointment.”

More than just email

And emails aren’t the only thing you can send on a holiday as part of a successful campaign. We helped several clients pre-schedule social media posts and launch special blog posts for Thanksgiving. Monitoring of these posts showed that audiences were indeed engaged with the material, despite or perhaps because of the holiday.

Keeping this in mind, now is the time to think about responsive design Christmas and New Year’s campaigns. Would a December 25th send benefit your message?

In order to achieve our goals, we formed a nurturing strategy including pre and post surveys to engage and understand both parents and students who have attended The College Program seminars. Let’s take a look:

Goal:

The goal of pre-seminar surveys for students and their parents was to find out more about them, their needs, motivations and concerns in relation to college education. That information was then used to tailor further communications to best fit their needs, and eliminate any information that might be irrelevant or not interesting to them.

Expectations:

Survey for parents: we wanted to get an idea of who is attending the seminar, what their needs and expectations are as to the content and presentation style of the seminar, what they wish to learn, what their concerns may be about college education and its impact on their child’s future, along with the financial aspect of it.

Survey for students: our expectation was to learn what their true motivation and interests are as far as college education and college athletics are concerned, as well as what factors influence their decision most.

Implementation:

We decided it would be best to have two separate surveys – 1) for parents, and 2) for students, since parents are in most cases the ultimate “sponsors” and decision-makers, while their children will obviously have their own point of view. We knew that ultimately both would be helpful to really understand the motivations and needs of people who were going to come to the seminar and essentially were potential users of the College Game Report.

The surveys were not anonymous for the purposes of incentives introduced. The incentive was an attractive discount on an order of a College Game Report. The main survey, for parents, was a follow-up survey after parents have registered to attend the seminar (automatic redirection was set up), and its friendly interface allowed for it to be filled out on a computer or a mobile device.

The parents survey had 6 questions (5 out of them were multiple-choice questions), and the survey for students was only 3 questions (2 multiple-choice). As the parents finished their survey, they were prompted to share their child’s email address so that the student survey version could be emailed to them.

Results:

We received 16 complete responses to the parents survey version. Although the responses of the survey cannot be representative of all potential users of the College Game Report, they provided great insight on the seminar attendees and potential clients from that particular seminar, and will be invaluable in making communications tailored to their interests. The information from the responses was also helpful in preparation for future seminars, due to knowing the common concerns and interests that parent attendees have. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, we were not able to receive any responses from students.

Specifically, a short summary of answers to 6 questions is provided below:

Most participating parents (81%) were expecting to learn in the seminar how to best pick a college for their child based on their major and sports played, as opposed to, for instance, identifying the real cost of college. They were not completely confident that they would make the right choice themselves based on the information they already have, and they were also not sure that their child’s choice of major would pay off. Most of them find the cost of college critical in the college search process, and most think it would take them more than 8 hours to do the research on their own, with half estimating it at more than 20 hours. In the end, most parents (88%) do expect their child to go to college.

Goals for the future:

– add question on year of high school to the pre-seminar survey for parents to be used as filter for future lead nurturing campaigns in ExactTarget

– execute the surveys before future seminars (as a regular part of registration)

– get feedback from both students and parents (as opposed to the pilot project where we only got insight from parents)

– execute the surveys as part of reengagement campaigns for those who haven’t taken the surveys yet and to gather more information on where they are with their college search process

– do ongoing analysis of the target audience of seminars, and monitor differences between groups and any trends

Next:

We’ll discuss outcomes, including specific numbers that show how our goals have been achieved.

Part 1: Background

The College Program started about 12 years ago with a mission of helping families better understand their college options and maximize their potential.  The College Game Report is a personalized 30+ page report, customized for each individual and providing key facts and clear guidelines to help families make the best possible college choice.

Tim Twellman, founder of The College Program says, “We’re working with families, students, student-athletes and schools, trying to help them understand the magnitude of the decision their about to make. We pull in athletics, but we also work with non-athletes. We try to give them all the information they need up front so they can make the best decision.”

Initially, The College Program sent out emails to large lists on their own. “In the last six months we’ve taken a different approach to our marketing,” says Tim. “I’ve always been intrigued by email marketing and the way it comes across to a potential customer, but I was having difficulty doing it.”

Utilizing the services of RootedELM, The College Program has since launched a comprehensive email campaign to gain new subscribers as well as nurture existing clients. Working on a tight budget, we used colors and a simple infographic style format to grab attention with mobile viewing in mind, without the additional cost of custom graphics and advanced html coding.

“As I see things coming through, the reports look amazing. It’s absolutely incredible the information we’re able to get back. I didn’t even know that was possible,” says Tim. “We can track who’s opening and what page of our website their going to, so it really gives a good feel of what people are looking for.”

Next: we’ll talk about our nurturing strategy and the pre and post surveys we’re using to engage and understand both parents and students who have attended The College Program seminars.

Background

A&W Restaurants, is distinguished by its draft root beer and root beer floats and its “frosty mugs,” where the mug would be kept in the freezer prior to being filled with root beer and served to the customer. Today, A&W has franchise locations throughout the world, serving hamburgers, French fries, hot dogs and of course Root Beer Floats, among other items. Previously owned by Yum! Brands, the chain was sold to a partnership of A&W franchisees in December 2011.

During the transition after the sale of the brand, A&W lost all of their customer data, including subscribers to their Mug Club. “We obviously had to start the Mug Club over,” explains Liz Bazner, Social & Digital Communications Strategist for A&W. “We went with at three-prong approach to launch our new website, new smart phone App and new Mug Club.”

The first step was running a Facebook sweepstakes in June, 2012, using a spoof of a viral video featuring the company mascot. Participants were asked to click to enter and then provide their email address. “This enabled us to realize a dual purpose of spreading the video to increase our online presence while also being able to capture consumer information at the same time,” says Liz. The results were just over 3000 new subscribers in about four weeks.

RootedELM then helped A&W and their marketing partner, Cornett IMS, create a re-engagement campaign, sending emails to all of those previously captured during the sweepstakes promotion. The result was a retention of about 20%. “So we didn’t start out with huge numbers but it was good timing for us to launch our Mug Club in coordination with our new website and new App. Everything went live on January 28, 2013 and we’ve had steady growth since then,” says Liz.

Goals

A&W’s main goal with the overall campaign is to increase their subscriber list to the Mug Club and thereby increase customer engagement. In order to do this, they need to provide a full online experience and connect all online activity for the consumer.

“In terms of what we do online, and for everything we do digitally at A&W, we like for everything to be connected and to come full circle,” explains Liz. “So for example, when people are visiting our webpage, we’ve got a very active social page on there that then directs them to Facebook and Twitter so that everything is interconnected.”

To this end, RootedELM suggested setting up the Social Pages tab through A&W’s ExactTarget Account. The Social Pages tab allows A&W to add personalized content from a single source, while collecting visitor information and growing subscriber lists across channels.

Social Pages

A&W currently has a fantastic Facebook following with just over 160K fans and an active engagement, hovering around 5%.

Average for the QSR industry is around 1.5%. “It just seemed like perfect timing for us to harness how active people are really being on our Facebook page,” says Liz. “We do get a lot of people who ask for coupons and want to know more about A&W, so it just seems like the perfect fit to be able to direct people from our FB page into our Mug Club to get them signed up for monthly coupons and a free Root Beer Float on their birthday.”

RootedELM has helped A&W outline realistic goals for this endeavor, aiming for 5,000 new subscribers by the end of July and 10,000 by the end of the year, representing a 20% growth each month. “It’s not an impossible goal but it’s an aggressive one,” says Liz. “I’m excited to see what happens. We’ve got such good metrics to look at and Lisa’s made it so easy to go in and see the progress and really see in real time: how many people have subscribed, how many people are clicking through and how many people are staying in the club. We have a really high retention rate, which is good.”

Next Steps

We’ll talk about our strategy and exactly how easy it was to set up Social Pages in ExactTarget in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!

Last summer, we worked with PCAK to clean up their existing mailing list and supply targeted information to their audience, with a goal of increasing the open rates and overall engagement.

A Little Background

PCAK was sending out emails to a single mailing list which consisted of more than one target audience. Although they fell within the median with engagement metrics for non-profits, with an average open rate of 18% and unique click-through rate of 4%, they realized that much of their information was missing the target audience and needed to be tailored toward the specific groups.

With such distinct segmentation among their audience, PCAK needed to develop separate lists so that targeted emails were focused on the specific needs of the audience.

Re-Engaging the Audience

A re-engagement campaign was created to differentiate PCAK’s audiences, with an initial email sent out explaining that PCAK was cleaning up their mailing list and encouraging the recipient to choose their correct category for engagement. Recipients could select to continue receiving updates about parenting education and resources, or they could select to continue receiving updates about events and training opportunities. A third selection allowed recipients to opt-out of receiving any further emails from PCAK.

The re-engagement plan included a second email, approximately one week later, reminding recipients to define their level of engagement by choosing to opt-in to one of the two categories. Finally, a third email, sent out approximately a week after the second, issued a “last chance” to opt-in*.

“We really focused on being a lot more targeted,” explains Becky Kissick, Prevention Services Specialist with PCAK. “We asked our audience what they wanted to hear and we tried to be very strategic in what we sent out, tailoring our messages to what they said they wanted to hear.”

The Results

As a result of the campaign, and PCAK’s dedication to providing more targeted content, their average open rate has increased dramatically to 46% totaling a 28% growth!  Their unique click-through rate was not to shabby either resulting in a 25% average, totaling 21.4% growth.

“It’s solely based on the fact that we’re asking people what they want and we’re making sure we fill that need,” says Becky. “Not only has it made a huge difference in engagement and promotion, but it’s also really positively affected our budget because we’re not sending out 30,000 direct mail pieces that don’t need to be sent.”

*PCAK made a decision to retain those unengaged for a few annual campaigns focusing on general information.  Over the past 60 days, four campaigns have launched to this general audience resulting in a slight increase of 1.24% unique click-through rates (4.9% from 3.7%).  Open rates remained the same at 18% as they were prior to the re-engagement campaign last summer.

To learn more about industry engagement rates visit Marketing Profs.

Preparing for content can be daunting, especially when you have clients and team members moving in different directions.  Over the years, I’ve worked with clients on developing a marketing calendar to stay organized but the issue of keeping it current, sharing with others and staying on task has always been a challenge.  Earlier this fall, we tested a new cloud-based task management system called Flow and it’s proven to be a huge asset with our client Hyde Park Jewelers.

Hyde Park Jewelers has three locations –  Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas and a stand alone brand called Traditional Jewelers in Newport Beach. Working with their Interactive Marketing Director, Molly, we were able to schedule out an email marketing strategy for their holiday campaigns to match their existing brand and holiday promotions.  With an average of three campaigns per week, per location – efficiency was of the essence.

The results have been amazing.  The email marketing strategy called for two different holiday series. The first was to support holiday events such as a personal appearance and trunk show by Efva Attling, a well-known Sweden designer.  The second was an online shopping series to promote the beautiful and unique pieces Hyde Park Jewelers has available within their online store, making the perfect gift for someone special.

Within Flow, each campaign associated a task for the mock-up deadline.  Jason, the developer, was assigned the task inviting each team member to collaborate to fulfill the goal of the campaign.  For example, the task afforded Molly the ability to upload assets, clarify the audience and comment on design; Jason the ability to show the design and accept feedback; Christina, the copywriter, the ability to upload and edit copy and myself the ability to manage, comment and oversee the entire task.  A second task to launch on a specific date and time was assigned to Molly.  Checking off the task is the reward for a job well done!

We don’t stop there however.  Each campaign has an Advanced Litmus Test attached to understand engagement and subscriber viewing behavior.  Taking this knowledge, along with the campaign tracking results, we continue to collaborate on improvements for upcoming campaigns within Flow.

Efficiency is an understatement.  Since November 27th Hyde Park Jewelers has launched fourteen responsive designed email campaigns based on subscriber interest, status of their Platinum Rewards program and geographic location.  One even had animated snow flakes!  We’re not finished though – we have three campaigns in the pipeline before their final holiday campaign on Christmas Eve.  All will be completed and scheduled by Thursday, December 20th so our team can take time to enjoy the holidays with family and friends.

Flow works for us.  We’re in a grove and find it valuable for all our clients.  So to return to my original question – how do you collaborate?

We talked to Emily about her process and she told us her trick of using appealing B2C emails from her own inbox to inspire B2B emails she creates for Paladin.

Check out the email Emily created below, using the above JCrew email as a template:

Compared to an earlier email with similar content (a call for photos), this email had a much higher open rate (over 38% compared to 29%) and a higher unique click through rate (almost 22% compared to 12%). Overall, this email send was a terrific success!

Have you ever translated a great B2C marketing idea into B2B or vice versa? We’d love to hear about your experience! Email us at hello@rootedelm.com.