Opportunity

AARP is the largest membership organization in the world. With nearly 40 million members, AARP constantly seeks ways to better engage their members specifically through the electronic channel. Mansell Group has provided email communications and technology-enabled marketing to AARP for the last six years. Recently, the organization requested, through our Labs@Mansell program, the development of a truly dynamic, 100% personalized, email prototype. This prototype led to AARP launching a specific Membership Relationship Management (MRM) program targeted around email communications. The idea was to deliver a direct mail piece that drove members to a Web site that asked them to complete a survey identifying their top interests. These interests would be communicated to Mansell Group through an XML (Web services) integration that would permit our email messaging application to automatically generate dynamic email messages.

Solution

Mansell Group and AARP partnered with various direct mail vendors and internal technical staff to create a team that was made up of four departments, two vendors and Mansell Group. This team scoped the necessary technical requirements, determined the creative elements and programmed an application that actually scored the responses of the members. The appropriate content was written for each section and the real-time Web services integration (XML) was implemented between AARP’s membership database and Mansell Group’s email messaging application. This campaign was deployed in a total of four months.

Results

The program created a 100% dynamically-generated personalized email. This email was built for each individual person based on specific responses to survey questions. The program accomplished several objectives including direct mail and email integration, personalized content based on member feedback, real-time dynamic content and direct database integration between AARP’s membership database and Mansell Group’s email messaging application. The performance results included 90% delivery rates (lower due to input errors on form), a 55% open rate and a staggering 44% click-through rate.