Kimberly Kay, Marketing Lead at Change.org, will be joining our Email Marketing & CRM webinar on Thursday 20 August to discuss what they’ve learnt during the pandemic to attain their biggest ever growth in retained users. Here is a preview of her presentation.
Laying down the rules…
Change.org was established in a “batch and blast” era, where the industry norm was to set up several email campaigns per week which went out to everyone on their email list. However, there came a time where this strategy was no longer appropriate, so Change moved onto a more segment-based model related to different interests of social change (for example: environment, criminal justice, etc).
The next phase was to acknowledge different levels of engagement. There were some users who were happy to receive five petitions per week relating to a specific cause, and there were other users (ie new users) who preferred to receive one email per week. The fusion of what their users are interested in and how often they want to receive emails became the basis for their email marketing programme, with the aim of creating a positive rhythm of engagement.
Then 2020 happened…
In 2020, it became really important for Change to take a look at how the huge systemic shifts that were happening across the world were having a real-life impact on the people on their email list, and what those changes meant for the email ecosystems that they manage.
People power really thrived during the pandemic, and Change saw a growth from around 20,000 to 250,000 users per week in the UK, as more people signed more petitions than ever before. As the global climate was changing, they noticed that every petition they were testing qualified to be sent to everyone on their email list based on the data set out above.
However, their strict rules on how many emails users should receive meant that many were blocked from receiving those emails. So they looked at the data, and what their users were telling them, and had a conversation about switching off the rules – and it worked!
Establishing a “New Normal”
For Change, the main lesson they learnt from this period was the need to shift their marketing effort from a static, rule-driven programme to a movement- and moment-led one. Their aim moving forward is to adopt a more empathetic email programme, and to ensure they continue to add value rather than “noise” by tuning into the barometer of their user base.
Join our Email Marketing & CRM webinar on Thursday 20 August from 10 a.m., where Kimberly will be discussing their email programme in more detail, as well as how it works in practice and the results they’ve achieved. Register here or email Paul Nichols for more information.