2017 dotties winners - The Email Marketing Blog

• Updated on: 2017-07-14
• Read original article here

Tonight was another big night for dotmailer – our second annual dotties awards! Of the more than 350 entries across the 11 client categories, from a shortlist of over 70, here are the brands that took home the trophies:

In the UK, most of us take access to clean water for granted, so WaterAid had to craft subject lines that would resonate with its readers and allow them to relate to not having easy access to clean water. Moreover, the brand faced the challenge that a lack of access to clean water brings up some issues that many of us find taboo, which makes these emails difficult to drop into people’s inboxes. WaterAid were able to craft subject lines that used humour to overcome both of these challenges, delivering great results. The way these lines resonated with the judges proved that personalisation doesn’t need to include a person’s name; it just needs to connect well with the reader.

Restrictions in email rendering mean that emails are just a box of boxes and therefore not the best channel through which to show off traditional creativity. The judges therefore wanted to see evidence of creativity in other areas. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) impressed with the clever way it used recipients’ data in its My Marathon campaign to keep contacts motivated and engaged throughout their own “personal marathon.” Using dynamic content and real-time landing pages, The BHF were able to deliver each recipients progress towards both completing their personal marathon and achieving their fundraising targets. The key to the whole campaign was a consistent journey across all channels driven by both the look and feel as well as strong copy, which drove incredible results.

Your email marketing efforts can only ever be as good as your list. The problem for England Hockey was that it had the details for hockey club committee members but not the club members themselves. With the hockey World Cup coming to England in just a year’s time, the team had to grow its player member list fast. England Hockey emailed existing contacts with a link to a survey that could be easily passed along. With the records collected through this process, the team hit its “hockey family” sales target in hours rather than weeks.

One of the hallmarks of retail is managing stock. For most retailers the stock comes with the variation (size, colour, etc.) but the price for each variation is the same. The airline industry, like all ticket-based businesses, flips this model on its head. Each seat is the same but will be sold for a different price. Sure, there are different classes of seat, but seat 14A does not change from flight to flight. It can however, be sold at wildly different prices. The way around this is twofold: first, sell more seats directly from the airline rather than travel companies; second, sell more seats to loyal customers who will pay more per ticket. Copa is able to achieve this by delivering the right offers to the right passengers through their depth of integration with dotmailer.

Just using a bunch of different channels here was not going to be enough to win a dottie. The judges were looking for entries that strategically tied multiple channels together. Greene King used email to promote its digital scratch card game to existing customers first building engagement then encouraging them to share the game with their friends. Traditional social media channels and other sites like Money Saving Expert bolstered this new acquisition effort. Overall, the campaign generated an almost mind blowing ROI of 10,000%.

City & Guilds has a large number of different audience groups that each need to have different information across both the website and the email. The challenge is that new visitors come into the site anonymously and City & Guilds needs to get a little information before they start sending. They built a custom preference centre and multi-step welcome program to get this initial information. Once the recipient starts receiving the email, City & Guilds is able to build a deep rich profile by combining web insight and contact scoring from which they can further increase the level of personalisation through segmentation and dynamic content.

There were many worthy winners in the Best B2C Marketing Campaign category. What made this Dune campaign standout was that email was clearly a part of the core multi-channel strategy not a last minute add-on. The episodic nature of the content attracted new customers who were integrated quickly into the overall email marketing communications starting with a confirmed opt-in.

Spend-less shoes is an Australian owned and operated footwear retailer with over 200 stores in addition to an ecom shop. To promote its core range of seasonal fashions inspired from around the world, the company sends two emails per week. To avoid list fatigue, Spend-less Shoes combine explicit data collected through its preference centre with implicit data gathered through interactions with previous emails, browse behaviour and purchase history to deliver the most relevant content to each recipient.

Gaspar is thought to have brought Frankincense to the baby Jesus. He had a whole caravan of camels, wagons and servants; Neal’s Yard Remedies only had email to launch its Frankincense-based facial serum. The brand combined emotive copywriting and design over the course of four emails to explain the science behind the serum, the ingredients, drive customers into their shops to experience the product and, finally, how the Frankincense is ethically sourced. Neal’s Yard Remedies more than doubled its initial sales target; no small ask, as this was the brand’s most expensive product when it launched.

Charities often face an impossible challenge – they have to raise awareness for things that are generally unpleasant – such as one in ten people who suffer cardiac arrest in public survive. The British Heart Foundation work very hard to prevent heart disease. When the worst happens however, pretty much everybody should know what to do. This campaign supported “Restart the Heart Day” by encouraging schools to use the CPR kits they already have to train up to 100,000 young people on how to perform CPR. The British Heart Foundation succeeded by first targeting the teachers who had participated in the previous year to be part of something bigger. The charity also targeted teachers who had not participated previously to help fill Wembley stadium with young people trained in CPR. Through a multi-channel campaign, the email component delivered 120% of target.

What is the best way to find out if your readers like your email? Ask them; this is exactly what Shortlist did – in every email. How do you keep your readers from feeling you are bombarding them with emails? Tell them, which is also what Shortlist did. The company dynamically display the reader’s preferences in every email so not only does the reader know what they are getting and what to expect, but the brand can build a little FOMO (fear of missing out) and promote its other emails. By combining this feedback with a rigorous test-and-learn program and the data shown in the campaign reports, Shortlist were able to transform one of its key newsletters in just a couple of weeks rather than months.

In general, the judges were looking for partners that exemplify the dotmailer philosophy:

Of course being good to work with, fun to drink with and bringing in loads of business doesn’t hurt either.

Congratulations to the best partners:

The email marketer of the year is more than just a great email marketer; they also have to demonstrate that they can overcome difficult business challenges, deliver tangible results and, most importantly, promote email throughout their organisation and in the wider marketing industry. Sheri nails this. Over the past year she has lead the effort to fully implement the dotmailer platform into all of Forrest Holidays’ marketing efforts – which has increased their ROI from email by over 1,000%.

This may seem obvious but the Email Marketing Team of the Year has to work well together, overcome difficult business challenges and deliver real, significant results for their business. The Short List team is the epitome of these criteria. There are three of them who deliver newsletters across a number of brands and because they are a publisher, all newsletters have to go on time, every time. At the same time, they have delivered great results by growing subscribers, boosting engagement and driving revenue over the past year. The best example of their impact to the business is that they brought along 30 colleagues to the dotties to celebrate their success.

A big pat on the back for all those shortlisted and huge congratulations to the winners. Be on the lookout for the dotties annual and our upcoming dotLives featuring tonight’s winners.