How an E-newsletter Helped CBSSports.com Increase Engagement
December 10, 2008 By Heather Fletcher, Senior Editor, Target MarketingIn a society where even President-elect Barack Obama is a fantasy football player, CBSSports.com decided it had to get on the ball. So the Internet outlet for the network that had already integrated fantasy league updates into its sports news chose to reach out to baseball and football fans through an e-newsletter. From there, Portland, Ore. e-mail marketing firm eROI completed the pass and ran for a touchdown.
"The goal was to create a series of newsletters that carried a wealth of sports data, were easy to update, maintained consistent branding and were built to ensure accurate rendering across various e-mail clients," eROI writes in its most recent case study, CBSSports.com Fantasy Sports: Email Design Drives Results.
Inside Pitch, the fantasy baseball newsletter eROI helped CBSSports.com create, achieved a 50 percent open rate and a 14 percent click rate, enhancing fantasy player engagement. Here's how eROI did it:
- The newsletter design enabled cross-league marketing and advertising opportunities while maintaining consistency in the CBSSports.com brand;
- Video clips linked through the e-mail increased engagement and clickthrough rates;
- For the e-mail templates, eROI created wire frames and a modular design system that allowed recipients to easily scan compartmentalized information;
- Lists were displayed on alternating gray and white backgrounds, again to improve the recipient's ability to scan the newsletter quickly;
- Atop the message body, site navigation tools allowed readers to jump to chosen content;
- For those who wanted to view full stories and see complete lists of statistics, links drove recipients to CBSSports.com;
- Header and footer buttons allowed recipients to forward the newsletter to friends, perhaps expanding the fantasy league;
- And finally, eROI accounted for "the worst case scenario, such as Outlook 2007 with images turned off, and a best case scenario, like Mac Mail," in designing for optimal newsletter readability.




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