2013 Bronze Best use of Email

Client Dove Spa

How did the campaign make a difference? This email strategy has halved the drop-out rate compared to industry benchmarks. Over three-quarters (77%) of people who buy Strength Within, an anti-wrinkle supplement that works, have returned for a repeat purchase. The focus on building customer intimacy, by ensuring strong personalisation and relevance, also resulted in 50% plus return visits to site.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Strength Within is an anti-wrinkle food supplement developed after more than 5 years of clinical research by a team of Unilever scientists. It's clinically proven to reduce lines and wrinkles. Customers are advised to take three capsules a day over a 14-week period to achieve the desired results, so the key aim was to get people to finish the course. The strategy called for integration of purchase activity and email content to ensure that when people bought their first month's supply, they were followed up with clear encouraging messages about the benefits and timescales. Key elements were: Taking a supportive approach to content; creating 6 individual triggered messages; providing strong personalisation reflecting past messages and the customer's situation; maintaining regular contact throughout the customer journey; providing a wide range of touch points; integrating web and email systems to trigger appropriate emails based on purchases; creating a strong and repeatable process to ensure effective email delivery; and integrating analytics to track results and identify trends and success rates.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? A range of texts were created to support users throughout their journey, all friendly without being patronising, informative without preaching, and balancing science with aspiration. A triggered message approach that linked purchases with emails structured the creative to match each individual customer's journey. Content progressed in line with the customer journey, evolving to add more information and offer more support. For those whose purchase profile suggested that they had missed a purchase, the call to action was focused around encouraging them to keep faith and complete the course. Others included the experience of demographically similar users, with quotes from people in the same town or county.

Results By October, the overall open rate had climbed from a norm of around 15% to a new level of about 20%. ROI was the ultimate goal: the rise from an average of £35:1 up to a three-month average of £56:1 by May 2012 shows the new creative impact. The incremental profit contribution from a database of 750,000 increased by over £2m.