Rok Hrastnik Interview - Part 2
Continuing on from yesterday’s initial installment, here’s part two of my interview with Rok:
What were the initial expectations for some of your campaigns? Were the results surprising or unpredictable?
The entire email program development process was full of surprises. You have to keep your mind open and accept that consumers react differently than what marketers expect, and then adjust your communications accordingly.
There were a lot of things that went according to plan… follow-ups always increase total sales. In most of our campaigns the follow-ups actually generate more sales than the initial e-mail. Last-minute text-only reminders tend to work best. Being able to read the core message of the email is more important than the email looking good. It’s another simple one ... and one that many marketers still tend to ignore. It’s so simple. Just replace all of your text in graphics with standard HTML text. In 99% of our tests HTML text outperformed text in graphics.
Some of the bigger surprises I touched on earlier... First, you can’t sell mattresses by focusing your email communications primarily on sleeping related content. Only when you start going beyond your brand do things really start moving.
Secondly, email generates more sales indirectly than directly. In a multi-channel world no single channel can hold the line. Consequently your analytics also need to adapt. Men and women exhibit completely different email interaction patterns. Your email campaigns should reflect that, catering differently to different audiences.
Have you had the opportunity to apply your predictive behavior model to other interactive mediums besides email?
We’re using this approach in a variety of media, although not always the exactly same models. The insights we have on our email users are used also for direct mail and catalog campaigns, and occasionally also for mobile.
We are using the same logic (although not the same models) for our paid and organic search. We are right now working on a project to take this model and also apply it for dynamic website content targeting and also integrate it with our external display advertising.
Sounds like Rok and his team at Studio Moderna have some incredibly clever things up their collective sleeves.
Stay tuned for the concluding, part three post tomorrow!
Posted by MindComet on Mar. 10, 2009