The background
Mortgages for Business is a leading buy-to-let and commercial online mortgage broker, offering the best current deals on commercial mortgages to landlords.
Voted What Mortgage Best National Adviser in 2009 and Best Specialist Adviser and Best Overall Adviser in 2008, the company was formed in 1990 and has a long established reputation as a leader in the commercial finance industry.
The marketing challenge
Mortgages for Business had been using email marketing for several years, sending regular weekly and monthly newsletters to an opted-in customer and prospects database built through a newsletter signup form on their
website.
The challenge faced by MD and Head of Marketing David Whittaker, and Head of IT Mark Ryan, was twofold.
1. Firstly, they needed a new email service provider. Their old email supplier had faults that were holding back their progress with email marketing, and they wanted a new supplier that would offer:
- Better value for money
- A transparent and straightforward pricing model that made budgeting easy
- User-friendly, one-click reporting
- More reliable delivery
2. Secondly, they needed a professional redesign for their e-newsletter template. Their old template was underperforming and off-brand. “It wasn’t fit for purpose” says Mark Ryan. So it was clear they needed a fresh new approach from specialist email template designers.
The Brief
Mortgages for Business chose dotMailer to be their new email service provider, taking an Enterprise Licence, a monthly Value Plan to make budgetary control easy, and a bespoke template design.
"dotMailer's reporting suite makes it so easy for managers to drill and pull their own reports – it literally takes work off my desk" says Mark Ryan.
The brief for the email template designer team in dotAgency (dotMailer’s sister web design agency) was to create a template that:
- Maximised inbox delivery and renderability
- Dramatically increased reader engagement and click-throughs to the website
- Reflected the branding, look and feel of the website - to smooth the recipients’ click through journey
The solution
The new template created by the email template design team in dotAgency uses the same brand colours and fonts as the company’s website, providing a very clean and business like layout.
The template is text based, ensuring maximum renderability, even in preview panes with images turned off. Special mortgage deal offers take prominence, with strong font colours driving maximum click throughs and enquiries.
Each article is presented as a teaser paragraph, driving readers through to the website to read the full story.
The results
The email was sent to an initial group of 24,000 contacts and drew a click-to-open rate of 30%.
Customers were happy too, emailing in to congratulate the Mortgages for Business team on the new look newsletter.
The next steps
Inspired by the power of email marketing when it’s done well, the Mortgages for Business team plan to work with the dotMailer account management team to start using split testing and triggered campaigns to increase click through and conversion rates further.
They also have plans in place for building their prospects database using a more proactive website signup strategy.
The last words go to Mark Ryan, for the dotMailer team:
Really well done guys, smashing job. You guys
rock!