Case
Study: Fossil Rim Wildlife Center
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Silverpop’s
reporting capabilities help agency prove value
Company
Profile
e-Marketing Strategies has been helping businesses take
advantage of the seemingly limitless possibilities of the
Internet since
2003. Based in Dallas, the interactive agency specializes
in the design and development of effective email marketing
campaigns
and Web sites for small to mid-sized companies. With clients
ranging from non-profit organizations to luxury automobile
dealerships, e-Marketing Strategies has built a solid reputation
as email marketing and e-newsletter experts.
The Challenge
Like all marketing agencies, e-Marketing Strategies faces
the challenge of demonstrating returns on its clients’ investments. “People
want to see the numbers,” explained President Mona
Belcher. “Many
clients initially think email is easy and that anyone can
do it. It can take some effort to move them to implement
best
practices that can really enhance results.”
For example,
when working with client Fossil Rim, a 1,800-acre natural
wildlife facility, e-Marketing Strategies emphasized
the importance of trying new tactics proven to improve
response. While the non-profit’s small base of e-newsletter
subscribers gave rave reviews about the content, Fossil
Rim needed to find
a way to grow the database and turn subscribers into actual
park visitors.
“We
wanted to incorporate dynamic content and event-driven lifecycle
marketing to create more sophisticated email marketing
programs,” she
said. “We needed to be able to generate specific
metrics and in-depth reports in order to empirically
demostrate campaign
results, so the client could see the value of these
changes.”
The Solution
Working with Silverpop, e-Marketing Strategies came
up with a solution for increasing opt-ins and driving
revenue.
As
a first step, the agency created a confirmation email
program for Fossil Rim in the form of a welcome message.
This personable,
highly interactive message is the customers’ introduction
to the email communication program, and it gives
subscribers a taste of what they can expect from
the newsletter.
By tapping
into the rich mine of data available from
Silverpop’s
reports, Belcher’s team was able to track
link activity over a four-month period and identify
for
the client which
received high performance rates and which were
getting few clicks. The metrics reports enabled
Fossil Rim
to reduce the
number of links to avoid confusing a new subscriber,
as well as to focus only on links that provide
value to recipients
and drive conversion to revenue.
The Results
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center has seen dramatic results
from the campaign implemented by e-Marketing
Strategies and
powered by Silverpop. Opt-ins for the e-newsletter
have quadrupled.
Open rates run as high as 80 percent, and click-through
rates are as high as 70 percent.
“With
the data and analysis we can pull from Silverpop, we are
able to create campaigns that produce huge results and show
clients exactly the kind of returns they’re
getting from the campaigns,” Belcher
said. “Generating reports
from Silverpop’s application is the easiest
I’ve
experienced. The reports are extremely powerful
and provide everything I need to show my clients
what works and what doesn’t.”
e-Marketing
Strategies has been so successful in gaining
results for its clients that it
recently received the
Dallas-Fort Worth
Interactive Marketing Association’s “Outstanding
Interactive Marketer of the Year Award,” and
was also recognized by MarketingSherpa for
the Fossil Rim e-newsletter. |
