• "Your website can no longer be a digital brochure, it has to be an engaging place where you can drive conversion," said Joel Book, ExactTarget's Director of eMarketing Education.
  
• "It's time to stop reacting and start taking a pro-active approach to your marketing campaigns," said Jeff Rohrs, ExactTarget's Vice President of Agency and Search Marketing.
  
• "If I receive an email and I don't know who it is, I immediately delete it, so why would we expect our customers to be any different?  I received an email from Continental on my phone that was mobile friendly and I was able to check-in just by replying to a text message - now that's engagement," said Jeanniey Mullen Founder of the Email Experience Council (eec) and Global Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Zinio Systems and VIV Magazine.

The highlight of the day for me was listening to Nick Godfrey, from Customer Portfolios (an email marketing agency partner with ExactTarget) discuss how his company utilized ExactTarget's email marketing software to build Dunkin' Donuts' loyalty program from the ground up.  He talked about the unique challenges of creating a 1 to 1 marketing customer loyalty program. 

A Dunkin' Donuts customer can receive rewards depending on how many times they visit a specific Dunkin' Donuts store each week.  As an example, if I go in Mondays and Wednesdays, the system is smart enough to trigger an email to that patron offering them a $1.00 credit towards the loyalty account, encouraging a third visit  This type of email marketing tool removes the time and budget burden most marketers are facing.

Shrinking budgets have led many marketers to search around for the best way to drive customers to their web site, but after attending this seminar, I realized that your marketing campaign must be engaging, and compelling, giving users a reason to come and stay on your site.  There is too much information out there for your message to get lost. 

My top four takeaways from Route 1 to 1:

• No more digital brochures - they don't work
• Give them a good reason to engage with your brand
• Truly powerful marketing will treat each customer as a unique individual, who has unique need
• Discussing Dunkin' Donuts leads to binge eating on my part

If you are a marketer like me, who knew what they wanted to do, but weren't sure how to do it, you really should think about coming to the ExactTarget Route 1 to 1: The new eMarketing essentials event.  Coming up next are Chicago and Cincinnati...its time to stop being a slave to our to-do lists. 

Gotta run, Dunkin' Donuts just opened here in Indianapolis and I want my free dollar. 

Todd McCall, PR Manager

Hats off to ExactTarget agency partner, Customer Portfolios for the terrific work they are doing to help Dunkin’ Donuts roll out its new Dunkin’ Perks™ customer loyalty program.

As reported by Amy Johannes in the January 23rd online


As reported by Amy Johannes in the January 23rd online edition of PROMO P&I, Dunkin’ Donuts will use permission-based email to keep customers enthused, engaged, and most importantly . . .  coming back to its stores and its website to take advantage of special offers.

In the article, Joahannes notes that customers who opt-in for the Dunkin’ Perks program will receive e-mails twice a month with product news, store locations and special in-store and online offers. Members get offers throughout the year specific to their local market.

David Tryder, Dunkin’ Donuts manager of interactive and relationship marketing said, “We want to continue building relationships with our customers by sending them targeted communications and offers.”

Localized Promotion

One of the things I like about this program is that many of the promotions Dunkin’ Donuts sends will be specific to the Dunkin’ Perks™ member’s geographic location. I think franchise owners will love this! As I am reminded when I click on the “Perks FAQs” menu item (See My Perks Profile page below), “It's the easiest way for Dunkin' Lovers to keep up to date with everything happening at Dunkin'.”

And just in case a consumer needs help finding a Dunkin’ Donuts store where they can get their DD fix, a handy store locator makes it easy for me to find one.

The Dunkin’ Perks™ program was piloted in Albany, NY last year and went very well according to Nick Godfrey of Customer Portfolios.

As to how the one-to-one marketing program works, Godfrey said, “As customers use their Perks card, all transaction data is captured so we know what they are spending per visit, how often they are visiting their Dunkin’ Donuts store, and at what time of day they are visiting. This enables us to target customers with relevant, just out of reach offers. When customers change their behavior, they are rewarded. Everyone is happy. To that end, we consistently see over a 50% open rate for Perks’ emails!”

Godfrey added, “To ensure customers become accustomed to receiving and recognizing their regularly scheduled Perks email, all emails carry the same subject line: Dunkin' Perks Alert.”

The Agency Behind the Dunkin’ Perks™ Program

Customer Portfolios is the agency behind successful database marketing programs for many brands including Johnston & Murphy, Hat World/Lids, Unicef, World Travel Holdings, and Baskin-Robbins.  The firm’s “Lights-Out Marketing” solution enables organizations to execute highly targeted and triggered email marketing programs that are based on such specifics as the customer's segment, life cycle stage, and purchasing behavior.

EmailStatCenter.com recently released findings from a survey they conducted in September and October of this year on the State of Email Metrics. The survey consisted of 345 respondents, with 55% coming from client side marketers and the remaining 45% coming from agencies and ESPs.

The study provides some decent insight into the challenges that marketers are facing today.  List development, time constraints (which can also be interpreted as resource constraints), and strategy/planning are all areas highlighted both as challenges and as areas for near term focus. 

All of these are critical areas.  We continue to test new list development strategies and will be providing some updates on this topic soon.  Time and resource constraints... building out metrics and making the business case for getting email the attention it requires is a critical first step. Beyond that, recruiting experienced talent in this area is tough.  Strategy and planning is near to my own heart, so I'm glad to see this on the list.  It also makes sense given the considerable growth of our Strategic Services practice in the past two years which focuses the vast majority of its attention on strategy and planning.

Interestingly, another area many indicated as an important near term focus was “metrics and measurement”.  Not that this is interesting in itself, but it puzzles me a bit to see this as the second highest near term focus area (behind list development) and then to see testing ranked lowest in near-term focus.  There are three explanations I have thought of for this:

1) Marketers do not want to start testing until they have better metrics and measurement in place.  If that is the case, I applaud that effort.  The stronger the metrics and the more closely aligned to bottom line business goals those metrics are, the better a program can be optimized through testing.

2) Testing simply is not that appealing.  Given the focus on strategy, planning, and metrics, this does not make sense.  Even with the best plans in place, those plans need to be verified (see my recent post of Marketers Intuition). Moreover, metrics are only good for two things: a) convincing management that we are doing a good job and, b) improving the program—which requires testing new concepts.

3) Past testing has not resulted in the promised results.  Let me be the first to admit that this does happen.  Marketers run tests all the time that do not result in huge gains.  I have run many AB subject line tests during my email marketing career that left little to be desired.  I have also run tests that have blown the doors off a business.  Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 tests to get the knockout, case-study worthy test results.  Not every idea is a good one, but we can't get the huge improvements unless we are willing to fail now and then.  That is precisely why we test!

If you were fortunate enough to attend DMA '07 in Chicago last week, you could not help but notice the significant increase in the number of sessions (10) devoted specifically to email marketing. And judging by the attendance at these sessions, email is clearly receiving more budget and is fast becoming the “workhorse” of one-to-one marketing.

Traffic in the exhibit hall at McCormick Place was also heavy. More than 79 exhibitors were listed in the show directory as providers of Email Marketing Services, including ExactTarget and agency partner, Aspen Marketing Services.

As a long-time attendee of this annual gathering of direct marketing professionals, I can tell you it is great to see email marketing embraced by the DMA as a legitimate direct marketing channel. The recent union between the DMA and the Email Experience Council is further evidence that email – and specifically permission-based email – has become a vital component in multi-channel marketing strategies for customer engagement, retention and growth.

And the Email Experience Council is already having an impact on the DMA! There is plenty of interest in the upcoming Email Evolution Conference which will be held in San Diego February 12 – 13. If you’re looking to get more juice for the squeeze from your email marketing strategy, you cannot afford to miss this conference.