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Brief
HMV is the UK and Ireland’s leading specialist retailer of music, DVD/video, computer games and related products. The company operates around 200 stores in key shopping locations nationwide, as well as a successful online store at www.hmv.co.uk. Like all companies, HMV.co.uk is continually looking for new revenue opportunities. With this is mind, it approached Experian CheetahMail’s consultancy team to review its e-mail marketing in order to identify new opportunities for revenue growth.
Strategy
With testing and optimisation programmes running continuously, the scope within HMV.co.uk’s commercial e-mail marketing messages was limited. Experian CheetahMail’s answer was to look at confirmation and services messages to provide the additional revenue required. When Experian CheetahMail examined the existing order confirmation e-mails, it discovered that they were sent in plain text, with no branding and without any cross or up-sell message. Here was the opportunity HMV.co.uk was looking for.
Confirmation messages are often seen as the domain of the IT department but, in the hands of marketers, they offer huge potential in terms of brand building, loyalty and retention and additional revenue. Order confirmation e-mails delivered as HTML can become marketing vehicles to an already attentive and engaged customer.
According to Forrester, confirmation e-mails are 17% more likely to be opened than newsletter or promotional e-mails, and customers are 20% more likely to click through on them. Confirmation e-mails are often read multiple times and are usually last to be deleted.
In addition, Jupiter reports that transactional and operational messages such as confirmation e-mails result in 3% conversion rates (of those with open rates of less than 22%), well over the conversion average of other direct marketing programmes. Experian CheetahMail, therefore, recommended that HMV.co.uk utilises the opportunity to cross-sell via its confirmation e-mails.
Execution
Using the Experian CheetahMail solution, HMV.co.uk now sends a multi-part confirmation e-mail, incorporating HTML, Rich Text and Text, enabling a larger audience to receive the HTML format incorporating HMV.co.uk’s branding. The new HTML template also makes use of Experian CheetahMail’s Dynamic Content, which populates the e-mail with cross-sell offers that relate to the original purchase, e.g., customers who bought this also like these.
By using the Experian CheetahMail platform to deliver these e-mails, HMV.co.uk benefited not only from improved deliverability but also from Experian CheetahMail’s tracking and reporting functions. HMV.co.uk now has a wide range of reporting for confirmation e-mails, including deliverability statistics and conversion metrics, with the revenue generated per message.
Results
The campaign achieved an open rate of more than 90%. Click rates increased 6x more and the overall conversion rate rose by a staggering 19x compared to standard promotional messages. After just 7 days, transactions increased over 7x more.
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