6 phases, 38 steps, 27 people
No, it’s not a Saturday night in an Austin roadhouse. These are the total number of required steps to deploy global outreach emails for Dell Technologies World.
Each person and step are required for each email deployment. The ten total emails sent during the 2018-2019 campaign doesn’t include the 32 varying iterations based on creative testing and market segmentation.
So yeah – it’s more work than you’d think. But it’s also a lot of fun.
Lauren Featherstone, Opus Creative’s Program Manager for Dell Technologies World, helped create detailed operational charts to explain the complex process. The “Phase Chart,” as it’s called internally, paints a detailed picture of what a global newsletter campaign looks like.
“It took a solid year and a half to get to the point where we could articulate this process,” Lauren said. “We were always doing it, but it wasn’t realized until we took stock and put it all on paper.”
The phase chart is intended to leave breadcrumbs for future campaigns. No campaign is the same year-to-year, including the humans behind it. Furthermore, the process is a visual baseline that can be applied for future clients to streamline and optimize their campaigns.
Our six phases are as follows:
Creative Process
Link Management
List Management
Global Packaging
Deployment Process
Post Deployment Metric Analysis
It’s important to address each step in order – they are all contingent on one another.
The Creative Process, List Management, and Metric Analysis phases are most important, according to Lauren. Opus Creative’s expertise is in designing and optimizing engaging campaign content, but equally as critical is a good contact list and always making improvements through metrics review. Each needs to work together for an effective outreach campaign that nurtures prospects and avoids brand fatigue, ultimately driving them to register for the event.
“Contacts are gold. You need to treat them with respect.”
“We have a strong understanding of the campaign’s outreach segmentation so we know how to properly address each group,” Lauren says.
Link Management is a quick step in the process but key to ensure we properly capture campaign metrics. Metrics are our “report card,” and are essential in fine-tuning and improving the performance of the attendance acquisition efforts.
Dell Technologies World is held in Las Vegas every year, but it draws and international crowd. That’s why the Global Packaging phase is essential. Newsletters that we design will be received on five continents, so all content and messaging must be digestible and easy to distribute among the overseas teams.
Deployment (Phase 5) isn’t as easy as it sounds – it’s more than just clicking the ‘send’ button. With about 2 million addresses to send to, Opus Creative staggers each email send across three days to maintain Dell’s white list email deployment status.
The final phase is Post-Deployment Metric Analysis, which is the fun part. It sheds light on how effective the email was, providing analytics and insight so the next send can be improved. In many cases, Opus Creative does A/B creative testing to determine best practices to increase engagement performance before final deployment.
These six phases wouldn’t be possible without the cooperation of the team at Dell Technologies World.
Collaboration, persistence, and continuous learning are evident throughout the process.
We’re proud to be partners with their talented team and look forward to the 2020 campaign being the best yet.