July 24, 2015

Markco Media

Silverpop worked with Markco Media (owner of myvouchercodes.co.uk) and achieved a 99.7% rate of deliverability by producing personalised emails, sending top company offers based upon subscriber preference and creating a re-engagement service to interact with customers that hadn’t interacted with the company in the past three months.

Brief

Markco Media is a global web-based marketing and advertising company that operates the UK’s number one voucher and deals network. Its global portfolio of high traffic websites includes MyVoucherCodes.co.uk. Realising that issues with deliverability were hampering its success led Marcko Media to look for a new email service provider. As the myvouchercodes.co.uk site is rapidly expanding with 8-10 million unique views every month, Markco Media was keen to drive traffic to the site and increase conversion rates.

Strategy

There was a renewed focus on the myvouchercodes.co.uk’s email programme after selecting Silverpop Engage as its email service provider and hiring a new email marketing manager to put together a strategic plan. Marcko Media’s email marketing manager, Simone Vincent, worked closely with Silverpop’s account management team to understand how she could take best advantage of Silverpop Engage to make its programme as dynamic as possible.

Execution

This included a full redesign of the creative, plus the implementation of a double opt-in system and a focus on how best to engage subscribers based upon their behaviour.

Techniques used in the campaign include:

• Weekly promotional emails to subscribers focused on:

o top company offers based upon subscriber preference
o top trends – a content-based email written from a very personal perspective
o third party emails that drive advertising revenue
• Welcome/Activation program – a three-part series focused on welcoming new customers and improving their likelihood of activation
• Re-engagement programme – a personalised email series sent to customers that haven’t interacted with the brand or opened an email within the past three months

For its Welcome Programme, Markco Media uses Silverpop’s Programmes feature to create a multi-email series welcoming new subscribers to the program and then sending them reminders if they do not activate via double opt-in within a specified period of time. “Implementing a double opt-in is best practice but we are also at risk of customers never completing their sign-up process. With Programs, we are able to easily automate the process and realise a significant uplift in terms of an increase in subscribers completing the sign up process,” says Vincent.

For its re-engagement programme, Markco Media targets dormant subscribers with personalised content using Silverpop’s Dynamic Content functionality. “If we can get dormant subscribers to open their emails again, they will realise the value of the brand. By speaking to them in a personalized one-to-one style and incorporating subscriber preferences, we are increasing the likelihood of re-engagement,” says Vincent.

Results

Myvouchercodes.co.uk’s programme focuses on the entire customer lifecycle that includes welcoming new customers, nurturing them and, winning back inactive subscribers. With a focus on monetising its email program based upon subscriber behaviour, myvouchercodes.co.uk has enjoyed the following results:

• 121% lift in activation through welcome campaign three-part reminder series
• 20% of its dormant subscribers reactivated through re-engagement programme
• 17% increase in open rates using Send Time Optimization feature

“The biggest benefit with our email program is that our results are measurable and therefore it is transparent where we need to focus our efforts,” says Vincent. “We are very happy that our open rates improved by 17% by using Send Time Optimization. This is a feature our merchants really like and implementing it is as easy as clicking on a box”.

Overall results include:

• 99.7% deliverability
• 121% lift in activation through welcome program
• 20% of inactive customer are activated through re-engagement program
• 17% increase in open rates due to Send Time Optimization