Time, Inc. Case Study

Customer	Time Inc. / Time Consumer Marketing
Industry	Media
Email type:	Transactional

CUSTOMER

Time Inc. is the world’s leading magazine publisher, with more than 150 titles that are read more than 300 million times worldwide on a monthly basis and account for nearly a quarter of the total advertising revenues of U.S. consumer magazines. Time Consumer Marketing Inc. launched a new online customer service site for these magazines and they wanted to encourage subscribers to use this site to manage their subscriptions, choosing various options such as renewing, paying bills, and making changes to their account information. Although deliverability was good, their messages were often presented without links and images.

CERTIFIED EMAIL TEST

Time sent email describing their new customer service site to active readers of several magazines, including Time, Fortune, Business 2.0, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. Users were told of the various subscription management options and provided a link to the site. Half of the emails was sent CertifiedEmail, and the other half was sent non-certified email.


Non-CertifiedEmail sample as received by the customer	CertifiedEmail sample as received by the customer.

RESULTS

The response rates for the CertifiedEmail recipients as compared to the non-certified email recipients showed the following increases:

Click-through rate	+30%
Site login:	+28%

ANALYSIS

All variables between the CertifiedEmail messages and the non-certifi ed emails were tightly controlled, leaving two primary differences between the populations. Firstly, as a secure, trusted message, the CertifiedEmails were presented with links and images rendered intact by default. Secondly, the CertifiedEmails were presented with a unique trust icon indicating to the recipient that the message was authentic and trustworthy. It is concluded therefore that these characteristics were responsible for the positive lift on metrics. Time’s return on investment (ROI) was calculated to be extremely positive.

TERMINOLGY

Click-through rate	The number of emails that were clicked-through to the website over the emails received, as a percent. A single email clicked
Site login	The number of people that logged into the website over the emails received, as a percent. Multiple logins driven from the same email are counted as a single login (unique login).
Return-on-investment (ROI)	Profit generated by a marketing campaign less the cost of the campaign (return), over the cost of the campaign, expressed as a percent. A positive ROI is one where the profit generated exceeds the cost of the campaign. For example, an ROI of 180% means an investment of $1.00 generated a return of $2.80.

Download the PDF of the Time Case Study

“The business benefits of CertifiedEmail – assured delivery of messages to our subscribers with all links and images presented intact – had a clear impact on results.

Trusted, authenticated CertifiedEmail messages resulted
in higher click-throughs, and improved program response rates.”

Ernie Vickroy
Marketing Director, Time Consumer Marketing, Inc.