On this page:
Vernier Software & Technology
NW Natural
Categories: B2C, Science, Education
Agency lead: Mambo Media
Deliverables: Copywriting, copyediting and junior copywriter supervision
Impact: Sometimes agencies have a detailed plan for a client and they bring me on board to execute it. That was the case for the cold email marketing campaign for Vernier Software & Technology.
The folks at Mambo had already assembled research, crafted personas, written a messaging matrix and put together a site map for a campaign microsite. But time was running out to write the microsite copy and a series of 15 segmented campaign emails (3 sequential emails per market segment). I brought on a junior copywriter to join me, and together, we got it all done.
The results? Our campaign did better than average for a cold list. (Opt-in email marketing open, click-through, and conversion rates are much higher than cold campaigns.)
Where a cold list open rate is considered outstanding at 3-5%, our campaign achieved 7%.
After folks opted in to future emails, the open rate jumped to 64%! (A good benchmark for education would be about 25%.)
Vernier's director of marketing was so impressed by what we did for the company's voice on the campaign landing page and emails that she directed it to carry forward on the entire Vernier site redesign. Since that time, Vernier has redesigned its website again. My copy is still being used throughout this new site and in the 2022 print catalog.
See below for one sample of one email.
Categories: Public Sector, D2C
Agency lead: happy, inc.
Deliverables: Research, campaign strategy, concepting, copywriting
Impact: NW Natural works with local community-based organizations to provide weatherization services at no cost to low-income households. NW Natural asked us to design a campaign to drive sign-ups for the energy efficiency program.
We started by conducting stakeholder research, including interviews with the administrators of the program and recipients of the services, to find out what motivated people to participate, what the barriers to participation were, and what people struggled with in terms of energy costs and home maintenance.
Using our findings, we identified the bill insert as the most credible and cost-effective way to spread word about the program, and we created a deployment strategy to allow NW Natural to customize the insert county-by-county.
Keep in mind: there were some challenges to this project. First, we could not redesign any landing pages, create new website content, or apply digital tracking codes. Next, we had to be very clear in our messaging in order to elicit calls and inquiries only from our intended audience since every customer in a service area would receive the bill insert, but few customers would be qualified. Also, since that audience was qualified using federal poverty guidelines, we wanted to ensure that perception of the program was positive.
I concepted and wrote the bill insert. This was the first time the utility ever tried driving sign-ups through its monthly statement mailings and it worked. The phones rang at the community organizations. We successfully filled the pipeline with qualified families ready to receive weatherization audits and services.
Categories: Public Sector, D2C
Agency lead: happy, inc.
Deliverables: Campaign concepting, campaign testing, copywriting (bill insert, bangtail mailer, direct mail letters)
Impact: Since 2011, NW Natural has been asking its customers to go green by opting in to its Smart Energy program. For a small additional charge, customers can fuel their homes with biofeul instead of fossil fuel.
After five years of annual mailings, no variation on a solicitation letter outperformed the control letter on conversions--until ours, shown below.