DMA Gold Winner — Best Customer Retention for Canon CRM

For two years I was Canon Europe's sole CRM copywriter — writing about photography and imaging, and framing their professional and consumer camera product lines (as well as their printers) in the very best possible light.

In that time, my writing helped Canon Europe achieve a world-class, award-winning comms solution. My emails were recognised as Gold Winner at the 2021 DMA awards by achieving open rates of 35%, click-through rates of 3.7% (doubling the industry benchmark for both metrics) and generating €460m in sales. In short, we set the industry standard on how to retain customers via great relationship management.

 Stylish content, Strategy aligned

As a seasoned copywriter and comms strategist, I was able to hit the ground running and get to writing copy that impressed from the outset. Canon's messaging style — clean, creative, and sharp — came very naturally and in light of this, I was quickly integrated into VCCP's core strategy team to consult on the best way to approach long-term, multi-email campaigns and to ideate on cool ways to integrate my written content with bespoke visual assets.

Our strategy came to revolve around a holistic understanding of customer lifecycles, crafting personalised communications that guided customers from initial interest to loyal advocacy. By leveraging data-driven insights and integrating them with creative storytelling, we managed to create some world-class targeted campaigns that encouragingly resonated with different segments of Canon’s audience.

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A simple starting point, with a quality finish

Good copy always starts to take shape in a good — but simple — place. The humble copy doc, whether it's in Microsoft Office, Google Suite or anywhere else, might not look as flash as your average designer's heavy duty graphic applications. But it does the trick when it comes to crafting clean, clever and development-ready content.

For Canon, we established a baseline format for each and every copy doc to conform to — with consistent rules on tagging and labelling. That way, designers, developers, and client stakeholders, could always be confident as to the type of documentation they were being asked to process or review. Plus, a consistent effort was always made to neatly version control each template in order to track, or push back on, client change requests or queries.

A methodology for tonal consistency and evaluation

During my tenor with Canon I developed a brand new set of Tone of Voice guidelines revolving around three core principles. Regardless of the comms channel in question, copy needed to be consistently VISIONARY, INNOVATIVE and BOLD.

While document gave good context as to how this should be applied by other brand copywriters, I was interest in going further and wanted to see if I could establish a correlation between adherence to various ToV principles and metrically identifiable email performance.

To do this, I created the Canon CRM copy scorecard — a comprehensive content matrix designed to break email content down into granular copy components and score how well they gave nuanced expression to our three main themes.

This then amounted to a baseline score that allowed us to evaluate what kinds of content strategy best lent itself to various brand messaging beats. Reassuringly we did establish a pattern of better open and clickthrough rates tallying with copy demonstrated to be me consistently on brand. Other emails within the organisation (written by third party agents without formal ToV compliance) scored demonstrably lower in ranking and performed far worse in terms of revenue generation.

This proves what most good copywriters know — but can't always prove. Good copy is worth good money, and content that reads well also likes to return on its investment.

Impact

The campaign’s execution involved a multifaceted approach, combining inspirational content with tactical promotions to drive both engagement and sales. Key communications streams included:

1. Activity Communications: These communications kept Canon top of mind by inspiring customers and enhancing their proficiency with creative content that ranged from tips and challenges to product announcements.
2. Lifecycle Communications: From welcoming new customers to encouraging product upgrades, these communications were triggered by specific customer behaviors and milestones, ensuring relevance and timeliness.
3. Conversion Communications: Focused on driving purchase decisions, this stream leveraged endorsements from brand ambassadors and special offers to convert interest into action.

Throughout these campaigns, our content was tailored to deliver not just messages but also experiences that fostered a strong connection between the customers and the Canon brand.

Outcomes:

The results of these meticulously crafted campaigns were remarkable:

• We successfully managed communications for 33 markets, adapting content to meet local preferences and requirements.
• The campaigns achieved an impressive average email open rate of 35%, nearly double the industry benchmark.
• The click-through rate stood at 3.7%, more than double the industry standard, highlighting the compelling nature of the content and the effectiveness of our targeted approach.

Conclusion:

The DMA award-winning campaigns for Canon underscored my expertise in leveraging content strategy and copywriting to forge meaningful relationships between brands and their customers. By marrying technical proficiency with creative acumen, I was able to drive significant business results, demonstrating the power of well-crafted copy in the world of digital marketing.