Industry: Publishing and Social Networking

Products: Return Path Platinum and Campaign Insight

A KEY RESOURCE FOR THE MILITARY

Military.com is the leading online resource and portal for active duty members of the military, veterans and the broader armed services community. With more than 10 million subscribers on file, Military.com members have access to 26 newsletters on a range of topics including careers, finance, education and entertainment. Most subscribe to multiple newsletters plus all members receive emails promoting benefits and opportunities related to their service branch (Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines) and status (active duty or veteran). All in all, Military.com sends tens of millions of emails each week.

THE CHALLENGES OF RUNNING A HIGH VOLUME EMAIL PROGRAM

Military.com’s sophisticated email program is best in class, managed by a team of email and IT professionals. They have permission from their subscribers and their campaigns are relevant, targeted and sent on a consistent schedule. Their inbox placement rates should be 100%, right? Wrong. The reality is that high-volume email programs, no matter how well run, always raise a red flag with ISPs. As an online portal, email is the primary (and in many cases the only) channel to connect with and engage their audience. This makes deliverability and inbox placement a key strategic issue. From the occasional blacklisting to a blocking problem with a specific ISP, maintaining strong inbox placement is a daily challenge and priority. Plus, Military.com has high standards and their daily deliverability generally exceeds 95% but their business success is so tied to email that even a small dip in their inbox placement rates impacts their bottom line.

A SOLID STRATEGY + THE RIGHT PARTNER = SUCCESS

Military.com views investing in deliverability as essential to maintaining strong member relationships and profitable partnerships with their advertisers so they work with Return Path as a Platinum-level client. This means Military.com receives proactive, full-service account management from a dedicated representative along with complete access to Return Path’s industry leading deliverability platform. Return Path’s deliverability tools include Mailbox Monitor, Campaign Preview and Reputation Monitor. In addition, they can leverage Return Path’s team of professional deliverability consultants as well as the email strategy group.

The Military.com team works with their partners at Return Path every day. They collaboratively review the daily reports from Mailbox Monitor, the seed-based monitoring system. Using Mailbox Monitor’s expansive reporting options, they analyze and trouble-shoot inbox data in real-time by ISP, region or time frame. This allows them to rapidly identify, diagnose and address problems before they become crises. In addition, the Return Path tools are set to immediately notify Military.com if one of their IPs appears on a blacklist – and their Return Path account team acts quickly to find out why the IP was blacklisted and determine the right remedy for removal.

Military.com also relies on Return Path’s Campaign Preview tool to understand exactly how their emails will look in all the various email readers. Specifically, the creative teams along with the HTML coders use Campaign Preview to troubleshoot and test creative across the many email readers used by their diverse subscriber-base. In fact, Campaign Preview has become an important tool across the Military.com organization.

Significantly, Military.com is active in Return Path’s beta programs so they get a first look at new products and features while providing important feedback so Return Path can offer a better experience for all their customers. As part of this, Military.com tested Campaign Insight, Return Path’s newest innovative tool. By using pixel images Campaign Insight has allowed Military.com to discover new things about their members and how they access their emails. They now know how many members read their emails via older platforms like Outlook 2007 in stark contrast to the many members who read their emails on mobile devices. For example, they now know how many members use iPhone 3 and how many rapidly transitioned to the iPhone 4. By knowing the email clients which are most often viewed, Military.com has prioritized their mobile marketing efforts while improved targeting has opened new advertising opportunities.

Military.com has also implemented tactics identified in the Email Program Report Card provided by Return Path’s Professional Services team to further advance their email program. Most notably, Military.com addressed the pre-header area of their emails by reducing the size of the font and white space and using this space to improve their lead business. Military.com has found that incorporating “statistically heavy” text into the single line email pre-header is driving more traffic to their lead forms and other strategic areas of their website with a click-through rate improvement of 1.19%. By acting on a recommendation from Return Path, Military.com has grabbed their reader’s attention at the onset, driven additional clicks to the website, increased lead procurement, increased overall click-through rates and upped their overall reader engagement.

By partnering with Return Path, Military.com has found the recipe for email marketing success and inbox placement rates that exceed 95%. You start with a focused, professional team, a smart strategy and engaged subscriber base. Add in leading technology, proactive account management and deliverability expertise. Follow with consistent monitoring, a collaborative approach and a commitment to industry best practices. This is what it takes and Military.com has mastered it.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

“We thought we had a pretty solid idea of our users and their habits – boy were we surprised. The data from Campaign Insight was the missing link in the chain of information our organization needed to make intelligent decisions about our marketing strategy. Thanks to Return Path we now have a new perspective on what our users want and are adjusting our marketing priorities accordingly. No marketing department should be without this invaluable data.

– Kirk Gray, eMarketing Specialist - Member Communications