Soon after expanding its direct marketing offerings to include the Internet, Grey Direct has launched eMMetrics, a platform designed to integrate all e-mail-related touch points with offline marketing efforts.
Working with vendors, the platform offers results in real time, backed by statistics of 60 percent response rates in 48 hours to e-mails, as opposed to traditional direct mail, which takes at least three weeks with an average response of 1 percent to 2 percent, Grey said.
“The other thing that makes it better is that you can become very personalized in your communications with your customers, and you can provide dynamic content based on data profiles,” said Jeanniey Mullen, vice president at Grey Direct and general manager at Grey E.Mail, a wholly owned subsidiary in New York.
Clients of Grey E.Mail’s eMMetrics include Internet telephony provider deltathree.com; California’s City National Bank; W Hotel; and RentPort.com, which reports rental payment history to credit bureaus and offers rewards for on-time payments by tenants.
The debut of eMMetrics marks a turning point in Grey Direct’s strategy for growth in an increasingly digital environment. The first step was hiring Mullen, who spent nearly eight years developing and working on retailer JCPenney’s Internet and e-mail-related programs.
Grey Direct’s e-mail marketing initiative, which includes inbound and outbound communications, is crucial to the company’s future, said Larry Kimmel, president and chief operating officer at the agency’s New York office.
“On a long-term basis, it is essential that we migrate as many of our customers into commercial, e-mail-based solutions,” he said. “One of the things we’re doing here is trying to reduce the cycle times. … We’re getting to the marketplace faster with messages to consumers.”
Grey Direct, the New York-based arm of ad agency Grey Advertising, posted billings of $905 million in 1999 and projects $1 billion for this year.
As the platform for Grey E.Mail, eMMetrics is key to a company plan to offer customized e-mail relationship marketing to clients and prospects. Not limited to outbound e-mail, the agency’s closed-loop platform offers services such as data analysis and mining, strategy development and its segmentation, execution and integration with offline marketing efforts, inbound replies and responses, and real-time reporting from click through to conversion.
For eMMetrics, Grey E.Mail will charge a set-up fee and a volume-based retainer. It will source e-mail addresses from clients’ opt-in lists. It also will rent from opt-in e-mail lists on the market.
“The objective is to introduce companies to e-mail marketing as a very efficient tool to strengthen the lifetime value of the customer,” Mullen said.
