Question: With relatively high open and click-through rates to date, how should the team measure success of the new strategy and process?

CommonBond Email Case Study Introduction By the end of 2015, the marketing team at CommonBond was confident that one of their priorities for early 2016 was to curate and share a cohesive brand story. There was no doubt about it: the financial services landscape was, and would continue to be, a cluttered mass of traditional banks and emerging financial technology players. While the CommonBond marketing team was confident in their positioning and brand story, they knew they needed to communicate it clearly and consistently across multiple marketing channels from their website, to content, to affiliate websites, to email. Email marketing was a critical vehicle for communicating the CommonBond brand story. The team was aware of the fact that email messages are by far consumers preferred method of receiving commercial messages from companies. CommonBonds two primary target segments, inschool MBAs seeking student loans and student loan refinancers seeking to find a lower interest rate responded well to email with strong open and clickthrough rates. As CommonBond sought to grow throughout 2016, the team was cognizant that the need to consistently communicate via email as well as launch new products to different target markets would impact their email marketing strategy. The CommonBond Back Story CommonBond was founded in November 2011 by David Klein, Michael Taormina, and Jessup Shean, who met at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. The idea for the company was sparked by the founders' frustration with the lack of affordable loan options to fund their own graduate school education. The trio put together a business plan and were accepted to the highly selective Wharton Venture Initiation Program, which serves as a startup incubator for Wharton students who are pursuing their entrepreneurial passions. The team piloted their business model at Wharton, lending to Wharton MBA students and recent graduates. Following their pilot in 2012, the team made great strides in expanding their product offerings, enabling CommonBond to help a larger population of members. A quick summary is below. 2013: CommonBond expanded to 20 MBA programs across the country. 2014: CommonBond expanded its student loan refinancing and consolidation programs to graduates of law, medical, and engineering programs. 2015: CommonBond expanded its student loan refinancing program to almost all undergraduate and graduate schools in the United States. Locking Down an Email Marketing Process & Strategy The team spent a great deal of time at the end of 2015 and in the beginning of 2016 stepping up their email marketing efforts by refreshing their email creation process and content strategy. Process Process was becoming increasingly important as CommonBond grew as a company, and email grew as a priority communication vehicle. Process would enable the team to think through and align on each emails objective, target market, content, and layout. Borrowing from team members past experience, they began to meet weekly to hash out critical components of upcoming emails. Key details were documented in a shared document that was updated by members throughout the week. As copy and layout evolved, all inputs were updated in the a Content Request Form document (see a sample here ). The document empowered the team to push projects forward and gain alignment quickly. Targeting The Right Customers Fortunately, CommonBond had collected thousands of customer email addresses since the companys inception. They had been using those email addresses to target customers with transactional and content emails alike, but needed to review who they were contacting and how frequently. The team had collected four separate email lists: Members: Members of the CommonBond community who had successfully taken out a loan with the company. Pipeline: Applicants who were in the process of completing a CommonBond loan application, but who had not yet successfully booked a CommonBond loan. Events: CommonBond team members worked hard to curate inoffice events that welcomed members and nonmembers into their workspace for panels on career switching, fireside chats on the financial technology (or fintech) industry, and happy hours. These activities generated a separate events email list. The people on the events list may benefit from receiving additional email communications from CommonBond. Friends & Family: Investors and quite literally, friends and family of the CommonBond team comprised another list. Understanding the various email lists CommonBond had access to was the first step to targeting the right customer for each email. The team discussed how in the past, emails were sent to one group specifically: Members typically received content emails. Applicants in the pipeline typically received transactional emails encouraging them to complete their application. Events attendees typically received thank you notes for attending events as well as additional event invitations. Friends & Family only sporadically received email when the company had news or milestones to share. After surveying the lists, it seemed that content emails could be relevant to each of the different segments. Just because an applicant hadnt become a CommonBond member by completing their application, there was no reason they wouldnt find the financial planning or careers content the team published via content emails useful. Similarly, members who hadnt attended a previous event may find value in learning about each event CommonBond had scheduled, as a future topic may be compelling. The team realized there was ample opportunity to target different customer segments with similar types of information and ultimately reach more members and potential members with their emails. Defining Email Objectives Identifying clear objectives for each target segment was a critical step in enabling the team to determine what types of content should be sent via email. Looking across the various customer segments (members, pipeline, events, and friends & family), it was clear that each segment had different objectives that email could serve. Thinking through this enabled the team to come to the following conclusions: Segment Objective Relevant Emails CommonBond Members Engage members with the CommonBond Community including events, contests, and services Newsletters Event emails,Announcement emails Pipeline Share CommonBond value proposition to drive consideration Encourage pipeline to complete application Provide information on refinancing Drip campaigns Newsletters Announcement emails Event Attendees Share CommonBond value proposition to drive consideration Engage attendees with CommonBond community including events, contests, and services Newsletters Event emails Announcement emails Friends & Family Share updates on company milestones and growth Announcement emails Creating an Email Calendar For Content Emails Creating an email calendar for content emails was critical. This enabled the team to proactively identify who they were reaching, and when, throughout the month. The team set out to create a 3month rolling email calendar that highlighted each of the different content and events emails they sought to create. This way, they had plenty of time to clearly align on the objectives of each email, the target population, and the send date. In addition, the threemonth lead time gave them sufficient time to work through the content of each email using the Content Request Form document while still allowing sufficient time for email design development and reviews. Critical Challenges Going Forward As February began, the team was feeling comfortable with the process to plan content emails in advance. It was clear that the advanced planning had paid off: the emails the team had produced since they had put their new process in place felt like some of the strongest in the companys history, with strong open and click through rates (see examples below). 2015 Year in Review Email: Click to view example Key Metrics Open Rates: 48.2% Click To Open Rates: 7.9% Unsubscribes: 0.6% January 2016 Community Email: Click to view example Key Metrics Open Rates: 43.8% Click Through Rates: 4.1% Unsubscribes: 2.1% January 2016 Newsletter Email: Click to view example Key Metrics Open Rates: 33.4% Click To Open Rates: 15.6% Unsubscribes: .05% As CommonBond approached 2016, a year with new product launches in store, the team knew this could mean diversifying their email content to meet the needs of multiple target markets. Would new products mean creating entirely new content emails that had a different focus than the student loan emails the team currently created and launched? When new products were launched, how should the team determine if they warranted a new email communications strategy? If the team chose, at any point, to begin to differentiate content based on the interests of the target customer, what data and technology would they need to do so? As the marketing team celebrated their success in creating high quality content emails, they knew they couldnt rest on their laurels for long. The fastpace of a growing company required that they learn from their challenges and successes and plan for the future.