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MultiVariate Testing and Web App Development to Produce Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

By Paul Harris

Digital persona creation, real-time evaluation and message development (Note: this case study from 1998-99 predates key developments in marketing technology and is included to demonstrate core concepts of web marketing*.)

“Our team was fortunate enough to be a pioneer in utilizing the web to drive business, because our customers were those who managed large IT networks. . . as a result of (Paul's) leadership, we were among the first to introduce investor relations calls over the web (late 90s), conduct extraordinarily successful e-marketing campaigns linked to immediate call-back from inside sales, and provide robust features to our customers and channels via the web--all efforts that are considered "standard" today. [read complete testimonial]

Lesley Bateman, Director, Paradyne Corporation
Managed Paul at Paradyne

Challenge:

1. •Paradyne, a global leader in voice and data network access equipment — wanted to harness the power of email marketing, but lacked corporate policies and experienced inconsistent messaging between sales and marketing.
   

2. •Inside sales and marketing used a legacy CRM system (Vantive); support used a disparate system, and regional sales managers relied on Excel spreadsheets to track pipeline activity.
   

3. •The legacy CRM system contained 75,000 customer and prospect email addresses that had been largely untapped.
   

4. •A high risk of improper mass emailing practices from renegade sales existed.
   

Solution:

1. •Corporate Marcom created best-practices guidelines for email marketing and established a dedicated email marketing function, staffed with subject-matter experts.
   

2. •Marcom evangelized best-practices, conducted sales and VAR partner training, and engaged in weekly accountability meetings with sales.
   

3. •Marcom managed web application developers created systems to track all prospect contact and response per email address, and worked with IT to integrate call-for-response forms with the legacy CRM system.
   

4. •Copywriting changed daily based on response rates while testing of key variables including unique user IDs (personal accounts and alias corporate accounts), subject line, time of day, and call to action.
   

5. •By methodically sending batches and adjusting, click-through rates soared to as high as 40%, and campaign take-rates up to 10%.
   

6. •Lead management processes enabled incoming marketing responses to flow instantly to Inside Sales Reps.
   

7. •Marcom personal blog sites were launched for exclusive use of email marketing programs, and online personas developed to help communicate product updates and corporate news developments.
   

8. •Marcom systems (internally dubbed "Lookback ROI") provided visibility to sales operations of leads origination, enabling return on investment definitions per marketing tactic.
   
   

9. *Salesforce.com was implemented by the author during a second tenure with Paradyne (2003 - ’04), replacing most of the previously developed custom systems.