You can’t imagine a business card or company letterhead without a logo and branding material. Yet in this branding age so many companies are allowing their most common mode of business communication, email, to be sent out totally unbranded? In an era dominated by online communications, email is now king.

Launching A Brand In Every Way Possible Online 

Direct Broking is one of an increasing number of companies that has already started recognising that the hundreds of emails they send out on a daily or weekly basis are a rich and untapped source for communicating their brand differentiation.

The company that has pioneered online sharetrading in New Zealand is now leading the way in harnessing the power of digital marketing solutions to reach and market to its customers.

The company runs New Zealand’s most popular online trading website, www.directbroking.co.nz, having consistently won Hitwise awards in the business and finance - stocks and shares category based on the number of visits to its sharebroking website. Its products and services include DIY online or telephone share trading, share alerts, fixed interest, wholesale dealing and investments.

To leverage its large client base, the many thousands of daily email communications with them and the enormous activity on its website the company decided to use a total package of digital marketing solutions to launch its new branding last year.

The company turned to leading digital marketing solutions provider, Calcium Software www.calcium.co.nz , to launch its new brand in every way possible electronically.

Digital marketing tools “leave no room for error”

“From day one of the new brand launch, every email from any individual within the company correctly used the new brand – Calcium saw to this – it leaves no room for error,” Direct Broking Marketing and Communications Manager Gillian Beresford says.

Previously, the company did not have the right tools to make the most of marketing online to clients and its database was in need of major ‘cleaning’ though email addresses had been collected.

Gillian Beresford adds, “We had an issue with ‘bulk’ email and Calcium’s 1-2-many tool was able to give us an immediate solution without having to wait until the database had been cleaned up,” she says. “It is vital within our business to be able to send communication to clients and subscribers in a timely fashion and Calcium’s tools allowed this with ease.”

Calcium Software is a young, fast growing and creative technology company focused on delivering world-class branded email solutions backed by strong web analytics.

Direct Broking uses three Calcium Software solutions: mailPrimer 1-2-1 (for your everyday email marketing needs), mailPrimer 1-2-many (for personalised mass email marketing such as newsletters, promotional campaigns, competitions) and Siilhouette (for tracking customers’ online behaviour on your website.)

The first task for Calcium Software was to create strong brand awareness across all Direct Broking online communication channels, both daily email communications, email newsletters and on the company’s website – a complete online package using mailPrimer 1-2-1, 1-2-many and Silhouette.

Creating cross-selling opportunities

The next step was to leverage this branding by creating cross-selling opportunities, for example to promote specific investment funds and for share alerts.

Gillian Beresford says Direct Broking wanted to achieve consistency, education and brand recognition and also the ability to promote its products and services in a timely and efficient fashion coupled with the technological grunt to change its product and service information quickly and easily.

Calcium’s MailPrimer 1-2-1 solution allows for branding to be carried on day-to-day emails with 99.9 per cent delivery, mailPrimer 1-2-many offers email newsletters with an average of 96.9 per cent deliverability (much higher than the industry standard of 80 per cent) and world leading web analytics.

As Direct Broking relies heavily on email as a communication tool to reach its customers, if 20 per cent of emails the company sends out remain undelivered it would result in significant business losses.

“The  products have very little ‘limits’ and compliment each other, with mailPrimer 1-2-1, 1-2-many and Silhouette, Calcium offering a suite of solutions,” she says.

Transforming plain emails into dynamic web pages

mailPrimer 1-2-1 is powerful, flexible and easy-to-use. It ‘primes’ plain text emails by placing them inside customised templates. It transforms plain everyday, every emails into dynamic web pages.

By using mailPrimer in its day-to-day email communications, Direct Broking has brought its corporate identity online without limitations, creating cross-selling opportunities, tracking its emails, how recipients interact with the email and its links, thus fully and easily profiting from its daily communication with them.

In addition, mailPrimer is a unique email marketing solution that transparently and automatically leverages the implied permission built into any organisation’s daily email exchanges.

By applying branding and product and service information to daily emails, using smart HTML and smart delivery Calcium Software has

extended the power of e-marketing for Direct Broking.

Gillian Beresford says using the suite of Calcium products to consistently promote the company’s brand and products and being able to ‘back up’ each specific product advertised on everyday email communications, through an e-newsflash  and email newsletter “we can get the same message across to clients but in three different ways”.

Results: a sharp spike in website traffic

The solution delivered brand and product awareness directly and personally to Direct Broking clients. By using mailPrimer, Direct Broking has had a direct increase in web traffic and in the number of inquiries it receives about products and services advertised on the company’s daily emails, email newsletters and the web.

For example, Direct Broking sent a campaign out promoting investment funds backed by the branding in the company’s daily email communication. By measuring traffic on its website it was found that there was a 100,000 page view spike in traffic specifically in relation to the campaigns going live.

Furthermore, the company received 200 requests for information relating to the investments promoted within eight hours of the campaigns being sent.

The Calcium solutions delivered the Direct Broking brand on all the company’s online communications, everyday email, email newsletters and website quickly and effectively and at the same time provide a low-cost alternative to traditional direct marketing campaigns.

Gillian Beresford says this has strengthened the Direct Broking brand and established the company as a market leader in online share trading. “The first port-of-call for fast and effective campaigns will now be via multi-level email marketing and advertising,” she adds.