Increasing the ROI of e-mail campaigns in automobile

Context & Objectives

A market leader in the automotive industry relies heavily on a wide variety of e-mail campaigns to acquire and retain customers. Working with multiple brands, each with different segments, the company has marketed a proliferation of variants of newsletters. 

This broad marketing activity scope led to an increasing complexity when it came to analysing their performance. It culminated in the data being consolidated manually, implying an insufficient process in three ways: it was time-consuming, vulnerable to human error and impaired in its analytical capabilities, as the client spent resources on preparing the data rather than on optimization. We set out to tackle these three shortcomings.

Approach

Data gathering and reporting automation

First, we automated most of the data gathering process, making it faster and more reliable. 

To further improve productivity, we created a tool that automatically generates the campaign performance reporting, from the delivery status to the customer inquiry. 

Optimization

Once the data collection process streamlined, we started reviewing the specific sequences of actions of each audience. Mapping out the lead generation flow allowed us to identify the best conversion paths. 

Fine Tuning

Next, we proceeded to analyze the content and design of the “calls to action” with the best click rates, enabling us to reliably test wording, color and text size variants.

This consolidated approach helped us develop a more robust segmentation model feeding the company’s various marketing tools (e-mail campaign, paper mail, etc.)

Results

Within a few weeks, our intervention led to:

• a significant increase in the conversion rate, as newly implemented guidelines facilitated the sending of customized content to better targeted prospects.

• a saving of 10 days per month through a reduced number of manual steps in the campaign reporting process, thanks to automation.