• by Jess Nelson , August 29, 2016

InVision tripled average email engagement rates for the entertainment industry while promoting its first feature-length documentary, Design Disruptors, this summer.

The company premiered its documentary at screening parties across a host of cities -- and to promote the film and drive viewership, It delivered a geo-targeted email campaign to accompany each event.

InVision tripled the average open rate for entertainment events in its San Francisco campaign, averaging an open rate of 64% and a click-through rate of 36%.

The company’s campaign for its New York film premiere saw an average open rate of 38% and click-through rate of 29%, while the campaign for the London premiere had an open rate of 45% and click-through rate of 19%.

For comparison, the average open and click-through rate for the entertainment and events industry is 21.37% and 2.36%, respectively, according to MailChimp’s August email benchmark report. A May 2016 report by Sign-up.to places the average open rate for the entertainment vertical at a lower 19.91%, followed by a 3.10% click-through rate.

Andrew Mattock, senior marketing automation manager at InVision, credits the success of its Design Disruptors campaign to accurate data and good design skills. Mattock manages InVision’s email marketing program, powered by Hubspot as the company’s chosen CMS platform. 

“It all starts out with data,” says Mattock. “It’s about building the right audience -- that’s the most important thing. We don’t want to approach an uninterested list.”

Using user engagement data from the company’s products, as well as geographic information, industry and job title, InVision curated an email list of individuals who would actually be interested in screening the film and who lived close enough geographically to attend the event.

Email outreach was personalized with the subscriber’s first name and company name, but otherwise Mattock says the email invitations were not “super personalized.” The email marketing strategy consisted of two types of emails: HTML-designed emails and a simple, text-based follow-up.

Every prospect received a series of coded, HTML-designed emails inviting them to the watch the film and then received periodic reminder emails leading up to the event in the same designed format. Every email was optimized to render on any mobile device with a responsive layout. 

Then, just before the event, a follow-up email was sent with no design elements at all. Instead, it was a traditional, text-only email sent from a company representative.

InVision was so surprised by the high engagement rates of this text-only email that Mattock says they are now considering integrating this recipe of interchanging design and non-designed emails into its own product onboarding program. Although only designed emails were usually sent in the past, the company found these involved more work and resulted in less engagement than with text-based emails.

Mattock recommends that email marketers consider changing up the design of their emails to stand-out in a crowded inbox.

“People appreciate things that are relevant to exactly what they’re doing,” says Mattock. “Text emails are so quick to turnaround, we can iterate on them in more timely and relevant ways. The number of variations you can create, and quickly create, makes it more personalized.”