2016 Bronze Best use of e-mail marketing

Agency Wunderman UK: Part of Pulse Creative

Client The Sun - News UK

Campaign summary

Innuendo-laden emails for fantasy football

Campaign overview

Dream Team is one of the UK’s favourite fantasy football games.

But other games were about to launch so they needed to convince previous Dream Teamers to stay with them, and acquire new players.

Strategy

Email was a key acquisition channel, and analysis revealed a high value segment that delivered 11 times the ROI than other groups identified. Performance in the game was a key driver of propensity to sign up, and sign-ups increased exponentially closer to season kick off.

The Sun used an email programme with more than 120 personalised content elements packaged into 12 sends over a four week period - all choreographed to minimize unsubscribes.

They used killer insight for the creative - Leicester City’s league triumph win. Only 0.19% of Dream Teamers had spotted Jamie Vardy’s potential at the beginning, and how he would outstrip better-known footballers such as Wayne Rooney and Eden Hazard.

It was no longer enough to pick celebrated strikers and defenders and sit back as they accumulated points. Players were faced with a new proposition: it pays to be brave.

Creativity

The proposition ‘It pays to experiment’ used well-known nicknames of Premier League clubs and innuendo-laden scenarios to encourage audience experimentation: ‘SLIP A TOFFEE IN THERE’ (i.e. pick an Everton player) or ‘TRY IT WITH A SWAN’ (i.e. select a Swansea player).

For high-value audience segments, a personalised video rendered with details unique to the player - their surname, team, league and score - with a challenge to better previous performances.

200,000 videos were sent, showing the recipient’s name on the back of a football shirt. Those performing well were labelled ‘the Ranieri’s’ of their league, and those performing badly the ‘Moyesy’s’.

Emails were tailored by club supported, for example, inviting Arsenal fans to play safe by picking Ozil or experiment and pick Siggurdson. In the run-up to season kick-off banners ran with dynamic countdown timers that ominously ticked down, driving urgency for players to sign up.

Results

The campaign hit more than one million sign ups, surpassing targets.

The combination of personalised, segmented communications, built on solid direct principles and coupled with a strong creative proposition worked well.

Email was responsible for driving 23% of all acquisitions, and was the highest performing channel in the integrated campaign.

For conversions, personalised communications outperformed the controls by more than 115%.

Although the basic game is free to play, 134,001 players were so taken with the new season concept that they signed up to the pay-to-play leagues at £2 a head.

A further 92,920 entered the cash minileagues. These people were then targeted with betting offers.The total revenue from the campaign is estimated at £3,449,000.

Team

Sam Mellis (Art Director) • Rob Pritchard Jones (Copywriter) • Richard Kenyon (Creative Director) • Nigel Webb (Creative Director) • Andy Dymock (Designer) • Gary Salter (Photographer) • Ben Jones (Director) • Roy Swansborough (Producer) • Keith Drewrey (Account Director) • Michael Maxwell (Digital Strategist)