Time, Inc. Case Study

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

About Time, Inc.

“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.

Time, Inc. is the world's leading magazine publisher, with more than 150 titles read more than 300 million times worldwide each month. The company accounts 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. The company wanted to encourage subscribers to use the 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.

CertifiedEmail Test

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


Non-certified email sample, as received by the customer	CertifiedEmail sample, as received by the customer

Results

Compared to responses from non-certified email recipients, CertifiedEmail recipients showed the following increases:

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

Analysis

All variables between the CertifiedEmail messages and the non-certified emails were tightly controlled, leaving two primary differences between the populations:

As secure, trusted messages, only the CertifiedEmails arrived with links and images rendered intact by default.
Only the CertifiedEmails included a unique Blue Trust Seal, indicating to the recipient that the message was authentic and trustworthy.

The conclusion? These characteristics of CertifiedEmails were responsible for the positive lift on metrics. Time, Inc.’s return on investment (ROI) was calculated to be extremely positive.

Terminoloy

Click-through rate	The number of emails that were clicked-through to the website divided by the number of emails received, expressed as a percent. A single email clicked.
Site login	The number of people who logged into the website divided by the total number of emails received, expressed as a percent. Multiple logins driven from the same email are counted as a single login (unique login).
Return-on-investment (ROI)	Revenue generated by a marketing campaign less the cost of the campaign (return), divided by 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.
Revenue per email	Per customer, the average revenue generated per email.