• by Staff Writers , June 19, 2019

The opening day of the Email Insider Summit in Pinehurst, North Carolina started out with lies and truths.

Veronica Mynders Hamel, senior marketing director, DraftKings, spoke about lies she once believed such as (horrors!) "I'm an email marketer." Retention, she said, is not about the channel but about the customers and reaching them where they want to be reached, and that is not always email.

The truth, she said, is "I'm a customer marketer." The top effective channels, she said, are email, which is the most impactful and most effective for reaching inactive users. It drives awareness. Then there is App push, good for recently engaged users and drives immediate response. Retargeting is useful for those who have opted out and are unreachable. Finally, In-app messaging is most effective for upselling. It drives users to enter a second contest or place another bet.

DraftKings tested to see which channel is best, email or push. Using both was 78% more effective than using email alone and 42% more than push alone. 

Another lie, Mynder Hamel said, is "I don't have time for long-term work," the truth being that "I have time for anything if I make a priority." To increase customer LTV, DraftKings focused on trigger-based communications, increasing retention over time. They got off the sports season treadmill and launched 35 triggers in six months, watching retention rise.

The bottom line: Find an area you're interested in investing more time and dedicate the resources. 

Find the rest of this video here, and see the rest of our Email Insider Summit Agenda page.