FreshPerspectives: June 2009
CASE STUDY:
How One Cataloger Switched To Email And Thrived
Could you survive the switch from direct mail to email? The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) did just that, and lived to tell about it at a session at ACCM ’09 in New Orleans. If you missed it, here’s the recap:
MFA shut down its catalog operations back in ‘03, and decided it was time to reach out to former catalog and Internet customers via email. Resource-constrained, the organization needed to find a way to quickly and efficiently build the requisite email list they needed to go digital in a meaningful way.
Organic growth wasn’t sufficient --- to-date, MFA had accumulated only 10,000 email addresses through brick-and-mortar sign ups and website activity. Meanwhile, its postal database exceeded 400,000 records. Therein lay the answer – email append.
By partnering with email database service provider FreshAddress, Inc., MFA was able to append over 100,000 email addresses (24.5%) to its postal database within 12 months. Mission accomplished.
What does MFA suggest you look for in an email append vendor?
- Solid Reputation (look for testimonials, references, a credible client list)
- Experience and Knowledge (make sure appending is a primary area of focus)
- Price (watch out for offers too good to be true)
- Stringent Data Protection Protocols (understand how your data will be protected)
- 100% Opted-In Data (insist on time, date, and URL of the opt-in)
- Suppressions (vendor should run your unsubscribe list and suggest other suppressions)
- Robust Data Hygiene (insist on double-scrubbing of your results)
- Deliverable Results (vendor should offer a 100% guarantee that your results will not bounce)
Now that the MFA had its appended emails, the organization needed to integrate them carefully in to their existing database and email marketing strategy. Here’s what they did:
- Scrutinized their results to confirm general accuracy
- Maintained the append results separately from their houselist
- Slowly messaged the appended emails in a 2-step approach
--Dedicated offer to MFA retail website
(special offer for appended results only)
--Standard offer to MFA retail website
(same offer as houselist)
- Messaged appended emails carefully – and was careful not to personalize household append results
- Did quarterly append reruns to capitalize on added data sources
In the end, MFA saw great results. Former catalog and web customers placed more online orders. Multi-department newsletters experienced their highest click-through rates ever. Everybody won.
“Of course we were thrilled with the high match rates we experienced; but we were even more excited when we started seeing a return on our investment. Email appending is a no-brainer if done right – it’s an easy and inexpensive way to grow your customer email list fast.”
-- Ellen Bragalone, Director of Retail Operations, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston