Blog : Email marketing

Email benchmarking tool – are you an email superhero?

Email benchmarking tool – are you an email superhero?

Why you should give our email benchmarking tool a try?

You don’t realize how great you really are unless you compare with what others are doing. It’s time to come out of the shadows and claim your share of the recognition you deserve. It’s time to measure how well you’re doing. To figure out how to take your email program to the next level. How does your program measure up? What parts are great, and what parts are simply Meh? Beyond opens and clicks, what do you need to look at to measure your email program performance? That’s precisely why we created this simple, and we hope fun, email benchmarking tool. Use it to evaluate your email superpowers and set yourself on the path to glory.

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Five strategies for a healthy marketing database

Five strategies for a healthy marketing database

If you want a healthy marketing database, don’t be shy

A healthy marketing database requires constant upkeep, or it will degrade fast. The causes of this degradation are many: Customers become inactive. Implied consents expire. People unsubscribe. As a result, your relationship marketing program falters, no longer delivering the sales growth needed to ensure the continued prosperity of the company.

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A/B Testing – How to implement a winning strategy

A/B Testing – How to implement a winning strategy

Yes, we can learn to love statistics and A/B testing

I am a big fan of optimization and A/B testing. But that was not always the case. When I was studying for my MBA at HEC in the 1980s, the most challenging courses I enrolled in was Statistics and Probabilities. This course, loaded with obscure equations, was meaningless gibberish to me. And I couldn’t see how it could be useful in real life except maybe for surveys.

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Flèche d’or 2019 award nominees – our three campaigns

Flèche d’or 2019 award nominees – our three campaigns

Each year, the Quebec Marketing Association (formerly the AMR) holds a competition to select the top marketing campaigns created by prominent brands and their agencies. Year after year, Strategies does quite well in the standings. Last year, we were awarded Best omnichannel marketing campaign. The year before, we were honoured as the Agency of the year.

This year, we have three campaigns nominated for an award (out of three submissions) for three of our clients. Check out the videos below to learn more about the nominees.

OSM – 2019-20 SEASON LAUNCH

In order to highlight Kent Nagano’s last season as artistic director, the OSM commissioned Strategies to design an email campaign to launch programming for the upcoming season and begin the season ticket renewal process.

This campaign was highly personalized according to the various client segments. It integrates many interactive content elements, including musical excerpts from featured concerts from the upcoming season that can be listened to directly in the email. The engagement rates for this campaign are truly exceptional, which probably explains part of the nomination of the campaign.

RENAULT CANADA / EUROP AUTO – DISCOVER AUTHENTIC EUROPE

Renault Canada and Europ Auto turned to Strategies to help it better convey the value of “short-term lease” car rental format and in the process help to boost sales. Our agency redesigned  the brand experience and implemented a relationship marketing strategy centered on the freedom and rich travel experiences that a only a car can provide.

The “Discover Authentic Europe”, program showcases destinations that are off the beaten path throughout Europe. Including a welcome series, a renewed e-mail template, destination campaigns and conversational programs geared towards the joys of traveling, this program resulted in higher engagement, increased website traffic and a significant sales increase for Europ Auto.

 

LEVENSWATER SPRING – INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN

Levenswater produces a range of small batch craft gins in the Niagara Valley, including Levenswater Spring 34. This unique gin recently won the Best Compound Gin Award at the World Gin Awards. When it secured its first order from the SAQ, Levenswater needed to create awareness for its product in Quebec and quickly sell out inventories in order to stimulate a new order from the corporation. Levenswater turned to Strategies to set up an Influencer Marketing program to reach out to the mixologist community and gin-lovers in Quebec.

Working closely with a group of influencers, online publications and mixologists, we deployed an outreach strategy that generated over 600,000 earned impressions over an eight-week period. Tasting events were held in Montreal’s Frank & Oak stores and recipes were developed and distributed in partnership with several popular bars including the Alt+ hotel’s Les Cousins bar.

THANK YOU TO THE JURY FOR THIS RECOGNITION

These nominations in such a prestigious awards competition is already a great victory for us. We sincerely thank the Jury of the Flèche d’or competition, under the chairmanship of Mélanie Roth, Senior Director, Strategy and Marketing Execution, National Bank for having recognized the quality of our work. Will we be the winners of one or more awards? This is what we will soon find out at the 2019 Awards Gala on June 11, 2019 at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit the Association Marketing Québec website.

 

Apology emails: How to turn an Oops! into an opportunity

Apology emails: How to turn an Oops! into an opportunity

Despite all your best efforts to avoid them, sometimes errors slit through your carefully-planned safety net. Maybe it’s “just” a typo. Or a small design flaw. In which case, you simply make a mental note to pay more attention in the future and move on to the next project. But when it’s a more serious issue, like a broken link, the wrong price, or an email sent to the wrong audience, you only have one option: send an apology email or “oops!” email to your customers.

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Email quality assurance – Flawless QA helps prevent campaign blunders

Email quality assurance – Flawless QA helps prevent campaign blunders

It’s easy to forget about quality assurance (QA) with all the time pressures to get your emails out the door. Easy despite the fact that it is one of the most important steps in the creative process. Easy to forget that after having invested tons of time, energy and dollars in designing the perfect campaign, the simplest of errors can trip you up.

Which is why we wrote this post on how to do effective email campaign QA:

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Email marketing defined – everything you need to know!

Email marketing defined – everything you need to know!

Email marketing is a powerful tool…if you know what you’re doing

Email marketing is sometimes equated with sending out newsletters. But it’s so much more! Simply put, Email Marketing is the systematic and structured use of email in order to initiate, build and consolidate a relationship between brands and people. Email is the most popular media for Relationship Marketing. This is largely because of its impact, its ROI and its ability to grow sales.

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Email marketing essentials – What you need to know to get it right!

Email marketing essentials – What you need to know to get it right!

Make sure you nail the fundamentals

If you want an email marketing program that really delivers results, you need to get the technical basics right. The most beautiful content won’t drive results if it doesn’t get delivered. According to ReturnPath email deliverability report, an average of 20% of all email messages never reach their audience. Generally because they’re blocked or diverted from the inbox.

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CASL: Canadian anti-spam legislation – Are you truly ready?

CASL: Canadian anti-spam legislation – Are you truly ready?

Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL), also known as C-28, comes into full force on July 1 of this year. If you’re sending emails to Canada and haven’t already taken steps to prepare for CASL, you have a few short days to get ready to comply with what is considered to be the most stringent anti-spam legislation in the world. And there’s a major incentive to do so: fines of up to $10 million for a business, or $1 million for an individual.

CASL and the concept of consent

At the heart of CASL is the need to obtain consent – either explicit or implied – in order to be able to send Commercial Electronic Messages (CEMs) to your customers, prospects or subscribers.

Explicit consent is consent which is given verbally or in writing by a contact, using various means including a web page that provides a check box (which cannot be pre-checked) or a subscribe button.

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