Online financial services firm KeyBank increased open rates by 29% by following best practices and certifying e-mails with Goodmail, according to a panel at the DMA-07 Conference and Exhibition yesterday.
In a session titled “Do customers trust your e-mail? Differentiate your communications – Certify,” industry executives discussed the benefits of building consumer trust through following best practices and sending certified e-mail.
KeyBank was having issues with oversending and low open rates and was looking to regain consumer trust. The site was seeing a 35% open rate, but the company wanted to increase open rates and customer engagement. After using Goodmail, open rates jumped to 45%.
“The important thing was to get people to open the messages,” said Daniel Tyrpak, online channel manager at KeyBank. “Once we got people to open [them], they started to have trust in [them]. This resulted in an increase in conversion rates.”
KeyBank moved to an all opt-in process and created a standardized template for all e-mail programs, sent more personalized messages, centralized ownership of e-mail across the company, followed best practices and signed up for Goodmail for e-mail trust.
Goodmail also helped test KeyBank’s deliverability through various ISPs including AOL by looking at feedback loops.
“There are a lot of resources available to senders for dealing with things like deliverability, which will help build consumer trust,” said David Atlas, VP of marketing at Goodmail Systems. “AOL is one of the most helpful in helping senders, while some of the cable companies are not.”
In order to become certified with Goodmail, marketers must become accredited and work to build a good reputation. A good reputation comes through low complaint rates and sending mail that consumers have opted in to receive. E-mail sent as an acquisition tool is not certifiable.
“The number one thing that a consumer needs to know is that an e-mail is real and that it is coming from the person it says it is,” Atlas added.
