Presentation by Bill Brand, Senior Data and Communications Manager, Last Word Media

1. Last Word Media and Adestra
– Our email journey
Bill Brand – Senior Data and CRM Manager, Last Word

2. Last Word
• Last Word, an independent financial media solutions business with
offices in London, Singapore and Hong Kong.
• Launched in 2005, Last Word provides market news, analysis and
comment across the global investment industry.
• Content is delivered across multi-channel platforms - print, digital,
video, research, data and events.
• We are the first choice for wealth managers, financial advisers,
fund selectors, distributors and intermediaries across the globe,
helping them forge the right connections – and make better
informed business decisions.
• And we send 2 million emails a month!

3. Where we were three years ago
• Challenges we were having with our marketing emails:
– Lack of consistent branding
– ‘One size fits all’ emails
– All campaigns copied
– Poor data – spreadsheets, no CRM, no personalisation
– Non responsive
– No text versions
– Once unsubscribed, unsubscribed from everything
– No campaign process

4. The move to Adestra
• Workspaces, projects and user groups
• Preference centre
• System integration
– API from website for data capture
– API from CRM (selections and unsubscribes)
• Templates
What else was happening
• Introduction of a CRM (Wyvern)
– Central data storage, API integration into MessageFocus
• New websites with data capture

5. Rebrand and new templates
• The rebranding of Last Word
• Events template workshop – defining what
templates need to included
• What we wanted the templates to do / How we
wanted them to work
• New template design
• Training and roll out

6. Email life cycle planning

7. ‘New’ template design

8. ‘New Editor’ template design

9. Data journey - Objectives
Business needed to understand the customer and wanted to
increase engagement.
• What’s our vision for data?
• What are we trying to achieve with personalisation?
• What does personalisation mean to our customers?

10. Laying the groundwork
What did we do?
• CRM – single view of the customer
• Audited the data we had
• Started by getting the basics right. Aiming for 100% in key fields
• Overhaul of forms - what data are we capturing - what do we need & will use
• Ongoing research projects

11. Collecting the data you are going to need
• What are we going to be sending?
• Now and in the future
• What data do we need to be able
to deliver?
• Add rules to ensure the data you
want is completed

12. What’s in a name?
• Putting data to work with
personalised introductions
• …and subject lines
• Testing plans
• How we went about it
• First step along the
personalisation journey

13. Newsletters – simple change, big impact

14. Events – the same but different
The same campaign template is used but with different
messages tailor to the different identified audience segments

15. Events – copy and tailor
The same “campaign” sent to different audience
segments, with different subject lines and tailored content

16. Preference centre
• Putting control in the hands
of the recipient
• Enabling consumers to
choose what they receive
• Use preference knowledge
to only send content the
recipient wants to receive

17. Results
So what impact did all these changes have?

18. Results - newsletters

19. Results - events

20. Results - websites
Website traffic from Email
2014 - 39.8%
2017 - 57.2%

21. Results - websites
Growth in web traffic to all
four brands
More page impressions
generated every month:
• IA - 63%
• PA - 52%
• FSA - 185%
• EI - 16%

22. Results - event registrations
Registrations from Email
2015 - 37%
2016 - 56%
2017 - 61%

23. What's next – Paid subscriptions

24. Thank you.