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Synopsis
Moneysupermarket.com is the UK’s leading finance price comparison site, as well as a leading travel price comparison site. The company was established as an online business in 1999, and by the end of 2006 was attracting 64 million users and 523 million page impressions a year.
Because Moneysupermarket.com is an online business it felt that email was the most appropriate channel to market to its customers. Its existing marketing tool did not offer the company flexible targeting or reporting options and Moneysupermarket.com wanted to ensure that customers were not over-solicited or receiving emails that were not relevant. In addition, a lot of the company’s messages were being intercepted by spam filters. By using the SmartFOCUS DIGITAL solution, Moneysupermarket.com was able to segment its rapidly growing database of subscribers, resulting in more focused campaigns that sent out fewer emails. By doing this, Moneysupermarket.com has enjoyed increased revenue from its email marketing activity and was able to support an initial public offering (IPO) with a retail offering via email.
The Challenge
Moneysupermarket.com intended to start marketing to its customers via email, but it had a problem. “The company has a rapidly growing database of active subscribers,” explains Vicky Connolly. “At the moment it is well over 1.5 million people, and our in-house marketing tool could not handle that amount of data efficiently.” In addition, the bespoke marketing tool was not capable of segmenting the vast Moneysupermarket.com database, and could not provide detailed enough reports to provide the company with the feedback it needed to judge the effectiveness of each campaign. In addition, a lot of emails were being intercepted by spam filters, and of those that were delivered, many were not being looked at. “We needed a solution that could help us run campaigns based on segmented data,” explains Vicky. “And we needed to ensure that our emails landed in the target’s inbox, not their junk mail folder.”
Moneysupermarket.com also needed a way to give its marketing department greater control over the email marketing campaigns. Before the company acquired the SmartFOCUS DIGITAL solution, the complexity of the system meant that marketers often required assistance from the IT department when operating campaigns. “Data manipulation was also difficult under the old system,” says Vicky. “All manipulation of data needed to be done manually. Obviously, this required a degree of technical know-how, slowed everything down, and took even more control away from the marketers who needed it.”
Moneysupermarket.com needed a solution that could be hosted on the company’s servers. When looking for a marketing solution, the company discovered that many email service providers operated on a cost-per-email basis. “We can send out large campaigns of around 500,000 emails,” says Vicky. “Operating on a cost-per-email basis would not be cost-effective, and so we needed the system hosted in-house.” It was also important to the company that the email service provider be based in the UK. “When we searched the market we found that a lot of the companies are US-based,” says Vicky. “We knew we would be working closely with the company, so we needed it to be closer to home.”
The Solution
Working closely with SmartFOCUS DIGITAL, Moneysupermarket.com segmented its database effectively. “Rather than running unfocused blanket campaigns, the company is now capable of targeting its customers in a much more intelligent way,” says Vicky. By targeting specific segments, for example age ranges, the company has been able to reduce the number of emails it sends out for each campaign. Customers only receive messages that are relevant to them, and the reduction in messages sent means that the customer has a much better relationship with Moneysupermarket.com and fewer messages get identified as spam. Even though the company has been sending fewer messages in each campaign, the ROI has not been adversely affected. “Quite the opposite,” says Vicky. “The SmartFOCUS DIGITAL system has helped us to streamline our email marketing significantly. We’re even seeing an improvement in revenue as a result.”
SmartFOCUS DIGITAL collaborates closely with moneysupermarket.com, producing delivery reports that provide it with critical information, such as deliverability rates, how many emails were opened and how many targets followed the links in the email to the website. “Using these reports we can modify the next campaign, or the next stage of a campaign, to focus on those customers who are more likely to respond.” When Moneysupermarket.com decided to take the company public, it chose email as the sole method of raising consumers’ awareness and interest in its initial public offering (IPO). The company worked very closely with SmartFOCUS DIGITAL on a multi-stage campaign. “We received daily reports from SmartFOCUS DIGITAL,” says Vicky. “We modified the campaign at each stage according to the reports.”
Moneysupermarket.com discovered that it was the 45+ age range that responded best to information about its IPO. Using this information, the company was able to dedicate more resources towards targeting that segment and the IPO was very successful.
“A great thing about SmartFOCUS DIGITAL is that the interface puts marketing in control,” says Vicky Connolly. “By deploying a significantly more user-friendly system, more users can access the information they need very quickly.” Vicky notes that appreciation of the easy-to-use system is not just limited to the marketing and IT departments. “The solution is generating interest from all over the company,” she says. “More and more people are becoming aware of the value that it is bringing to the organisation.”
The Bottom Line/ROI:
2007 was Moneysupermarket.com’s first full year of using the SmartFOCUS DIGITAL system, and in that year the ROI has far surpassed its expectations. The company exceeded its email marketing revenue target by 15%. “The IPO campaign also went well,” says Vicky. “Thanks to SmartFOCUS DIGITAL we were able to deliver a successful retail offering.”
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