2015 Gold Best Use of Email Marketing
01 Dec 2015
RAPP
Virgin Media
Sky Movies Free Trial
The Team
Sid Gordon - Creative Director, Adam Rolfe - Creative Director, Julie Adams - Head of copy, Robert Pritchard-Jones - Copywriter, Sam Mellis - Art Director, Jeffrey Osborne - Senior Graphic Artist, Marlando Reece - Designer, Cat McCrea - Account Director, Natalie Green - Business Director, Jen Musgreave - Planning Partner, Natasha Conetta - Head of Customer, Vikki Herriot-Hill - Campaign Manager, Stefan Somersall-Weekes - Senior Campaign Manager
Contributors
Creator - Email build
Campaign overview
Virgin Media wanted to persuade existing customers, who were already paying quite a lot for their subscription, to take on extra products. The challenge was simple but difficult: to persuade people to add Sky Movies to their package.
Using smart heuristic techniques, such as driving impulse response and FOMO (fear of missing out), the campaign tempted customers to opt in to a free trial that they couldn’t resist.
Strategy
The team focused on a few key ‘system 1’ behaviours to drive impulse response. Loss aversion meant that saying goodbye to Sky Movies would be harder than saying hello, so the first part of the strategy was to give customers free ownership of the full 11 channels for 30 days.
The offer was positioned as an exclusive treat for a special group of customers, encouraging feelings of reciprocity, and a propensity model was used to identify the hottest prospects.
TiVo box data filtered out customers without children, because during the summer holidays, when the promotion was scheduled to run, parents are more likely to take shortcuts and make impulse purchases using ‘system 1’ responses.
Finally, previous campaigns informed the end-to-end communication journey, from subject lines to user experience.
Creativity
The creative solution was simple: an email with a big red button that demanded to be pressed, combined with some of the latest movies to appear on Sky Movies. It played on people’s impulsive mindset and innate curiosity to find out what would happen. The latest movies were used to tap into customers’ latent desire to watch whatever was big that moment.
Various design decisions were made to increase effectiveness. People prefer curves, so the button was round rather than the usual squared-off call to action button, and designed to give instant satisfying feedback to encourage further steps along the journey.
The customer’s first name featured in the subject line to suggest an exclusivity to the offer.
Messaging created a sense of urgency through a series of emails and SMS: 1. Launch – We’re giving you a free taster of Sky Movies, exclusively for you; 2. Follow-up 1 - Don’t forget to claim your free taster; 3. Follow-up 2 – Last day to claim your free taster.
Results
A 44% email open rate compared impressively against an industry standard of 26%, whilst the intrigue of finding out what would happen when they hit the red button was too hard to resist for nearly 70% of customers who opened the email.
Overall, 20% of those targeted took up the trial, 75% of which responded to one of the follow- ups, and a quarter of those taking the trial retained Sky Movies after their trial ended.
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