Guest Post: Next Level Email Marketing Changes Behavior and Brand Perception

Posted by Scott Cohen On July 28, 2014 in story time I One Comment

Below is a guest post from one of our partners, RUKUS, a company that specializes in mobile-first personalized video campaigns. Have a read!


Personalized video email marketing is proven to increase conversions and encourage engagement but at RUKUS.io, we’re asking does it change behavior and brand perception? A recent campaign with Zumba Fitness suggests yes.

At the Chicago Direct Marketing Association (DMA) conference, I met the ZUMBA Fitness folks and shared some results Rukus.io achieved with one-to-one personalized video email campaigns. Wayne Miller, senior manager of email and marketing automation explained that he had been charged with three tasks (1) deliver next-level engagement for this year’s Zumba Instructor Conference 2014, (2) increase ZUMBA Fitness brand awareness, and (3) outperform last year’s attendee registration rates. Having already implemented best practices including responsive mobile layouts and static video embedding, this was a difficult challenge. The first time Wayne saw a real-time personalized video, he saw an opportunity:

“To see something like that, generated in real-time, is mind blowing. That level of engagement is what we were looking for. People haven’t really seen something like this before. Presenting our conference with RUKUS, putting someone in the moment of convention before they’re even there, was kind of a no brainer.”

Consumers are increasingly desensitized to traditional email marketing tactics. Including the subscriber’s name in the greeting or body copy has lost its luster.

Each name on your email list is a human being, a real person. They expect to be treated with care and respect.

The Rukus.io Zumba Instructor Conference campaign launched in April under the pretense that personalized video was a way for Zumba to quickly and personallyconvey in an email that the event was on that “next level,” Miller said. (Marketing Sherpa)

When wielded with care, the combination of existing CRM data, third-party data, strong video asset and groundbreaking video technology can deliver staggering and unparalleled results. Miller was floored with the results “With this campaign, we pushed ZUMBA’s click-through rates up 4X over the control group, and delivered a 50% Click-to-open rate,” the strongest they have ever seen, ever. By delivering a one-of-a-kind experience, the investment in existing data nurtured relationships and changed a desired behavior.  “The Zumba Instructor Conference 2014 campaign resulted in more than 2X greater conversion rates compared to subscribers that did not receive a RUKUS personalized video.” (Miller),

Brand perception also changed. Social sharing of the videos proved an emergent campaign dynamic in that some recipients had nearly 1,000 views of their Rukus.io video. For example:

 

With mobile media consumption exploding, all email campaigns must be responsive and fully optimized to all devices. With the ZUMBA campaign, RUKUS.io reported over 50% of all subscribers opened their personalized video assets on mobile devices.

Some of the most compelling social sharing came from mobile first technologies like Instagram:

That was fun to see, people that were posting it online and talking about it, changing their mind about whether they wanted to go to this event. There’s no better feedback for the work you do,” Miller said.

For a real-time personalized video sample of your own, visit RUKUS.io

About Christopher

Christopher DiNicolas is Founder and Creative Director of RUKUS.io. Formerly an Art Director at the NFL and NBC Universal, Christopher is technology focused and design obsessed.

About Rukus

RUKUS specializes in mobile-first personalized video campaigns where each video is unique to each individual subscriber. At RUKUS, we believe in and practice a more natural, human, personal touch discipline. Through one-to-one video personalization, we elicit positive behavior change and brand perception i.e. the next level gold standard of brand marketing.

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One Comment
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  • Chris
    Chris

    Optimizing newsletters for mobile devices is simply a must nowadays. Not only are more and more emails read on smartphones, but the number of mobile devices being used continues to grow dramatically – they explain all:

    66% of mobile phones users have a smartphone
    78% of smartphone owners use it to check their email
    53% of all email are opened on smartphones
    40% of e-commerce transactions are completed on mobile devices
    81% of e-commerce purchases made through smartphones are done spontaneously

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