case study
Fedex’s Global Email Platform Delivers
Exceptional Speed, Agility and Cost Efficiency
Acxiom client
FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) provides a broad portfolio of
transportation, e-commerce and business services to
customers and businesses worldwide. With annual revenue
of $33 billion and 275,000 team members, the company
consistently ranks among the world’s most admired and
trusted employers.
Challenge
At FedEx, email is the number one way to communicate with
customers and prospects, from a welcome message for new
account holders to promotions to delivery confirmations.
Executing consistently across more than 220 countries and
territories depends on smooth, efficient email architecture.
In 2006, FedEx’s global operating companies and regions
operated independently with their respective email programs,
each employing its own vendors and tools. It could take weeks
to execute one communication from conception to launch.
Moreover, without a uniform approach, the company could not
readily take advantage of economies of scale or easily enforce
standard email best practices.
In turn, FedEx marketers started looking for ways to
standardize email across the globe.
“If the whole world used one platform, it would be easier to
drive strategy and share learnings across the regions,” said
Drew Bailey, Marketing Principal at FedEx.
Solution
FedEx has long partnered with Acxiom for email execution,
leveraging Acxiom Email Marketing Services platform as well
as the firm’s industry leading expertise. Together, the two
companies have built a high-functioning email engine that has
become a best practices model for email today.
Established in North America, the platform serves as the
foundational point for executing all email. Following success in
the United States, FedEx aggressively moved all of its global
operating companies onto the proven email platform, ensuring
a centralized, consistent approach for all communications.
By moving from multiple vendors to one global agency,
FedEx reduces its overall email costs and standardizes
its policies and processes. When strategy demands quick
communications to prospects or customers, the company
now has unprecedented speed and agility across all regions.
FedEx also taps into Acxiom’s knowledge of region-by-region
differences in relevant privacy and spam laws.
On top of that, FedEx better executes on its goals of
communicating more efficiently with customers through digital
channels, further reducing marketing spend.
Customer
FedEx
Approach
•
•
•
•
Email marketing
Campaign management
Customer acquisition and retention
Messaging and offer personalization
Solution
Acxiom provides the platform, processes and
people that execute customer and prospect email
communications in a consistent, best practices
manner across all global regions.
Results
• The company now conceives and launches email
communications more than
40 times faster than previously measured.
• Consolidating multiple global email vendors cut
more than half the email marketing costs.
• Deliverability jumped from 70 percent to
92 percent in the first year, to more than
96 percent this year.
• Open rates improved by 75 percent in the
first year and have continued to improve more than
one percent every year.
• Click rates also improved by 400 percent
in the first year and continue to improve every year.
• The percentage of unique opens that
are from mobile devices has also nearly tripled in
the last two years.
“It’s a huge advantage to have a single email platform,
because now we’re in a position to manage customer touches
based on priority and value to the company across all
geographies and all lines of business,” Bailey said.
Approach
A global agency, Acxiom supports FedEx regions through
offices in Nashville, New York City, San Francisco, London
and Singapore. To date, Acxiom has delivered more than
244 million email messages for FedEx, an average of more
than 7,000 every hour. The first quarter of this year alone,
FedEx sent approximately 21 million emails, or more than 232
thousand per day.
The email platform serves as the foundation for FedEx
to automate innovative, personalized touches across the
customer lifecycle — maintaining subscriptions, user profiles
and a rich database of customer insight. With each campaign
and interaction, Acxiom collects details on responses, allowing
FedEx to build more complete customer views. This effectively
requires a marketing central nervous system that learns and
responds based on real-time, multiple-input connections.
Likewise, processes prove to be just as valuable as
technology. Working with Acxiom, FedEx developed a
process whereby all marketing professionals simply fill out
an online request form for an email communication, ensuring
consistency and improving time to market.
Campaign success
The platform and joint Acxiom-FedEx relationship power
day-to-day email as well as several major campaign
successes. In 2008, when competitor DHL announced an end
to delivery services in the United States, FedEx responded
with its “Choose Purple” email campaign within 48 hours —
demonstrating the real-time capabilities of the email platform.
In the “Think FedEx First” global campaign, FedEx aimed
to attract new customers and increase sales from current
customers by establishing FedEx as the first option for all
their shipping needs. The company encouraged sign-ups for
savings and rewards programs. Once customers responded,
FedEx dynamically replied with personalized messages based
on what action a customer took — with minimal FedEx or
Acxiom hands-on involvement.
Another successful program, Customer Service Innovation
(CSI) sends customers tailored offers after they have sought
assistance from a FedEx customer service representative.
The strategy extends interaction with current customers after
they have engaged in conversation with reps on the phone or
chat, and then follows immediately with a customized offer via
email. With high open and click-through rates on those offers,
it’s a win-win for FedEx and customers.
Such innovations come out of FedEx’s collaborative
relationship with Acxiom. The firm serves as a dedicated
and unwavering partner, with the account team collaborating
closely with FedEx for continuous analysis and improvement
of all aspects of its email delivery. This mutual relationship,
focused on common and measurable goals, is a critical
component of FedEx’s success to date.
“With Acxiom, we don’t feel it’s about getting the next job or
contract, but about adding value as a partner in the short term
and long term,” Bailey said. “We really appreciate the honest
and accountable relationship.”
Results
At an organization as large as FedEx, measurable change
can be slow. But the combination of the right technology,
processes and people have brought about rapid innovation
for FedEx’s email marketing. Plus, marketing professionals
themselves drove the global initiative, which then caught the
attention and buy-in of executives.
Having one global email platform and one agency enabled
FedEx to achieve greater global collaboration, consistency
of quality and efficiency. Now, the company gets email
campaigns out the door — from conception to execution —
more than 40 times faster than before, a significant decrease
in time to market.
“We now have a process everyone can use to ensure speed to
market,” Bailey said.
Beyond that, a single platform eases training and expedites
changes in practices globally, with one change benefiting all
geographies. As a result, marketers have more time for higherpriority responsibilities.
“FedEx is spending less time internally focused and more time
focused on customer engagement and improving the customer
experience,” Bailey said.
On a global level, FedEx eliminates redundant infrastructure
costs and maximizes cost-per-mailing (CPM) volume
discounts. Across North America, Latin/Central America,
EMEA and APAC, FedEx estimates that it cut its email
marketing spend in half.
Moreover, FedEx improves the deliverability and response of
its email. Deliverability jumped from 70 percent to 92 percent
in the first year, to 96.8 percent in 2012. Open rates improved
by 75 percent in the first year and have continued to improve
more than one percent every year. And click rates improved
by 400 percent in the first year and continue to improve every
year. The percentage of unique opens that are from mobile
devices has also nearly tripled in the last two years. FedEx
attributes much of the initiative’s success to the strength of
the Acxiom account team — a relationship that is ultimately
consistent with FedEx’s broader goals.
“All email communications are synchronized, making for a
better customer experience,” Bailey said. “In that regard,
the global email platform does help us achieve our vision of
operating independently and competing collectively.”
Next steps
Originally envisioned and driven by FedEx marketing
professionals, the global email initiative has gained significant
backing from company executives. Now, Marketing has
support to take the platform to the next level. This unified
platform gives FedEx a springboard to expand its digital
marketing capabilities through new extensions like SMS and
transaction messaging in half the time and cost it would have
taken previously.
“Acxiom is privileged to be working with such a smart,
progressive and partner-oriented client in FedEx,” said
Michael Biwer, managing director technology vertical. “They
have built a foundational global platform upon which they will
continue to expand capabilities and position themselves for
the ever-changing digital landscape. Most impressive is how
tirelessly they push themselves to improve how they serve
their customers through a highly empowered team.”
FedEx attributes much of the initiative’s success to the
strength of the Acxiom account team — a relationship that
is ultimately consistent with FedEx’s broader goals. “All
email communications are synchronized, making for a better
customer experience,” Bailey said. “In that regard, the global
email platform does help us achieve our vision of operating
independently and competing collectively.”
EMAIL METRICS
Emails
Delivered
Delivered
Year
Pushed
Rate
Count
Unique
Open
Rate
Unique
Mobile
Opens
Unique
Click
Rate
Unique
Mobile
Open Rate
Mobile Opens
As Percent of
Unique Opens
2010 82,687,74392.0% 76,044,137 14.1% 927,041 1.4% 1.22%
2011 97,019,232 95.0% 92,190,426 17.0%2,920,084 1.9%
3.17%
2012*21,358,895 96.8% 20,678,699 19.1% 906,676 2.0% 4.38%
*As of April 2012
COST SAVINGS
Activity
Migration to single vendor
Consolidation of e-news
% Savings
70%
60%
8.6%
18.6%
22.9%
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