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True Religion Brand Jeans Ramps Up Email Marketing Results With Monetate

Relevancy is key to successful email marketing, especially in the age of tech-savvy, multitasking consumers. In fact, 26% of consumers say they’ll mark an email as spam if the message isn’t relevant to their wants and needs, according to Kentico research.

True Religion Brand Jeans is ramping up its email marketing efforts by leveraging data such as customer location, as well as browsing and buying history. The apparel brand and retailer was an early adopter of Monetate email, a new addition to the vendor’s Acceleration Cloud solution suite.

“The Monetate system tells us in real time what kind of device a consumer is on at a specific time,” said Gary Penn, Director of Global E-Commerce for True Religion, during a presentation at Shop.org. “It’s exciting to be able to determine that on the fly.”

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Following the August 2013 implementation, True Religion ran an A/B test for desktop and mobile users to see which drove the highest opens, clicks and conversions, Penn explained. During the testing process, Penn and his team decided to “do an A/B test where we sent mobile emails to both customer sets and see how people respond.” Surprisingly, “mobile emails converted way better on a mobile device and astronomically better on a desktop device. I don’t know why this is but this was the reality of what we faced.”

Due to the results of the email experiment, True Religion will no longer send desktop-optimized emails to consumers. However, there are other factors that need to be addressed. For example, the retailer needs to determine whether they should send a Retina-optimized image to consumers browsing on a next-generation tablet, Penn noted. “The questions go on and on, and the technology is evolving to answer these questions.”

Monetate also has provided True Religion with access to a wealth of data, which is providing the retailer with a more comprehensive view of customers to improve email targeting and personalization. Emails can be tailored to specific customer segments, as well as based on behavioral triggers.

For one campaign, True Religion targeted consumers through their mobile devices when they were close to a brick-and-mortar location. Imagery in the emails included information on the closest store, and a link to receive more information.

Penn noted: “It was solving a problem we had previously identified, and it fell into our laps.”

Prior to implementing the email solution, “we had a very poor email list in terms of demographic information,” Penn said. “Historically, True Religion had not captured any basic elements like zip code and gender, and we certainly couldn’t tie that information to order history. We never had the ability to target consumers around our brick-and-mortar network at all.”

There are several email campaigns and initiatives True Religion is in the process of testing and implementing through the Monetate product. The retailer plans to execute regional promotions based on a consumers’ location at a specific moment. For example, if a shopper is from New Jersey, but is near a store in Washington DC, he or she will receive an email from True Religion based on that specific store.

“These traveling consumers can be included in promotions on the fly, which is huge for our business,” said Penn during a follow-up interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We were never able to execute regional promotions before simply because our data was so poor.”

Weather-based emails also will be used to tout the extensive True Religion product line. Although the retailer is based on Los Angeles, and has one of its largest stores in Florida, the marketing team is seeking ways to better promote outerwear and sportswear.

“We have a great pea coat for this season,” Penn added, “so if we can target that product to cooler areas, that’s an advantage for us.”

Connecting With Consumers Through The Inbox

Outdoor retailer Moosejaw was another early adopter of the Monetate Email tool. Based on early results, the solution has helped Moosejaw “display content and offers within an email that are relevant to the customer at the time they actually open the email, not when we send the email,” said Dan Pingree, VP of Marketing at Moosejaw. “As a recognized leader in online marketing, Moosejaw sees Monetate’s new email solution as the next generation of email marketing.”

The Monetate Acceleration Cloud is made up of three buckets: Interact, Engage and Reach. Designed to connect knowledge of customers with real-time, multichannel marketing, the Acceleration Cloud empowers marketers to plan and execute campaigns in a more agile way — and without help from IT.

Additionally, the platform helps marketers tap customer data and device information to deliver the right message and offer to the right shoppers and in the format they prefer. Retailers can implement and leverage the Interact, Engage and Reach solution sets in a unified, integrated fashion.

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