2020 Silver Best Use of Email | DMA

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2020 Silver Best Use of Email

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Agency: MullenLowe Open

Client: Harley-Davidson

Campaign Name: Email Like We Ride

Campaign Overview

Full throttle for wellness

Harley-Davidson International had a new brand positioning and a huge database of potential buyers across 17 countries, but recognised traditional email blasts might put the brakes on sales.

Strategy

Harley-Davidson pushes against the ‘always-on' nature of modern life. Research shows that riding one of its motorbikes at 60mph relieves stress: full-throttle focusing of the mind also engages and relieves the body.

Email, however, has the opposite effect. The average person has more than 8,000 unopened messages in their inbox clamouring for attention. Despite it being a highly effective channel for driving sales, it is also one of the most annoying.

So when the brand wanted to design an email programme to drive an uplift in sales among owners and new prospects, MullenLowe Open - in association with Acxiom - had to find a way to encourage purchase while staying true to stripped-back escapism.

Creativity

An “email like we ride” programme that would bring some relief to customer inboxes was devised; one that stopped purely pushing product and could encourage consideration by giving people a taste of the open road.

This involved a customer-centric strategy with full-throttle wellness at its heart:

  • focus on driving brand love over product exploration for those not yet ready to purchase
  • segmentations based on what motivates someone to sign up: aesthetics, lifestyle or products
  • behaviourally driven contact strategy encouraging consideration and action from those most interested in Harley-Davidson, while taking the foot off the gas for the unengaged

Emails were turned into perfectly curated moments of focus designed to bring the same clarity, sense of freedom and release as riding one of the brand’s motorbikes.

Beautifully crafted cinemagraphs, carousels and GIFs were employed to bring movement and the feeling of the open road to emails.

Top-of-funnel audiences received emails to build brand love. Highly engaged individuals were fast-tracked to bike selection through recommendations based on look-a-like audience insights. Non-engagers were sent less frequent messages.

Results

In less than 12 months the campaign drove an ROI of 8:1 and sold 632 incremental bikes, translating into $4.58m incremental revenue - twice the original target.

Owner audiences showed a +95% uplift in open rates versus previous Harley-Davidson benchmarks. The average length of ownership reduced by three months among those who repurchased; and a quarter of purchases matched customer-level recommendations produced by the campaign engine.

Prospects engaged consistently across the journey, with an average of one in five opening every email. There was a +393% uplift in test-ride requests, with targets outperforming control groups in 16 of 17 markets.

The ongoing campaign is seeing a 24% uplift on conversion rates to sales.

The Team

Mullenlowe Open - Simon Goodall, Chief Strategy Officer - Ben Knight, Global Creative Director - Dean Lanzman, CRM Strategy Director - Stefan Bocas, Data Planner - Ellie Boxall, Senior Planner - Tina Pilley, Group Account Director - Michael Ryan, Campaign Manager - Rebecca Morris, Senior Account Manager - Jessica Parish, Account Executive - Rhianne Patent, Planner - Gavin Johnson, Creative - Miguel Monteiro, Creative Copywriter - Kat Gozdzik, Digital Designer - Helen Sharp, Senior Copywriter - Clare McGoran, Account Director - Vicky Stewart, Project Director - Toby Laws, Group Account Director

Mullenlowe Profero - David Blaseby, Global Business Director - Amy Greasby, Account Executive

Mullenlowe London - Tom Hudson, Global Creative Director

Contributors

Acxiom