Driving results with agile delivery.
Working with a premium automotive manufacturer in the run up to GDPR we risked losing three quarters of the people we had acquired and spoken to regularly. By optimising our strategy and tactics in the moment we delivered lasting results way beyond our clients expectations and a few award nominations to boot!
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The problem
On 25th May 2018 something terrible was going to happen. Research told us that overnight, 75% of the customer data we’d collected over years of campaigning was about to become obsolete. Unusable. Defunct.
That meant it was critical for organisations to engage with their customers and prospects ahead of May 25th and convince them to opt-in to future communications across multiple channels. Protecting historical investment and future opportunities.
The hypothesis
We knew that we were going to be up against stiff competition. Almost every brand would be running permissioning campaigns in a bid to protect their data. The old adage about the early bird couldn’t be more pertinent. We believed it was essential to reach people before they became overwhelmed with opt-in requests.
We also tapped into behavioural economics and the seven basic drivers of motivation. We believed that if we introduced an element of jeopardy, we could encourage people to consent.
The strategy was simple and twofold:
Cut through by getting our message out early
Prompt action by focusing on urgency
We designed a five-phase, multi-channel journey to be executed from the beginning of 2018.
An added benefit of the long lead time and multi-phased approach was that we would be able to use an agile SPRINT at the end of each phase - using in-train reporting to optimise our approach four times over the course of the campaign.
Our strategy
People are genuinely passionate about this iconic automotive brand. It was important that we didn’t destroy any of the hard-won brand equity, behaving with optimism and positivity, rather than aggressively, or importantly, seeming desperate!
We began by segmenting the database.
We wanted to re-consent the brand fans quickly giving us more time to concentrate our efforts and investment on the people we believed would be more difficult to convert.
We then ring fenced high value customers – those that we definitely wanted to re-consent. These customers received a high quality DM pack.
We planned a multi-channel campaign so that we were able to surround and engage people. Initially taking a softly-soflty approach to messaging, gradually ramping-up the urgency of the tone as the deadline approached.
Our agile approach to optimisation meant that each phase of the campaign had experiments ‘baked-in’. In each phase we used A/B/C footer testing, CTA and copy tests.
We used clear, simple imagery focusing on the cars - consistent with the brand’s BAU campaigns. This resonated well with our audience. The messaging was carefully crafted to encourage action, for instance the repetitive use of “Are you in?” to remind people they were retaining their place in something special.
The results
We think the results speak for themselves.
We over shot our re-consent target by 60% - achieving 94,442 opt-ins.
Of all re-consents 76% were multi-channel. Again, overshooting our target by 16 percent.
At a channel level, and in a period of drastically increased service email traffic, with brands asking for attention and action, our activity achieved an average open rate of 21%.
The content and messaging drove a Click to Open Rate of 15% with 83% of those who clicked going on to re-consent.
Our highly targeted, high value direct mail drove an incremental 7% of re-consents from our most loyal customers.
In the end, the brand retained its base of customers and prospects; albeit smaller. In fact, subsequent activity has shown that our base is nevertheless fully engaged with the brand and our communications and are buying more.
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