Case Study: Direct eMarketing

Situation

10Best, a provider of unbiased recommendations for a city's best sights, restaurants, hotels, clubs, and shops, sought to expand the number and frequency of individuals visiting www.10Best.com to drive online advertising revenue and on-site purchases.

Persuasive Brands was motivated, meticulous, and always flexible and accessible. There was never a concern or a question that went unanswered or unexamined. The goal was to make 10Best better, never to impose a ready-made scheme or dusty initiative. Everything was dynamic and readily managed. Persusaive Brands was experienced in all aspects of our project, and their expertise made our self-analysis and end product that much better.

Marc Bolick
VP Marketing, 10Best

Solution

Given SEO initiatives were actively underway at 10Best, Persuasive Brands recommended the creation of an eNewsletter to proactively engage existing and future account holders. By delivering valuable content to their inbox, subscribers would be regularly presented with 10Best's unique content -- encouraging further reading and visits to www.10Best.com. And by developing a large opt-in list, 10Best would create a valuable corporate asset that could be leveraged to drive online advertising and support targeted sales and promotions.

Action

Persuasive Brands began by providing 10Best with an in-depth review of the Best Practices for EMail and Newsletter Marketing -- addressing topics including: sign up processes, optimal content definition, subject line keywords, SPAM, privacy, and campaign measurement.

Leveraging an A/B/C multivariate methodology, Persuasive Brands created multiple newsletters -- each containing variations of subject lines and content categories. By randomly issuing an equal number of emails to each group and monitoring the open, opt-out, and clickthrough rates of each newsletter, Persuasive Brands was able to determine the optimal combination of subject line and content to meet 10Best's objectives.

During the engagement, Persuasive Brands also leveraged their evaluation framework to identify the most appropriate EMail Distribution Partner for 10Best -- considering factors such as deliverability, reporting robustness, customer service levels, database targeting, and cost.

And as a key objective of the engagement involved the transfer of knowledge (enabling 10Best to evolve and enhance the eNewsletter in-house), the development process was inclusive -- involving active participation from the Editorial, Technology, Operations, and Marketing teams.

Result

Today, 10Best issues two well received newsletters (weekly and monthly) -- each with evolving content and formats that support 10Best as their business, brand, and objectives change.