re-engaging email subscribers

Re-Engaging Email Subscribers

Jeanette Brown, Informz

Email Rockstar Guest: Isabel Carrión-López,

Toy Industry Association, Inc.

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Re-Engaging Email Subscribers

Jeanette Brown, Informz

Email Rockstar Guest: Isabel Carrión-López,

Toy Industry Association, Inc.

30%

About Me

@emktg_guru

About Isabel

Isabel Carrión-López

Who is TIA?

•550+ members

•Staff of 45

•$18+ million budget

About Toy Industry Association, Inc.

• Toy News Tuesday (TNT)

– Summary of week’s TIA news

– Multiple audiences

– @6400 subscribers

– Wide variety of topics and “fun facts”

Interview Regulatory

Advocacy Safety

Membership Events

Other TIA News Other Industry Events

Consumer Member News

Research Other Headlines

Foundation

TNT News Topics

Toy News Tuesday Stats 2009-2011

• Steady decline in TNT open and click-thru rates since February 2009

• 10% decrease in deliverability between 2009 and 2010 80.00%

82.00%

84.00%

86.00%

88.00%

90.00%

92.00%

94.00%

2009 2010

17.00%

18.00%

19.00%

20.00%

21.00%

22.00%

23.00%

24.00%

25.00%

2009 2010 2011 (through

5/31)

Open

Click-thru

Goals

• To grow both open and click-thru rates above 20% and restore 2009 deliverability rate

• To learn what our audiences want from TNT

• To move TNT forward by making it mobile-and social media-friendly

TNT Improvement Project

• A/B split testing on the subject line

• Re-engagement email and survey campaign

• Newsletter re-design

A/B Testing

Split A/B Testing - Methodology

• Split distribution list (50/50)

• Testing conducted in two, two-week intervals

• One group received the newsletter with the old subject line and the second group received it with varying subject lines

• Removed hard and repeated bouncers

Subject Line A/B Testing

Old Subject Line:

Toy News Tuesday | June 23

New Subject Line:

Based on lead story

Split A/B Testing - Results

• Use of varying subject lines resulted in higher open and click-thru rates (still short of goal though)

• Different subject lines yielded different results

15.50%

16.00%

16.50%

17.00%

17.50%

18.00%

18.50%

19.00%

New Subject Line Old Subject Line

Open

Click-thru

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

Safety or Legislative News

Foundation & Other News

Open

Click-thru

Re-Engagement

Re-engagement Campaign – Methodology

• Two email campaigns, three emails each (one per week)

• Two different groups: – Active readers– Inactive readers

• Subject lines: – Personalize Toy News Tuesday (both)– Don’t Let Toy News Tuesday Fade Away

(inactive)Personalize Toy News Tuesday (active)

– Last Chance to Continue Toy News Tuesday (inactive)Last Chance: Personalize Toy News Tuesday (active)

• Hard and repeated bouncers were removed

• Link to survey was also included in TNT

Subject Lines Used

Personalize Your Toy News Tuesday Subscription

Don’t Let Toy News Tuesday Fade Away

Last Chance to Continue Toy News Tuesday

Unengaged Email Results

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

Email 1 Email 2 Email 3

Open

CTR

Re-engagement Campaign - Results

• Open, click-thru, and survey response rates were much higher among active readers

• Only five respondents opted-out altogether 0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

Active Readers Inactive Readers

Open

Click-thru

Survey Responses

91% said they read TNT on their computers and prefer an HTML over a plain text version

Overall Unengaged Results

• 4% re-engaged

• Removed 1800 subscribers, about 30%

• 18% lift in deliverability

Redesign

Newsletter Re-Design

Overall Results

• Close to 2K addresses were removed

from the subscriber list. As a direct

result:

– Open and click-thru rates increased

significantly (on average +5%)

– Overall deliverability increased

almost 20%

• Increase in sharing activity of TNT

articles

• Since Sep 2011, overall open and click-

thru rates have remained at 19%+ with

rates as high as 43.1%.

Continuing Efforts

• Regularly remove bounces to maintain high deliverability rates

• Monitor results on a monthly basis

• Use of send-time optimization

134%

Send-Time Optimization

Lessons Learned

• Subject line matters

• List hygiene matters– Regularly remove bounces– Every 6 months to a year, conduct a re-engagement

campaign

• Don’t be afraid to test

• Survey your audience – you’d be surprised what you learn

Email Rockstar!

Let us help you!

Jeanette Brownbrown@informz.com@emktg_guru

www.informz.com1.888.371.1842@informz