• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 24, 2024

Publishers and other marketers seeking to boost open rates, clicks and conversions might take a page from a campaign conducted by Marigold for Hearst UK.  

The goal was to create engaging content to drive sales for marketing emails. There were four main initiatives: 

1. Content and commerce convergence — This fueled brand-affinity sends, or emails sent by brands to which customers are most engaged; Hearst monetized select newsletters and launched memberships and premium subscription offerings, resulting in better cross-sell and new revenue streams. 

2. Real-time personalization — By integrating data feeds and dynamic content using Marigold Liveclicker, this has facilitated additional lead-generation campaigns via Facebook as well as newsletter cross-sell opportunities, targeting users based on known profile data. 

3. Deeper audience segmentation — Utilizing Marigold’s Sailthru lifecycle optimizer, this allowed additional audience segmentation and retargeting.

4. Robust acquisition — Hosted pages enabled unique sign-up forms across every brand and place, including social, email and title sites. 

The effort generated:

• A 75%-100% uplift in email conversions with brand affinity sends
• A 10% increase in its newsletter open rate YoY
• A doubling of the marketing email click-to-open rate
  
• A 50% saving in hours spent on newsletter build per month
• 11 newsletter verticals created from saved resources 

Hearst UK has 16 magazine brands, including Good Housekeeping, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, Country Living, Men's Health, Women's Health and Esquire.