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volume four ~ issue eleven
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Welcome to our November E-Marketing Organization of the Month, featuring Imago, an organization that helps build stronger relationships. Though not a traditional arts institution, the recent updates to their Web site and their smart e-newsletters provide a fantastic case study and great food for thought.
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Featured Client: Imago Relationships
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Linda Thompson,
Marketing Producer
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PatronMail Client Since: February 2006
Starting E-List Size: 2,042
Current E-List Size: 5,500
Imago is a global organization that helps couples create and sustain healing relationships. The organization is based on Imago Relationship Theory which was founded 30 years ago by Dr. Harville Hendrix and his wife Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt. Dr. Hendrix's first book, Getting the Love you Want has sold over 1.5 million copies since 1988 and continues to be a best-seller. More than 60,000 couples have attended Imago workshops.
Using both their Web site and e-mail campaigns, Imago is growing their business with fantastic results. In the Q & A that follows, Linda Thompson, Marketing Producer for Imago, describes the secrets of their e-marketing success.
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Q & A with Linda Thompson,
Marketing Producer
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June E-Newsletter announcing Imago's new DVD
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Linda, to begin, tell us about your role as Imago's Marketing Producer and how you came to be involved with the organization.
Enthused about Imago after a workshop last year, I told the presenter, "The world needs more Imago in more places." She introduced me to Tim Atkinson, Imago's Executive Director and we hit it off from the start! Tim wanted to extend Imago's best-selling books, workshops, and effective therapy into an accessible education brand. Drawing on my previous marketing and strategic partnership experience with American Express and Channel One Network (where I produced sponsored educational and cultural programming), I understood Imago's needs and growth challenges. We saw that few others were doing modern, interesting, relevant, not gimmicky, effective relationship courses.
What began as a three-month part-time project grew into a year-long relationship that is still going strong. My role is to develop, produce, and expand the new educational programs we've branded as ImagoConnects. Together our team of therapists and a writer have taken Connects from a theoretical idea to an exciting venture that changes the way people experience relationships. The centerpiece is Imago's first documentary-style DVD, Through Conflict to Connection, which I produced.
You've recently made some improvements to Imago's Web site. Tell us about these changes and the feedback you've received.
We want to make the Imago Web site the leading online destination for information on relationships, catering to both couples and therapists. Originally, the site provided basic information about Imago Therapy and was a directory for local therapists and workshops. Recently, it has evolved into a much more interactive tool.
The content now includes more information for couples seeking help and our home page hosts a video clip from our founders providing information on Imago Therapy. Couples can also access a range of articles and video clips to help them learn more and we've optimized the site around relationship keywords. We also made a substantial upgrade to our shopping cart which has allowed us to display far more information about our products. It's also a lot easier to use and we've noticed a steady increase in sales since its introduction. A comparison of three month sales before introducing the shopping cart, with the three months sales immediately after showed a 40% increase.
These changes and additions have doubled the traffic to our Web site over the past year. We're now seeing about 20,000 unique visitors per month and they're spending an average of 26 seconds longer with us. To stay in contact with these visitors, we encourage them to sign-up for our monthly e-newsletter (we've got a big link on our home page)... and with the increased traffic to our site, we've grown our list by several thousand in just a few months! We're now at 5,500 subscribers - an enrollment increase of two and a half times in just seven months!
Your e-mail newsletters have been incredibly successful. Tell us what kinds of results you are seeing with open and click-through rates?
As well as a doubling of our e-mail list (in the six months since our e-newsletter launched), our open rate is consistently between 40%-60%. Click-through rates hit 17.2% this month - four and a half times PatronMail's benchmark! I suspect the interest and success is a combination of a growing, loyal subscriber base plus a few design tricks.
The release of our first DVD (featured in our June e-newsletter) saw a 50% increase in click-through rates from 10% to 15%. We announced the DVD in a few spots and the results were fantastic! In the 'link section' Imago: The Movie linked to a seven minute teaser of the DVD and got 193 click-throughs. The first article profiled a couple in the film and was called A Stale Mate or Soul Mate and received 205 clicks to read the rest of the story and 40 to buy the DVD. Finally, the fourth article was an ad for the DVD with a brief description of the film, cover shot, price, and a link to order which received 144 click-throughs.
Do you have a sense of what's driving such high involvement? How do you structure the content of your e-newsletters to entice people to open and read them?
Each of our e-newsletters contains three sections: Couple of the Month, Therapist of the Month, and a RelationTip. Starting each newsletter with a personal couples' story that readers can relate to and connect with has worked really well for us. It is a perfect opportunity to grab the reader's attention and this article is often our highest click thru rate.
I had noticed that some terrific stories were being overlooked because of their "second slot" real estate. So I experimented with the second article to see if I could get a better response rate by cutting the story at the first paragraph and asking readers to click-through to finish reading. It worked! This technique increased open rates of the second story by 10% over the opening story.
Action Links are also integral to our campaigns. Each newsletter has three links to things like asking readers to write their stories, take a workshop, or listen to Alanis Morissette. We routinely get a great response to these links.
Based on what has been working so well for Imago, give us some advice on creating a successful campaign.
Here are a few tips based on what has worked for us:
Start strong. I apply the holy trinity I learned as a fiction writer: compelling headline, intriguing photo, and a grabber opening paragraph. These factors quickly influence the way a reader views the entire piece. And with a strong opener, I can cut the story short and entice my readers to click through for more. (I'm also a stickler for style and presentation.)
Take time to write right. Every month, I select original, useful, and relevant stories and invite a range of topics from our therapists. For the past 3 months I've featured 3 couples from our DVD - great, pertinent material that also invites our readers to buy the whole film so they can fully understand how the couples arrived at their resolutions and reconnection.
Keep the mission in mind. Every issue is a chance to create a fun, personal experience and a connection with your readers - in our case, we see every newsletter as an opportunity to wake up sleepy relationships with a sense of possibility!
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Visit Imago's Web site.
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Improve your E-marketing with books by Eugene Carr, President, Patron Technology
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Wired for Culture: How E-mail is Revolutionizing Arts Marketing (Second Edition)
Learn how to get started with e-mail and do MORE marketing for LESS money and get BETTER results.
- Essential tips for great e-mail marketing
- Why an investment in e-mail marketing will provide a spectacular return
- What arts patrons do online, and why arts e-mail is so powerful
Web Sites for Culture: Essential Principles for Great Arts Web Sites
Provides a structured way of thinking about how to build and improve your arts Web site. You'll learn:
- The basics of site strategy, conception, and design
- What most arts sites are lacking
- What it takes to run your site once it's launched
- How to get properly listed on Yahoo! and Google
Sign-Up for Culture: The Arts Marketer's Guide to Building an Effective E-mail List
Learn how to grow your e-mail list!
- 20 top ideas to build your list quickly
- How arts patrons behave online and how to market to them
- What goes into an e-mail acquisition plan and how to create one
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$15 each from Patron Technology (click to buy)
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Watch for our 2006 Wrap Up (replacing E-Marketing Organization of the Month)
coming December 26, 2006.
Patron Technology
850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 801 | New York, NY 10019 | 212-271-4328
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