Email Performance Award
The Email Experience Council created the Email Performance Award to recognize an individual or company that has created a campaign that demonstrates the full power of email marketing. Chosen by the members of the eec, the winning campaign provides further evidence of email marketing’s unsurpassed return on investment and provides inspiration to others seeking to elevate the performance of their own programs.
The winner receives free admission to the Email Evolution Conference, where the winner is announced each February. Each year's winner is also placed into the semi-finals of the Direct Marketing Association’s International ECHO Awards. The Oscar of direct marketing and a much sought-after industry honor, the ECHO is the only comprehensive international direct marketing award recognizing excellence in strategy, creativity and results.
Our past winners and finalists have set the bar high for this competition, exhibiting admirable creativity and enviable results. If you have run a campaign that matches up well against these entries, then we'd love to see you compete for our next Email Performance Award.
> View past winners and finalists' campaigns.
Entry Guidelines and Deadlines
Campaigns from any industry vertical (B2B, B2C, nonprofit, education, etc.) are eligible, so long as results have been achieved within the 12 months prior to entry and the campaign was entirely permission-based. Entries will be evaluated for marketing strategy, creative components and—most importantly—results.
The eec will begin accepting entries in October. Stay tuned for offical deadlines and entry details.
The members of the eec will select the winner from among the Email Performance Award finalists, which will be determined by the eec’s leadership and announced in mid-January. The winner will be announced in the weeks leading up to the eec's Email Evolution Conference, which is held in mid-February and is the venue for the award presentation.
2008 winner and finalists
The 2008 Email Performance Award was presented at the Email Evolution Conference on Feb. 13, 2008, at a luncheon sponsored by Merkle.
THE WINNER: Wacom
Working with eROI, the manufacturer of pen tablets, interactive pen displays and digital interface solutions created an email campaign that ran for 12 consecutive days, with each day highlighting a different month of calendar artwork created using their products by up-and-coming artists. The emails invited subscribers to download the calendar as well as upload their own art to Wacom’s site, where the community could vote on their favorite, which would win a Cintiq 12WX tablet. Over the first six days of the campaign, more than 33,000 new visitors went to Wacom’s site and more than 1,300 works of art were uploaded.
> For all the details and results, view their nomination form.
> View supporting materials: Wacom-Power_of_the_Pens-Intro_email.jpg, Wacom-Power-of-the-Pens-Feb_email.jpg
> View the press release: Wacom and eROI Win Email Experience Council's Email Performance Award
THE OTHER FOUR FINALISTS:
Accor: Working with Neolane, the global hotel operator implemented a new email system that allowed them to personalize email content based on customer preferences, behavioral data, financial data, booking history and other factors—and do it on a grand scale. In fact, Accor expected to generate more than 50 million dynamically personalized emails by the end of 2007. With better technology and better targeting, Accor was able to reduce its marketing expenses by nearly $500,000 and still generate higher revenues.
> For all the details and results, view their nomination form.
AOL: To address the subpar results of a major advertiser, the internet service provider developed AOL Real Time Mail, an email delivery system that is triggered when a user logs into AOL’s email system. Abandoning batch deliveries allowed the advertiser to target only those accounts that were routinely checked and to make adjustments to the campaign messaging or creative on the fly, among other benefits. As a result, the advertiser’s cost per acquisition fell from $317 to $74.
> For all the details and results, view their nomination form.
Genentech, Inc.: Working with DKI Direct, the biotech company created an email campaign to support its RISE Support online patient relationship marketing program, which seeks to build awareness of rheumatoid arthritis and Rituxan, Genentech’s RA drug. The campaign targets three different segments of the RA market with a strong segmentation strategy and tailored content. Since the launch on March 28, 2007, the RISE Support ePRM program has successfully generated 23,783 enrollments through October, 2007, which exceeds the original online acquisition goal for the year by 18%.
> For all the details and results, view their nomination form.
REI: Working with Smith-Harmon, the outdoors apparel and gear retailer redesigned its July 7 “Summer Shoes Gearmail” email, implementing a range of best practices to optimize for viewing in preview panes, to improve readability, and to make calls-to-action more prominent. For the redesigned email, the unique click-through rate rose 22%, unique traffic to target specialty shop rose 90%, and revenue per email rose 11%. Because of the strength of the results of this creative test, REI moved forward with an entire suite of redesigned, maximized email creative templates in time for the critical fourth-quarter period.
> For all the details and results, view their nomination form.
> View supporting materials: REI-New_CreativeChanges.jpg, REI-New_Creative.jpg, REI-Legacy_Creative.jpg, REI-New_PreviewPane.jpg, REI-Legacy_PreviewPane.jpg
We'd like to thank all those organizations that submitted nominations. They made it very difficult to narrow the field down to our five finalists, including our eventual winner. We were thrilled to see such high quality efforts throughout the email community.
new from the roundtables
Apr. 3, 2008: The List Growth & Engagement Roundtable shared the takeaways from their latest meeting discussion, which involved tackling the list growth challenge of how to deal with lapsed subscribers. Read List Growth Challenge: Lapsed Subscribers.
Feb. 27, 2008: The Clients-Only Roundtable shares notes from a recent meeting where they discussed what kept them up at night. The Roundtable's chair, Brian Ellefritz of Cisco Systems, said, "We hope the vendor and agency side is listening because what we said—and heard—speaks volumes for unmet needs." Read Notes from the Client Side.
Feb. 22, 2008: The Advocacy Roundtable publishes the latest post in its Email Advocate blog series, discussing the use of the CAN-SPAM Act against a Las Vegas-based company peddling HGH via email.
Feb. 12, 2008: The List Growth & Engagement Roundtable releases an interactive Excel calculator to help retailers measure the ROI of their acquisition and retention email mailings, including deployment costs, list growth calculations, and more. See a sample of the ROI Calculator for Retailers or visit the Whitepaper Room to download it. The calculator is $49 for non-members, discounted for silver and gold members, and free to platinum members. (Learn more about membership.)
Jan. 30, 2008: The Advocacy Roundtable publishes the latest post in its Email Advocate blog series, addressing the status of the FTC’s CAN-SPAM rulemaking and whether the agency is going to reduce the opt-out timeframe.
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