TechNO Expo

Linda Crandell
Vice president of marketing and client relations, Knowledge Marketing, Plymouth

Jill Renslow, marketing director of the retail division for the Mall of America, asked Knowledge Marketing to help the mall create an e-mail campaign that reached more consumers, and also measured response rates in more detail.

One goal was to improve data collection. We ask consumers questions when they sign up to receive e-mails. For instance, we ask for their birth dates, so we can send an e-mail on their birthday telling them about the happenings at the mall. We also wanted to increase list size and management, and get a better response from consumers. The previous e-mail campaign had a 14 to 30 percent open rate—the rate of people opening the e-mail.

The biggest challenge was to bring a broad message to a broad market, from retail tenants and local consumers, to tourist bureaus and the Japanese chamber of commerce. We decided that the way to get more people involved was to break up those broad groups. Knowledge Marketing created a template for three different areas: tourism, store traffic and events, and promotions. These general areas were then further sliced up into different segments. For instance, promotions could go to parents of small children or parents of teenagers. Our client wanted to find new ways to keep its audience involved.

Knowledge Marketing used its Internet marketing platform to clean lists by weeding out syntax errors and incorrect addresses, manage bounced e-mails from wrong addresses, and automatically subscribe and unsubscribe users. Knowledge Marketing designs and formats the e-mail templates and the mall creates the content using a “what you see is what you get” editing program.

One of the campaigns we did was for Toddler Tuesdays, a special event at the mall for parents and their toddlers. An e-mail recipient clicks on embedded links which take them to a page on the Web. The marketing platform collects and tracks this behavior. By leading the customer down a specific path, it’s possible to aggregate information about them based on when and where they click. Toddler Tuesday e-mail campaigns have been particularly successful—62 percent of people receiving the e-mails opened them.

Aggregated data can also be imported into a customer relationship management program and integrated with database partners, such as a fulfillment company, so that customers can order a coupon book.

Customers from any of the various market segments are asked to opt in for weekly or monthly e-mails. Within the first 30 days of launching the new, segmented e-mail campaigns, the Mall of America experienced a 50 percent increase in Web site hits.