2. Antony Humphreys is Key Account
Manager at Adestra and has worked in
Direct Marketing for over 15 years and is
passionate about ethical use of personal
data.
3. Tracey Daniel is Marketing Manager at
iGaming Business, which is a part of
Electric Word plc. She has worked in
marketing for over 6 years. At iGaming
Business she is responsible for brand
strategy, online and offline marketing,
email, social media and SEO.
5. Email Summit
2015
About Electric Word plc
iGaming Business is a part of Electric Word plc.
Electric Word provides specialist information and
professional development in a wide range of
formats, including:
Websites, magazines, books, training, conferences and
consultancy services.
6. Email Summit
2015
About iGaming Business
iGaming Business is the oldest and most established
information provider in the iGaming industry. We
have been operating for over 13 years and are a
market leader in our field.
We have a range of products including:
• The iGaming Business Intelligence Centre
• iGaming Business, iGaming Business North America, iGB Affiliate
America, iGB Affiliate magazines
• iGB Affiliate conference series
7. Email Summit
2015
Background and objectives
Objectives
• Increase conversions from free trial to subscriber
• Encourage trialists to engage with online content (digital
copy of the magazine, news analysis, webinars etc.)
• Improve the users experience of a free trial
10. Email Summit
2015
Solution – Thinking behind each stage
1. Start of program – welcome email, have they got their login details,
what to expect
2. Middle – encourage to explore content, get the most from trial
3. Close to end – increase in frequency, time is running out,
prompt to take out subscription, benefits
4. End – trial expired, feedback
13. Email Summit
2015
What next?
We are exploring two new automated email programs:
1. Split-testing to optimise the program
2. Subscriber welcome series - aim being to encourage
users to become actively engaged with the resources
from the beginning with a series of pro user tips.
3. Preferences project – we want to ensure that the data
that we are working with is very clean and that people
are receiving the emails that they want to, when they
want to.
A quick introduction. My name is Tracey Daniel and I am the marketing manager at iGaming Business which is a part of Electric Word plc which is a niche publishing company. I am responsible for all of our marketing activities – across all offline and online channels which include email, social media, exhibiting at events, print advertising, SEO etc. I have worked in marketing for over 6 years and prior to my current role worked within a different division at Electric Word and prior to that I was working for a betting affiliate.
iGaming Business is a part of Electric Word which is a publisher that provides specialist information to niche industries such as education, health, sport and gaming. Across the business we produce content in a number of different formats including: websites, magazines, books, training, conference and
consultancy services.
iGaming Business is the oldest and most established information provider in the iGaming industry. We have been operating for over 13 years and are a market leader in our field. We have a range of products including the iGaming Business Intelligence Centre (our online subscription service), we publish 4 different magazines and produce the largest iGaming conferences and exhibitions in the industry – each which attract over 4,000 delegates.
BACKGROUND/CHALLENGE
At iGaming Business we are very much in the process of moving all of our print subscribers to our online offering. Initially when we developed our online subscription packages we were still treating our free trialists as we did with the print magazine (so they would sign up for a free trial of the mag and get a magazine with a letter a few weeks later) – and in the online world that just doesn’t work. Our users wanted instant access to the website so that they could start using our services – and they expected us to deliver that in a way that reflected the high quality and effectiveness that has come to be associated with our brand.
OBJECTIVES
We isolated our free trial process as a vital component in our user journey that was severely lacking. When we started this project with Adestra our objectives were to: Increase % conversions from free trial to subscribers, to get trialists engaging with online content and to improve the user experience of taking out a free trial
This is the outline of what we wanted to create. The trigger was someone filling out the form on the website that says that they want to take out a free trial. The overall program spans a two week period and as most publishers - we have been transitioning from a print publication to a digital service there is a large focus on our content and resources.
iGaming Business worked with Adestra Professional Services to create a 9 stage fully automated trial nurture program using MessageFocus Program Builder.
The entire program was envisioned with three stages.
FIRST – start of the program
They get an instant email with their logins and a welcome email. We tell them what to expect and who to contact if they have any issues. At this point what is quite cool is that we are able to see who is engaged, opening and clicking emails and who has put in incorrect information.
MIDDLE – This is where we focus a lot on the kinds of content that they will have access to as part of the service. We have group different topics here, magazines, analysis and data features etc.
END – As we approach the end of the free trial we start to encourage people to take out a subscription, inform them of the different ways we can do this
Average open rate across account 13%, average CTOR 11%
Some emails achieving open rates of over 70%
We have seen some amazing results in terms of the OR and CTR – looking at average OR of 49% and average CTR of 25% which is way above our account average.
Having looked at the data I think the OR figures are really to do with the timely nature of the emails – that they are getting their logins etc. and the fact that they are very to the point.
In terms of CTR – most of the emails are guiding people towards content and unlike some of our new/analysis marketing emails they do not have a lot of copy about the content available.
The subject lines were short, succinct and straight to the point, and the actual emails
created a sense of urgency with the countdown in the header and was content rich.
We have seen our conversion rate from trialists to sales increase by 7% which is amazing. There has also been a significant impact on the user experience:
People are getting their logins (and we can monitor if we can see they are not being delivered)
People are guided through using the website rather than just told to login and find their own way around
Instant access to content and the digital copy of the magazine – meaning that we get to showcase what we do instantly
This has also had a positive impact on the business:
Customer service less enquires
Collecting more demographic data – download a free report, set up using Adestra forms
Less strain on other areas of the business – sales, marketing, customer service – saving time, more efficient. More reliable.
More transparency over when people get their logins etc.
Subscribers who engage have the highest satisfaction rates and are more likely to renew thus we wanted to create a subscriber series that will run for their entire year of subscription. The email series is supported by direct mail and client engagement via telephone. The emails will be designed like an email from your account manager, making it a lot more personal and will be filled with “monthly pro-tips” for using the website.
Getting people to fill out their preferences – making sure we’ve got the right job title, pick up any changes
Job function
Sector
CRM – Sage, subscription manager, Drupal