Datran Media Helps Sony "Welcome" Campaign Delivers Welcome Results Earns 2009 MarketingSherpa Gold Award for Best Automated Email Campaign

Last year, Datran Media's Strategic Services team engaged with Sony to analyze their messaging programs and develop strategies to drive program growth and increase customer lifetime value. The results produced profoundly favorable click-through rates and a Gold Award for best automated email campaign at this week's 2009 MarketingSherpa Email Excellence Awards.

"We are pleased to have won the MarketingSherpa Award for Email Excellence along with our partners at Datran Media," said John Briesch, president of Sony Card Marketing and Services Company. "The combination of Datran's strategic solutions and the robust reporting of StormPost's email platform were critical to the campaign's ultimate success. With Sony's focus on relevancy and quantitative returns, the analytics, reporting and intelligence offered by Datran Media has great value for us."

Recipients of the campaign were new Sony Card holders who registered for the Sony Rewards loyalty club. Half of the new members received a test message stream consisting of an initial welcome message on day one, followed by a second message on day four, and a third on day seven. The remaining 50 percent served as a control group and received the existing single welcome message.

Click-through rate was 157 percent higher for test messages compared to control. The serialized test campaign drove 627 percent more total clicks to the site than the single message control campaign

Click here to learn more about Datran Media and Sony's award-winning campaign.

Who are your campaigns really reaching online? It's a question more and more marketers are asking as they scrutinize every dollar of their media spend. In today's challenging economy, marketers cannot afford to sit back and hope their messages have an impact; they need quantifiable strategies to ensure their messages reach the appropriate customer.

During last month's iMedia Brand Summit, analytics and audience measurement were hot topics amidst the rumblings of slashed budgets and mired marketing programs. In fact, a majority of attendees were investing in measurable, ROI-driven strategies. According to a survey of attendees, 59 percent of attendees will invest more heavily in measurable initiatives this year.

"With the current economic recession, digital marketing professionals are holding out hope that some of the budget dollars originally slated for traditional marketing will move into the cheaper, more measurable digital medium," wrote iMedia analysts.

Despite the increased interest in being able to fine-tune campaigns based on audience data, there is still some confusion as to the best approach. Datran Media will be joining some of the most revered digital advertising experts from Microsoft, Carat, Mullen and RAPP to discuss audience measurement, gaps in the current solution set, new ways of measuring audience at the household level and much more at the ARF Annual Convention & Expo. If you are going to be in New York City on March 30th, you can download a complimentary pass to attend this exciting panel. If you can not make it, you can follow our updates of the event on Twitter.

Click here to download your complimentary pass.

Datran Media's chief revenue officer, Sean O'Neal, shares his insight on the state of online marketing with readers of iMedia Connection.

Fresh on the heels of another successful iMedia Brand Summit, the recurring theme echoing from sunny Coconut Point, Florida was the need to leverage multi-channel media opportunities. The bottom line; in today's challenging economic environment, advertisers are not looking to Television to build their brands they way they once did. As ad dollars from Automotive, Banking and Retail brands are increasingly scarce, those slots are getting back-filled by Direct Response advertisers. At the same time, online video viewer-ship is at an all time high.

At last week's event I found myself having the same conversation with a number of brands. "We need better measurement", they would say, "How can we be sure we are reaching the right audience, and not wasting impressions?" And most of the brands also lamented that their media needed a performance-boost. Read More >