Lékárna.cz: Engagement score put into practice

For several months now, Mailkit customers have been able to use the engagement score, which evaluates the message’s recipient and assigns him a value according to his engagement level, his interest in the messages received and the services offered by the sender. Naturally, Lekarna.cz has tried to use this functionality to increase the efficacy of its campaigns.

To test the effectiveness of the engagement score, we used the client’s regular graphic campaign. The latter’s recipients had previously been segmented manually according to their previous purchases; occasionally, the campaign would address the complete portfolio of active recipients. This type of campaign provided steady results; it is useful for us to illustrate what happens when we make changes to the subject line of the message or adjust its targeting.

To examine these benefits, Lekarna.cz itself chose concrete mailings and then used the Mailkit application to define segments on the basis of the recipients’ engagement score. The results exceeded our expectations -- so much so that Lekarna.cz asked us to verify the data again and check for possible errors of measurement.

The graph shows the number of delivered recipients in the mailing and the open-rate of each mailing. The data comes from campaign mailings between 1 January 2016 and 21 June 2016; it was evaluated as of 28 June 2016.

The highlighted bars mark mailings that used segmentation based on the engagement score (columns 10, 17 and 21) and whose open-rate reached over 70%. The data also clearly shows that smaller mailings, which were segmented according to the recipient’s interest, had a 5% higher open-rate than non-segmented campaigns (5, 8,16,18 and 20).

Another key question of course concerns the possible financial benefits of this type of segmentation; these are shown in the following graph.

The effectiveness of campaigns is shown here based on click-through rate (CTR columns), open rate (in red) and revenues calculated per message sent (RPM in green).

As for sales figures, the influence of segmentation based on engagement score is clearly apparent. The increase in RPM in mailings 11-15 was due to the sales offers presented in these mailings. On the other hand, campaigns segmented according to engagement score contained no incentives in either the subject line or the message content.

The client was satisfied with the results of these campaigns. “We were pleasantly surprised by the results of the engagement score tests. On principle, we expected solid metrics from this function, but definitely not an open rate of over 70% or a five-fold increase in revenue per email. The function is helping us target a relevant audience, those people who are truly interested in our general offer, while we can save the others for another time and target them more individually,” said Milan Duda, the Marketing Manager for Lekarna.cz.

The use of the engagement score is of course not limited to targeting active customers in order to maximize revenue; it can also be a highly effective method of addressing inactive customers and reactivating them. You can find more information about the engagement score in this article, which discussed its functioning and options, or you can get in touch with us directly.