Wheelhouse Tests Banners and Email Campaigns Offering an Emarketing White Paper

CHALLENGE
Wheelhouse, a new emarketing consulting firm who specialize in helping clients marketing departments and tech/IT departments work together to grow their business, needed to keep the buzz going strong a month after their initial launch at DMA’s NetMarketing show last March. Connie Stack, a consultant in their marketing program practice gave us the details.

CAMPAIGN
Wheelhouse decided to test an integrated email marketing and banner ad campaign aimed at two distinct audiences, “we were looking for the decision maker in the IT group and the marketing group, because we bridge that gap.” The Company ran banners on six sites, TheStandard, DMNews, Interactive Week, InfoWorld, CIO.com and Upside.com.

Then a week after the banner campaign started, they broadcast an email message to three lists -- computerworld, CIO and TheStandard. Names were selected carefully by job title and purchasing responsibility. “We picked about half the job titles available.” Both campaigns offered a free white paper.
RESULTS
“We definitely saw some trends. Marketers seemed to be responding better to banners than IT people. But, although marketers clicked higher, fewer of them down loadedthe white paper. Maybe they didn’t have the time, because they are typically very busy.” Both banners were animated, one used the catchy phrase “Congratulations you’re in business, now what?” while the other focused more on branding, “Marketing + Strategy + Technology = Wheelhouse.” The first won, but results were close. Average banner results were in the .4% range.

Wheelhouse also tested two versions of their email campaign. Again one was aimed at the prospect, talking about “the pain points prospects might be feeling, such as ‘Are you having trouble reconciling all that data?’” The second featured “more about wheelhouse up front.” Email test results were not conclusive because none of the lists allowed split cell testing. “Overall TheStandard did better click thourh and registering; and cost to acquire was the lowest. But then, we definitely had higher expectations for that list.” Email results ranged from .5%-2.1% and “conversion was over 80% in some lists.”

COSTS

Email costs ranged from $375-$425/m including selects and deployment. All creative was done in-house.

NOTES

Stack recommends other marketers-to-marketers test an ad in the Peppers & Rodgers newsletter. “We immediately saw a spike on our site traffic when they ran a story on us.” But, she notes that that list has “lots of international folks.”