UKF - integrating social media with email marketing to gain maximum engagement

AEI Media’s brand, UKF, is one of the leading dance music destinations on the web, with over 300,000 Youtube subscribers and 200,000 Facebook fans across the two channels: Drum & Bass and Dubstep.  The company started using Pure360 email marketing software in September 2010.  Digital Marketing Executive, Craig Haynes, explains: “Pure360 offered us an easy to use software platform with the flexibility to push our email marketing campaigns forward with dynamic content.”

He continues: “The target audience for us are young bass lovers who are interested in the latest and greatest tunes on the scene.  With our email campaigns we are looking to engage this audience beyond Youtube and social networks and inform them about the broad spectrum of UKF activity.”

Using Facebook for email newsletter sign up

UKF decided that the most cost and time efficient way for them to build a mailing list from existing fans/subscribers was to build a Facebook tab for mailing list sign-up.  The clever Facebook development team simply transferred Pure360’s form wizard HTML into FBML and bingo – there’s an easy way for users to sign up to the newsletter without leaving the social media experience. 

In order to make this happen UKF are using a custom sign up email for their double opt in message.  They have also segmented their customers (dubstep, dnb, both) and utilised dynamic content to increase relevancy and personalise the experience.

And it doesn’t stop at Facebook: “As well as the Facebook tab signup, we also link to this tab with a branding box on the Youtube channel pages.  All of our emails, even our double opt in, encourage readers to connect via Youtube subscriptions and social media and we include the social share link,” explains Craig.

                      

51.5% open rate and 38% click through rates

The last campaign by UKF generated a 51.5% open rate and 38% click through showing a great level of engagement.  Unsurprisingly UKF have lots of ideas for the future, one of which is a monthly newsletter to subscribers.  They intend to run a monthly newsletter at first which will become more regular as they receive feedback on content.  Moving forwards the brand will be doing more live events and webcasting which will in turn attract even more subscribers.

So as UKF continue to ramp up their campaigns they will be sticking with Pure360 as their email marketing service provider, Craig says: “Feedback from Pure360 has always been incredibly quick and I’ve found the level of support provided by them invaluable.”

At Pure360 we are certainly excited about what UKF will do next.