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Caesars Entertainment Bets On Data-Driven Email Strategy

When Chris Jenner, VP Digital Operations, Strategy & Execution, Caesars Entertainment, started at Caesars, they were sending out 250 emails a month. It was a heavily direct mail-driven organization. "It was vomit on the page," he told our Email Insider Summit Monday. "There was nothing cool about it."

In fact, he said, it was so antiquated that his team had to stop sending emails on the 20th of the month.

So, Jenner looked to data because a casino gathers data on all its customers, starting with each person's ID. "We reverse-engineered all emails."

He asked the audience if they thought the most important part of the email was the subject line and most hands went up. Oops! No, he said, the From line, the brand's reputation, is the most important line. But he had a problem because Caesars has dozens of casinos and had to spotlight each casino's name in the From line.

"One of our challenges is that we have middle data in audience files and regulations galore," he said. "We've had to use lookup tables and by downloading data, it opened our eyes into what is possible."

With design, the company now uses the property codes to define each aspects of each email. A single wireframes across transactional and marketing is leveraged to build out different versions.

Now, they are sending over 2,000 emails a month that are highly targeted. And each one can have 50 versions within. They are content block-driven with offers driven by data.

"Regardless of the brand, we have one build, multiple offers, al team of 20 optimizing it all so that you truly are getting that offer that is best targeted to you." 

These days, Jenner said, Caesars Entertainment handles up to 2 billion emails a year, up from 500,000. They have gone from 250 uniques to 25,000-plus per month. 

Jenner advised marketers not to wait for perfection but to jump in.

Looking to the future, the company plans to work with unified data without silos, using full automation to create "cross-channel journeys for a great guest experience."

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