It’s not your grandmother’s mail-in sweepstakes operation. Find out how PCH transformed their traditional business model and became the fifth-largest gaming publisher by implementing innovative marketing automation strategies.
Say “Publisher’s Clearing House” and you’re probably struck with visions of oversized checks and an aged demographic that most marketers have given up for dead.
But PCH today is the fifth largest gaming publisher, boasting a completely unique ecommerce segment without an ecommerce storefront, as customers are entertained down the funnel. Gaming and flash-purchase opportunities are built directly into the experience once customers register in the hopes of winning big.
In other words, it’s not your grandmother’s PCH — and marketing automation is one of the major driving forces behind their transformation.
“My goal is to get down to 1-1 communication with our consumer,” says Jason John, the company’s CMO. “So as we try to grow our business, marketing automation is the way that we’re going to do that.”
“We send over 60 million emails per week to our consumers,” John says. “Moving from 0 percent trigger-based emails to 25% of the emails we send on the triggered side has really significantly improved our conversion engagement rates with our audience.”
The company is vigorously strategic in how they leverage the opportunities automation offers. Their major initiative is the OCM project: optimized customer models. Every day, against every customer in the database, they run a series of at least five models. It scores people on a wide variety of factors, from what properties they’re engaging with to how active they are in email, whether they’re at the threshold of unsubscribing, and more.
The models work together with decision trees to determine if a consumer gets an email, when they get an email, and what the content of that email is.
Data is at the heart of the strategy. “For us, the marketing automation piece really makes sense when it’s more intelligent communication that drives more engagement from the consumer,” says John.
That means, he says, that all your platforms, tools, and technology have to talk to each other in a clear and cohesive manner, and data must be clean, filtered, and fully integrated.
“That’s easier said than done,” he admits, “but the core component of making it successful is how good your data is, how clean it is, and then auctioning off it is more palatable.”
Because, he adds, “At the end of day you’re trying to optimize your customer’s experience, so with data with that is not clean and integrated, that is not going to happen.”
John will be joined be an expert of pros including Casino del Sol’s Steve Neely and Allen & Gerritsen’s Tim Parcell. To learn more about how marketing automation can help you achieve the holy grail of ROI — engagement, retention, and lifetime value — register today for free.
Don’t miss out!
In this VB Live event, you’ll learn:
- Exactly what marketing automation can and can’t do
- How to frame the marketing automation question for the C-suite
- How to maximize ROI by using automation tactics that work best
Speakers:
- Jason John, CMO, Publisher’s Clearing House
- Steve Neely, CMO, Casino del Sol
- Tim Parcell, VP Experience Planning, Allen & Gerritsen
Moderator:
- Evan Schuman, Moderator, VentureBeat
This webinar is sponsored by IBM.