Why it’s sometimes good to get personal
Newsletters existed long before MailChimp and tinyletter made them cool. And unlike the newspaper, readers aren’t ditching the newsletter. If anything, newsletters are making a comeback, all thanks to a very handy publishing platform we often overlook: email.
Fast Company recently noted:
Newsletters cater to people who want to stay informed without feeling like a slave to the Twitter stream—all the news you can use is waiting in a hand-crafted email sitting in your inbox.
We agree. On Team Communities at the Financial Times, we experiment regularly with email and newsletter campaigns to engage with our target audiences, whether it’s the banker in the City of London or tech entrepreneur in New York.
Our experiments show emails and newsletters deliver a high level of interaction as measured by open rates, click-through rates (whether the user clicks on a link), direct replies and even conversions (whether the user takes action, like register to FT.com).
What has worked for us so far? Here’s a mini case study taken from several experiments marketing Camp Alphaville in the days and months leading up to the event on July 2.
We tried a variety of email marketing messages — from listing the five reasons you should attend to targeting registered users with specific content, e.g. seeding China content to those who read stories on China.
What delivered the best results involved a personal invitation written by FT Alphaville editor Paul Murphy to his loyal community of Long Room members. We made it personal and targeted.
The email delivered an open rate of 34%, compared with an industry average of 22% and the 20–23% we achieved in previous invitations. Along with the personal note, we also switched the sender name to “Paul Murphy” from “FT Conferences” and used the subject line “We’re just two weeks away”. This email alone generated a dozen personal replies and 14 ticket purchases in the 24 hours after we sent it.
This simple experiment points to the value and effectiveness of targeting loyal communities with a personal touch — especially from a journalist. Many already do this by using the free gift article feature to share individual articles with people who don’t currently subscribe to the FT.
