Are you fighting to get your local markets aligned with corporate marketing initiatives? Are you nervous that their marketing efforts are not in compliance with CAN SPAM? Is it hard to enforce branding guidelines at the local level? Kelly Services had these same problems and now local branches are enthusiastically sending email messages to their customers that are branded, government compliant, and customizable. Find out how this transformation took place.
25. Case Study: Kelly Services Successes 05/04/10 Local Viewpoint Corporate Viewpoint This is a technology I can not do without! My emails are timely, personalized and inexpensive. The tool is very easy to use. Communications maintain Kelly’s brand identity. The branded emails give my market communications a professional look. Local email campaigns are now compliant with CAN- SPAM. Local markets now track open/click rates to gauge how email are performing.
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A National company with local presence? Go to market through franchises? Have branches that fulfill your local presence? Sell through local markets that have some autonomy? Franchise and Co-op Marketers – Take the complexity out of marketing for your local franchises and provide them a highly-effective consistently on-brand way to drive demand into their local stores with integrated, cross-medium campaigns. With total visibility into email marketing activities, franchisors can have a complete understanding of effectiveness and spend. National brands have the ability to enable their dealer networks to aggressively drive demand and brand awareness at the local level. Local Markets are different in terms of business maturity, infrastructure, economic performance, priorities and culture. That is why it is vital to think local.
I’m sure you have all been there. I’m sure you have had your own battles. I’m sure you can even add to this list of comments… But these are real concerns that drive negativism in the company The challenge is turning this around to engagement & enthusiasm And I think we have a great case study to share with you today to depict the changing tides. BUT THERE IS ONE PERSPECTIVE THAT IS MISSING HERE>
What is the customer’s perspective? This is their perspective walking up to your local shop It could be a local Midas shop, a local restaurant, bank branch or local office… you get the idea. Who are they talking to? Who is there relationship with? When it comes to email… who would the customer rather get an email from????
The shop owner… or the corporation?? By acting locally you can create powerful, highly focused marketing campaigns that build on the strengths of your main brand, but incorporate localized messages and images that reflect individual market conditions. A coordinated support program can help your branches compete effectively in their local marketplace Don’t lose focus on your objectives In the end, your strategy must align with your overall objectives both locally and nationally Retention, acquisition? Growth strategies Increase in market share Increase in sales Global is Out, Local is In Coke is instituting a strategy of think local, act local, by putting increased decision making in the hands of local managers KitKat has taken localization down to the product development level. There are over 50 flavors of KitKat, 19 being very specific to a region in Japan. Have you ever tried Soy KitKat? You probably won’t unless you are in China. Better understanding and appealing to local differences Social Media is creating unparalleled ability for creating relationships and dialogue with customers Social works in concert with email Social is a game changer If you are not on social media, that doesn’t mean your customers aren’t or that they are not talking about you
When it comes to email, by providing local solutions you are decreasing the level of effort that is required to do the most effective tactic. “ Delivering content relevant to segment” proves to be the most effective and challenging at the same time. By providing tools to your local branches, you are increasing your effectiveness automatically. This: Drives revenue Decreases local marketing costs Reduces marketing complexity Maintains brand integrity
Do your affiliates have a clear and actionable local marketing strategy? Do you have visibility into all local marketing efforts including creative, spend and results? Are all local store marketing activities executed in concert with your national brand? Can Local Markets have autonomy with their email communications? Can Corporate be ensured that the emails will be CAN- SPAM compliant? These are the questions that you should be asking yourself… and we can help answer in our case study by Lorrie Sole from Kelly Services
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- Because the branches were sending email with Kelly’s internal email system, their was not an unsubscribe option. Which made them not can-spam compliant. - Emails were very lengthy with no call to action. - Kelly’s branding was missing from the email communications. AND Images were imported at the users discretion (ex. ms clip art) so emails were often unprofessional. - No way to gauge email performance – we had no idea what was working and what was not.
We knew that local branches needed to be able to perform email marketing to get their local message out to their audiences. Needed an email tool that had an unsubscribe and list management features so that Kelly domains would not be in jeopardy. Users email knowledge is basic, so tool needed to be easy to understand and easy to navigate. Provide best practices and guidance for how to write a compelling email message. Creative needed to be branded yet flexible for the messages they need to send. Tracking was non-existent with the internal tool the branches were using - so the ability to have tracking and reporting was critical to show trends and usage of the system We then engaged metrics to help solve the email challenge we had.
We then engaged metrics to help solve the email challenge we had. Web-based application that is secure for our branches Email application is wizard based so users can not falter Must be easy to use for local staff, with very little training. Tool is branded Kelly Services Links to a email list management system (ExactTarget) that ensure Can-Spam compliancy
The “Help” section is critical 1 st step for users Users guide & instructions Best practices for messaging “ text” samples General email guidelines & FAQ’s
7-Step Easy-to-use wizard to launch an email
Entering text is simple and follow MS word for editing Added help doc on this page for easy access A preview screen of your email shows what your email will look like
Here are some samples Emails that our local team sends: The use email for : Business development to current customers and prospects Recruiting and retention to our candidates and employees
Users can then view their email launch history. They can see: Emails sent Delivered Undelivered Opened Clicked They can also see the detail of each email recipient.
Administrators of the tool can easily allow them to: Manage users Generate reports on topics like - emails sent & templates used
To get an idea how the users would re-act to the tool and how well the tool performed. No training was offered, just the user guide. Gain feedback for any needed changes. Being launch in an staggered approach to that we could control users questions/issues. Engaged our Corp Hotline support team to get to questions quick and to track issues. How long did you pilot? How long did the deployment take?
Even though we provided best practices and guidance on how email should be written, many users are still “green” to writing for email. I need review from time to time, email that go out and follow with users who may need help. Launched a email user newsletter to talk email with users, get feedback and talk about best practices. This helps with keeping guidelines fresh in their minds. Conducted users groups for best practice sharing.
Allowing branches to manage their own campaigns makes the messages more targeted and relevant. Open and click rates are above email industry standards. Email sends: 2/1/2008 - 2/1/2009 = 285,904 2/1/2009 - 2/1/2010 = 603,602 2/1/2010 - 3/22/2010 = 143,964 Total to date = 1,033,470
Templates for newsletters and other marketing initiatives Auto email messages based on front end system actions – new employee or customer Linkage to social is critical – develop a plan to get local users more involved including social media (linkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) included in their campaigns.
How do you communicate CAN-SPAM to the local markets? A: In our user guide we give specific instruction on what email data branches can use. We also do a high level review of what Can-Spam really means and how the tool takes care of much of the legal requirements for them. What type of best practices for email was communicated? A: How to write text: keep it short, encourage action, always include your contact in, font usage, Always test your email before sending, how to develop subject lines. How did you come up with a plan for email creative? A: We have branding standards that we follow at Kelly so that part was simple. It was the determining what email templates needed to look like based on audience that got tough. So we came up with a design that could manage our brand and audience. How many emails have been sent out to date? A: 2/1/2008 - 2/1/2009 = 285,904 2/1/2009 - 2/1/2010 = 603,602 2/1/2010 - 3/22/2010 = 143,964 Total to date = 1,033,470 What about landing pages and local web site development efforts? - Marci How was the cost for the tool managed? Co-op? Through the branches or only Corporate?