Email Campaign Case Study Summaries

Case study 1: Launch of NEO IoT Service for Aeris. NEO was a new service, offering development tools for individual and company-based developers responsible for IoT initiatives.

Description: 6-month campaign with behavior-based segmentation. Created email design and content to look like “old skool” computer text. Used humor to acknowledge developers dislike for email marketing. Leveraged available information from Marketo to personalize emails with (at minimum), first name and (from more mature leads), relevant tools for their IOT projects. Uncomplicated design and limited branding with a single call-to-action proved most effective after A/B testing. Non-responders were moved to quiet list for next product.

Goal: Conversion to free trial of IOT developer tools.

Audience: Managers of development team and individual developers working in IoT.

Target list: 7000 existing MQLs that had opted in during the previous 3 years. Targets were not customers of the traditional corporate solution and were working in one of three target industries: transportation/logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Challenge(s): Developers are notoriously prickly marketing targets. They ideologically resist attempts to “market” to them.

Metrics: 11% conversion rate to sign up. Campaign created 300+ new buying customers with 45 successful referrals. Increased traffic to the site by 9.2% over one quarter. Unsubscribe rate was .05. ROI was $39 for every $1 spent.

Case study 2: Launch of Conduit premium application development platform. Thousands of marketing organizations, including MLB, TechCrunch, and Forbes were already using the free platform to develop browser toolbars.

Description: Open-ended campaign used “before and after” looks at various consumer applications. Highly stylized emails mimicked look of People Magazine and Architectural Digest’s “before and after” makeover issues. Latter campaign emails highlighted users’ “before and after” stories with data on improved engagement.

Goal: Convert from free to annual subscription-based app development platform

Audience: Marketing managers and directors with purchasing or purchase influencing power. The audience skewed heavily female. Market research showed early adopters were aged 30-45 years old.

Target list: 125,000+ marketers in US and Europe that were existing corporate users of free app platform.

Challenge(s): Extremely sophisticated audience of marketers are not easily swayed by email marketing. Conversion requires budget allocation where none was previously required.

Metrics: CTR was 5.1%. Conversion to purchase was 2.86% for a multi thousand-dollar annual investment. ROI was $385 for every $1 spent.