Jul 29 2010
Best Practices for Cross-Promoting Sister Brands
As marketers increasingly create niche brands or become consolidated within ‘parent’ companies, it may seem like the ideal opportunity to cross-promote products and services across ‘sister’ brands to reach prospective customers, expand subscriber lists and increase revenue.
Unfortunately, sharing subscriber data across brands has the potential to negatively impact reputation, which can adversely influence inbox placement for all of the sending brands. This practice may not only generate increased complaints but, if executed improperly, could also result in lower engagement and higher unsubscribes due to subscriber frustration or irrelevancy of sister brand outreach.
Here are some tactics to positively introduce subscribers to ‘sister’ brands:
- Implement a branded welcome email series that familiarizes current subscribers with related brands. This serves to boost interest as well as brand recognition of the sister brand. Furthermore, this association will begin the process of persuading subscribers to click-through and check out other content. Be sure to include all brand logos in the footer or elsewhere in standard messaging or cross-promotional messages as that will further increase awareness and credibility for all of your affiliated brands.
- Place the unsubscribe link at the top of the cross-promoted marketing message to encourage subscribers to opt-out of co-branded promotions rather than complain to their ISP or unsubscribe from all emails from that ‘sender.’* Complaints are the most important consideration by ISPs in their filtering decisions, so providing subscribers a highly visible unsubscribe helps to maintain low complaint rates and a good reputation.
- Utilize clear and conspicuous language at the point of email consent so that subscribers have realistic expectations of potential cross-branded communications.
- Refrain from changing the ‘from’ address of the originally subscribed-to brand. Any other ‘from’ address will surprise recipients and increase complaints.
- Direct recipients to a preference center when they join or leave your program and utilize it to expose subscribers to other brands’ subscription options.
- Ensure that the cross-branded emails include a significant promotion that provides value and encourages future receipt of these types of emails. Alternatively, use some existing space within an email to solicit subscriptions to an affiliated brands email list.
As a proud ‘parent’ brand, the desire to showcase the attributes and advantages of an entire ‘family’ of brands is not only natural, but a recommended opportunity. Guiding this introduction through best practices is vital in maintaining a positive reputation amongst ISPs in addition to fostering high-quality experiences with consumers.
*In our next edition, we’ll address some of the privacy and legal issues with managing co-branded and affiliate email campaigns.
I wholeheartedly agree with these comments. Cross brand marketing is often a very good source of revenue but if not done right marketers will negatively impact the customer experience and likely see list attrition down the road. Marketers who are looking to sell across brands should also seriously consider:
- Not only should the from name and address in a cross brand promotion be that of the list owner but the list owner should also “introduce” or “present” the other brand within the body of the email.
- Clearly define the relationship between all the brands. If the relationship is not known among customers the reaction to cross brand emails will be worse.
- Promote your other brands to recent buyers. As part of your thank you series to buyers, suggest other products that they may also like from your sister brands.
- In addition to adding signups for your other brands during the My Account set up, the email sign up, and your preference center, consider adding an option to opt out of sister brand mailings.
The Gap brands are a great example of how to do it right. They list the different brands across the bottom of the website and their emails, they allow you to sign up for their other brands on the email sign up page and they have clear cross brand mailings.
[...] If you are cross promoting a sister brand, use the subject line to introduce the sister brand and do not change the ‘from’ address of the originally subscribed-to brand. Any other ‘from’ address is likely to increase complaints. For more information on cross promoting sister brands, please see our recent post on promoting sister brands. [...]
[...] expertise is on display in a blog post she published on her companys Email Responsibly blog, titled Best Practices for Cross-Promoting Sister Brands. Kelly provides would-be email marketers with a set of dos and donts that are very helpful in [...]