It seemed so simple enough back in 2003. Kimberly-Clark Professional started a newsletter called The Link, to serve as an information portal for several industries.
But the unit, which offers tissues and other washroom products, found that readers wanted specialized content in addition to the general. So it started several other e-zines, each one tailored for a narrow audience. And they are now drawing very good open and clickthrough rates. The Link is still the biggest newsletter, with 6,082 subscribers. In contrast, Manufacturing Link has 1,025 subs, Office Building Link has 802, Health Care Link has 694 and Lodging Link has 345. Some customers double up.
"When we looked at our subscriber base we noticed that a good percentage, approximately 30%, were subscribing to more than one of the publications," says Kristin Miller, e-business manager, Kimberly-Clark Professional. To make the communications easily discernable in a subscriber's inbox, the use of colors and graphics were used to give each e-newsletter its own identity. But Miller faced unique hurdles with distribution and editorial. To increase touches with multiple-Link subscribers, Miller staggers the newsletter releases weekly throughout the month. Since there are five e-newsletters, the two with the least overlapping audience are distributed the same week.
On the editorial side, Miller initially produced up to five stories an issue. But time and experience have led her to par back to three main stories each month: An industry specific headline story, one linking to a trade publication or association article and a downloadable piece (i.e. a tip sheet) that readers can print and post for their employees. "Some of the areas we work with have reciprocal linking and with some there's no return," explains Miller addressing the possibility of to losing readers by linking to an outside source. "But since we're B-to-B, the links are brand building and building our reputation as an industry leader of information."
According to Miller the general e-newsletter has the lowest open rates, averaging 26 percent. Opening rates for Manufacturing runs at about 40%, Lodging about 50%, Office Building about 40% and Health Care about 50%. Although primarily focused on end users, the newsletters also attract sales reps and distributors.
Kimberly-Clark Professional utilizes IMN Inc. to publish the newsletter, manage and track subscribers and provide newsletter reports. What’s being tracked? Page views, identified and unidentified visitors, the number of e-mails sent, the number of e-mails opened, clicks that resulted from the opens, tell-a-friend and the total subscribers.
Miller is adding new product and information updates this year, and plans to do opinion and feedback surveys on the firm’s opt-in page. Previous promotions and polls to get feedback were disappointing. Even a gift card promotion of 6,000-7,000 only yielded 150 responses, she says. Regardless, Miller is determined to keep trying because, "it's important for them [the audience] to feel they can communicate with us."
How does the company measure success and return on investment? It’s a challenge, Miller says. For starters, each newsletter has a different person responsible for segment marketing, content review and ideas. Those individuals study the data on clickthroughs, open rates and subscribers and develop an ROI to meet their goals, she explains. The tough part is that Kimberly-Clark newsletters do not sell or have a transaction to drive a call to action. "We have clickthroughs to the Web and our product ads but there's not the next step of an actual purchase," Miller continues. "So ROI is difficult for me and I struggle with that."
But the costs are clear. Writing is the most expensive part of the e-newsletter process costing about $25,000 per e-newsletter, Miller says. The tool to manage the publication and subscriber list runs about $12,000 a year.
Initially, addresses were culled from an e-mail address list and a list from Kimberly-Clark's internal telemarketing center. Now, subscriber lists are built via reciprocal relationships with organizations, and through marketing efforts—i.e., mailings and promotions that drive targets to the company’s home page or to its in-house telemarketing center.
Miller hopes to spend expend more resources on gathering subscriber information this year. When signing up, subscribers can chose not to give company information and leave only an e-mail address. "When that's the case, it's hard to tell what kind of information they want,” she says. “We want to try to define that." Miller hopes to start segmenting those people utilizing questionnaires and building profiles. That information would allow the subscriber to either be placed into a segment or support the need for a new e-newsletter offering to be developed.
"We're utilizing a database maintained by Kimberly-Clark of our customers and prospects,” she explains. “We've made attempts to match up e-mail address to information from this database. Our sales reps collect data and we have telemarketing contact our end users and prospects to qualify and collect data for this effort. We've tried to match the e-mails to our data and classify these people as best we can. With limited budgets, we do what we can.”
