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Email Summit: Brooks Bell Discusses AARP's Email Newsletter Strategy

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Jeffrey Rohrs
Brooks BellTesting is a big theme of any MarketingSherpa event, and this year's Email Summit is no exception.  In her session, Brooks Bell from Brooks Bell Interactive shared some behind-the-scenes about the testing they did for AARP in order to improve the performance of their member email newsletter.

The first step they took was to segment their audience as follows:
  • Active: Clicked at least once in the last 4 sends
  • Passive: Opened in last 4 months but hadn't clicked
  • Inactive: Hadn't opened or clicked in last 4 months
Next up, they set up a testing plan specific to each segment that included:
  • 4 subject line tests
  • 3 email newsletter design tests
Based on the performance data, they then worked to scrub the Inactives.  To do this, they implemented a 3-part "scrubbing series" created a sense of urgency to get recipients to click & reengage.  The series was a solid success managed to reengage 2% of the list.  As a result, AARP now runs the scrubbing series every six months to remove true Inactives (i.e., non-responsive subscribers).

The testing also allowed AARP to undertake a major redesign of their newsletter.  The interesting part of the story, however, is that Brooks' initial designs actually underperformed the control newsletter layout.  It took them a few different designs to get the lift they were seeking--but from there, they have been able to make constant improvements that continue to boost opens, clicks, and engagement.

Overall, the testing effort:
  • Helped lift the email newsletter to AARP.org's second-highest traffic driver (behind only organic search)
  • Increased their active subscribers by 59%
  • Increased open rate 39%
  • Lifted CTR 180%
  • Helped maintain email marketing's status as AARP's most cost-effective marketing program
Brooks offered a lot more of their learnings about subject lines and designs that worked, but my cursed fingers are too slow to capture it all.  Accordingly, I encourage you to subscribe to MarketingSherpa's Email Newsletters as they will be sharing many of the conference presentations and/or turning them into the case studies in the coming weeks.

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