8 Stories of Email Success
8 Stories of Email Success Marketing Cloud Customers Creating Email That Delivers
Your customers are waiting to hear from you. Share your message with the perfect email campaign. 2 | exacttarget.com
Email is still the most powerful digital marketing tool, but your customer’s inbox is cluttered. Standing out can be a challenge. Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers the solution. Creating personalized, engaging content is key to a successful email strategy. In these pages, eight Marketing Cloud customers share stories of success with their unique approaches to email. 8 Stories of Email Success | 3
Contents Create Content and Campaigns ........................................................................................................................6 Entertainment Benefits Group ................................................................................................................................... 8 Grammarly .................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Send Highly Personalized Email ........................................................................................................................12 The RealReal .................................................................................................................................................................. 14 Calamos Investments .................................................................................................................................................. 16 Track and Test Data .............................................................................................................................................18 Adore Me ....................................................................................................................................................................... 20 Blue Star Families ......................................................................................................................................................... 22 Drive Performance Across Every Channel ........................................................................................................24 WeddingWire ................................................................................................................................................................ 26 DonorsChoose.org ....................................................................................................................................................... 28 4 | exacttarget.com
The customer journey with your brand should build a real connection — and it can. 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 5s | 5
Create content and campaigns. Engage your audience. 6 | exacttarget.com
A strong subject line can enhance email open rate, but customers are more likely to read and engage if the message’s content is relevant to them. Marketing Cloud customers Entertainment Benefits Group and Grammarly captivated their subscribers with innovative content and original campaigns. 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 7s | 7
Customer Spotlight Entertainment Benefits Group (EBG), one of the continue to rise.” Year-over-year open rates are up largest privately held travel and entertainment 75%, orders have grown by 42%, and revenue providers, recently launched a high-performing has increased by a whopping 45%. abandoned cart campaign. Now, open rates for the company are well above the average of After Entertainment Benefits Group expanded similar efforts — between 36%–40%. its hotel inventory to over 80,000 hotels in 2014, the company used Marketing Cloud to EBG email marketing manager, Stephanie keep customers informed with a focused email Gustave, said issuing the abandoned cart emails campaign. “Providing relevant communications was easy with the support of Marketing Cloud. in real time is where the true growth lies,” said “While we are continuing to optimize and test the Gustave. Following the expansion and launch program to improve our results,” she said, “our of these notification emails, business grew by conversion rates for the abandoned cart program over 300%. 8 | exacttarget.com
“Providing relevant communications in real time is where the true growth lies.” STEPHANIE GUSTAVE EMAIL MARKETING MANAGER 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 9s | 9
Customer Spotlight Grammarly, a free app that keeps users’ written, mistakes found, and vocabulary used. grammar and spelling in check, has a fresh Price said the response to this unique customer approach to email using Marketing Cloud’s experience has been overwhelmingly positive. AMPscript, which can render email content on The weekly emails average a 5% higher open a subscriber-by-subscriber basis. rate than the company’s other email campaigns. “At the end of the day we want happy, active Grammarly also saw an increase in premium users,” said Drew Price, head of product account conversions, which Price credits to the marketing for Grammarly. This focus on popularity of the weekly emails. “We attribute the customer satisfaction inspired an innovative new success to the large amount of dynamic content campaign. Grammarly sends a weekly digest to and small details that ensure each individual user all free and premium users, including actionable gets a very personalized and instructive digest.” data for each writer, such as number of words 10 | exacttarget.com
“At the end of the day we want happy, active users.” DREW PRICE HEAD OF PRODUCT MARKETING 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 1s | 111
Send highly personalized email to build real customer relationships. 12 | exacttarget.com
Personalized emails create a more profound experience. With the Predictive Intelligence platform in Marketing Cloud, curated, real- time messages to each customer highlight your focus on their specific needs and interests. The RealReal and Calamos Investments turned to Predictive Intelligence to appeal to their customers in a whole new way. 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 1s | 133
Customer Spotlight Luxury consignment leader, The RealReal, isn’t available for purchase,” said Justin Parker, offers the world’s largest selection of designer director of retention marketing. If a customer products and blue-chip art from hundreds of views a product without purchasing, they are artists. The RealReal needed a way to offer real- notified by email when that item drops in price time, personalized product recommendations. and receive related product recommendations. The company turned to Marketing Cloud’s email, mobile, and Predictive Intelligence solutions. For emails containing this predictive content, open rates are four times higher. Parker With Predictive Intelligence, The RealReal can estimates that Predictive Intelligence, and the continuously update its catalog of thousands of personalized content it generates, are also one-of-a-kind items to issue current, dynamic directly responsible for approximately 5% of customer recommendations both in email all sales. “With Salesforce, marketing becomes and on the site’s home page. “We will never less about us and more about the needs and recommend a product to a customer that preferences of our customers.” 14 | exacttarget.com
“With Salesforce, marketing becomes less about us and more about the needs and preferences of our customers.” JUSTIN PARKER DIRECTOR OF RETENTION MARKETING 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 1s | 155
Customer Spotlight Calamos Investments, a global investment VP of digital marketing and design, Chris management firm, uses Predictive Intelligence Howard, said, “Email remains the primary form to generate personalized email content for of communication for advisors, so we’ll continue its subscribers. The Calamos team populates to innovate engaging ways to reach them via messages in real time based on the recipient that channel. Marketing Cloud gives us the advisor’s firm, content viewed by similar users, tools to do that.” A four-email welcome series and unique browsing behavior. is among these initiatives for new users. In the series, Calamos recommends content based With Predictive Intelligence, Calamos translates on fund page popularity and browsing history. advisor behavior into relevant, content-driven Hoping to drive more traffic to the service’s campaigns, such as individually catered email fund pages, an abandoned browser campaign journeys. “Tailoring these messages has was launched. Advisors who have clicked on a increased the average number of page views by specific fund page are sent an email suggesting double digits,” said Stephanie Kendle, manager of related resources. The efforts have paid off. Since eBusiness channel marketing. launching these email campaigns, fund pages make up 65% of the most popular content on the Calamos website. 16 | exacttarget.com
“Email remains the primary form of communication for [financial] advisors.” CHRIS HOWARD VP OF DIGITAL MARKETING AND DESIGN 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 1s | 177
Track and test to make data work for you. 18 | exacttarget.com
Examine the actual results and trends of your email marketing efforts, then let the data decide your next actions for you. Shape future campaigns by doubling down on what works. Since feedback is instant, a more focused and well-planned strategy is within reach. Adore Me and Blue Star Families evaluated their email initiatives with analytical tools in Marketing Cloud to initiate positive changes and shape new projects. 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 1s | 199
Customer Spotlight Online lingerie seller Adore Me began email Adore Me created a welcome email campaign marketing with simple batch and blast lists but based on their testing data. This series of found its customer base disengaged. Enter seven emails progresses from general to more Marketing Cloud. personalized offers to build brand loyalty and increase VIP membership. The welcome series Adore Me analyzed the behaviors of subscribers resulted in a 23% increase in conversions to and discovered that 80% of conversions happened purchase. “It’s a great example of how we use within the first week a customer opts into email. Marketing Cloud to fine-tune our communication When the team focused on increasing membership with customers,” said Josselin Petit-Hoang, for its VIP program, they turned to A/B testing with marketing associate. Marketing Cloud and found which messages and frequencies best resonated with subscribers and made changes to email campaigns. 20 | exacttarget.com
23% conversion rate increase after launching a series of personalized welcome emails 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 2s | 211
Customer Spotlight Blue Star Families (BSF), the largest chapter- BSF began targeting emails by family residence based military family nonprofit in the U.S., and sending location-specific event invitations to serves over 1.5 million military families with recipients. According to director of community initiatives that include employment assistance development, Megan Glynn, these practices were resources and family-focused programming integral to an accelerated success story. and events. The BSF team adopted Marketing Cloud in 2014 to help better engage with military “Salesforce does not just make our work easier, families and revamp their email program. They it makes it possible,” said Glynn. “With Marketing quickly saw the benefit of these changes. Cloud especially, our small staff is forming relationships with hundreds of thousands of BSF used Marketing Cloud to identify low- people every week, which is vitally important to performing content and remove it from its our mission.” regular newsletter, saving time for its small staff. Incorporating A/B testing revealed days and These relationships are growing. Blue Star Families’ times with the best open rates, and comparing open rates went from 3% to 20%. performance between different content and subject lines shaped a better campaign. 22 | exacttarget.com
“Salesforce does not just make our work easier, it makes it possible.” MEGAN GLYNN DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 2s | 233
Drive performance across every channel. Connect with customers like never before. 24 | exacttarget.com
Email is a powerful foundation to building customer relationships, and that’s just the beginning. Engaging customers is simpler and more impactful than ever using other Marketing Cloud tools to boost your email campaign. Cross-channel approaches garnered real results for WeddingWire and DonorsChoose.org. 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 2s | 255
Customer Spotlight As the leading global online marketplace Cross-channel initiatives with Marketing Cloud connecting consumers with event and help streamline WeddingWire’s customer creative professionals, WeddingWire has built experience. An email campaign encourages its success on innovation and meeting the couples to print custom table cards for their changing needs of its customers. The company wedding. The email contains an SMS shortcode employs email journeys, SMS campaigns, and and keyword generated with MobileConnect — dynamically generated content based on user Marketing Cloud’s mobile messaging tool — so behavior, giving it the ability to maximize user guests can text to receive a download link for experience while providing a personal touch, WeddingWire’s WedSocial app. tailored to customers at an individual level. “It’s always a challenge to connect people from “Marketing Cloud allows us to connect with our something in the physical world to something audience in the channel they’re using right now,” in the digital world,” said Bart Thornburg, senior said Bethany Mulcahy, email marketing specialist. manager of email marketing. SMS proved to be an effective way of bridging that gap. Since launching the email series, downloads of the WedSocial app increased 74%. 26 | exacttarget.com
“Marketing Cloud allows us to connect with our audience in the channel they’re using right now.” BETHANY MULCAHY EMAIL MARKETING SPECIALIST 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 2s | 277
Customer Spotlight DonorsChoose.org is an online charity serving When a tornado struck two schools in Moore, public school students and teachers by Oklahoma, DonorsChoose.org issued emails funding wholesome and creative classroom to first responders within a day and refined projects. The website also assists entire its mailing list to issue 500,000 emails communities in times of need, such as in the by the second day. In less than 24 hours, wake of natural disasters. DonorsChoose.org raised $190,000 to aid victims of the disaster. The charity saw over 1,900 With Marketing Cloud’s reporting capabilities, unique conversions, confirmed engagement DonorsChoose.org obtained a list of prior donors of first responders, and built new donor from existing email templates to engage as first relationships. In doing so, DonorsChoose.org responders following natural disasters. The fulfilled its mission and brought assistance to a group schedules and manages content during community in need — and will continue to do such events to inform followers on Facebook, just that. Google+, and LinkedIn. 28 | exacttarget.com
$190,000 raised within 24 hours by first responder email campaign $190,000 raised in 24 hours by first responder email campaign 8 S8 Sttoorriiees os of Ef Emmaaiil Sl Suucccceesss | 2s | 299
You’ve seen how Marketing Cloud customers curate unique audience experiences with email — and that’s just the beginning. Create a one-of- a-kind journey for your customers across email, mobile, social, ads, and the Web. Start building customer relationships that last. Have questions? Visit exacttarget.com for more information. 30 | exacttarget.com
Resources you might also like: 5 Blueprints for Earn a Place in Your Marketing Cloud Building Smarter Emails Customer’s Inbox Quick Peek DOWNLOAD NOW DOWNLOAD NOW DOWNLOAD NOW 8 Stories of Email Success | 31
