Greg Gerber posted on December 14, 2009 08:48
NEW YORK -- Camping World worked with Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team to redesign and test several variants of its monthly e-mail marketing template, gauge customer response and ultimately optimize e-mail performance.
By analyzing Camping World’s historical campaign metrics and utilizing creative best practices, the experts at Experian CheetahMail were able to identify the most effective email design configurations -- increasing unique clicks, average order value and customer engagement as a direct result.
Camping World faced several challenges with its e-mail program, including:
- How to optimize content presentation to a specific target audience
- Maintaining brand integrity throughout redesigns
- Increasing online purchases and click through behavior
- Applying e-mail design and usability best practices
As a first step toward e-mail design improvement, Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team analyzed Camping World’s historical campaign data to find out where subscribers were clicking and what visual elements they were most responsive to — gaining deeper knowledge of how they were interacting with Camping World’s emails overall.
Armed with this valuable information, Experian CheetahMail then generated several wireframes to clearly map out the navigation,
content organization, and product area layout options that the new designs would encompass.
One of the key areas of Camping World’s e-mail template targeted for improvement was the main product section. Traditionally, this section loosely grouped items in a grid-like structure without considering product type or cost. Throughout the redesign process, Experian CheetahMail gave special attention to better organizing products in a way that made sense to the user. For example, accessories were given their own section while the stand-alone products were grouped by price -- with the higher ticket items at the top.
In addition, different versions of the feature section were created to determine the most favorable content layout and ultimately garner more interaction from subscribers. The versions ranged from coupling a single product with two or three sentences of descriptive copy to showcasing multiple items accompanied by only the product name and price.
Executing on these ideas, Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team then developed three distinct templates to test against the control -- Camping World’s regular monthly email. An A/B/C/D split test was conducted across two separate campaigns to ensure test accuracy and thorough results.
Results
After combining email creative best practices with campaign data and testing, the redesigned versions of Camping World’s monthly email were able to garner more clicks and a higher average order value than the control. Importantly, by carefully examining the impact of multiple content and image variations, Experian CheetahMail was able to provide Camping World with specific insight on how their subscribers interact with the e-mail template and what design elements are most engaging.
About Experian CheetahMail
Experian CheetahMail is a provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies for top enterprises worldwide. With the industry’s largest client services teams, feature-rich e-mail technology and a broad range of data management options, Experian CheetahMail enables clients to build data-driven, relevant relationships with their customers.
For more information, call 212.809.0825 or visit www.cheetahmail.com.
SOURCE: CheetahMail press release