The Total Economic Impact™ Of Cheetah Digital by Marigold

Improved Customer Engagement

Evidence and data. With Cheetah Digital by Marigold, interviewees noted improved customer engagement from more complete customer profiles, optimized send times, and improved recency and use of data. These benefits facilitated marketing teams’ strategic campaign decisions and drove revenue from online and in-store traffic.

• The head of CRM in the retail industry said: “Marigold helped us redo filters to ensure that we were selecting the people who were most likely to respond. We now go to customers who’ve purchased in the last six months but haven’t engaged with an email, for example, because otherwise those people would be excluded if they weren’t clicking. So that’s helped because those people — despite not being engaged with email — actually still purchase, and we get a really good response from them. [Marigold’s] deliverability team really helped us rebuild those filters to make sure we were picking up the right people [for that strategy]. So that has definitely helped with engagement. And through Cheetah Digital by Marigold, the engagement click rate is much higher on trigger emails.”
• The same interviewee also noted, “We saw an uplift when we used Cheetah Digital by Marigold’s send time optimization.” The interviewee indicated that the organization’s average order values in the US and UK had grown over the last several years.
• Interviewees experienced online and in-store traffic growth. The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “We know that emails help drive store traffic. We have well over 500 stores. Our efforts are extremely important in getting people into stores, and we know it’s effective because they’re going into stores. A couple of promotions that we have throughout the year require that customers show the offer on their phones in store, and they’re doing so.”  
• The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry explained that with Cheetah Digital by Marigold, their organization could access up-to-date and complete customer profile data and leverage insights to drive better decision-making for campaign launch timing: “The bounties will vary based on the day. So it could be a 10% increase because we’re able to deliver targeted messages, or it could be flat. It all depends on what’s happening at that moment. We found through email communications, we were able to really drive up the conversion rates on Sunday mornings because people are not at work, their activities are leisurely, and they’re relaxing — but it would turn out to be the worst day economically, because the bounties were much lower. So whereas we were able to drive up the engagement and get those conversions up, the monetization wasn’t there. We had to make an adjustment and move those people out into a higher bounty day, where the conversions may not be that high. We’re constantly playing that game of driving conversions up on the highest bounty days.”
• Interviewees leveraged Cheetah Digital by Marigold’s custom reports with conversion metrics and email heatmaps to drive engagement. The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry said: “We do get a lot of data back from Marigold on consumer engagement with emails — where they’re clicking, what they’re clicking, the time they’re clicking — we get all the activity in a feedback file. We’re able to bring that in and pump that into our own internal analytics dataset.” Insights from Cheetah Digital by Marigold enabled interviewees to customize content for targeted segments. The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “It really made a huge difference. We were able to do more segmenting and get more of a direct connection from our systems to the Cheetah Digital by Marigold systems to update various metrics about the customer, like last purchase date, what channel they’re purchasing from, where they live, even the stores that they purchase from. So all that information helps us in our segmenting efforts. We are using all of their various tools to drive engagement, like dynamic content and segmenting.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 3,000,000 subscribers before it adopts Cheetah Digital by Marigold.
• The average number of marketing messages per subscriber is 156 (i.e., three per week), resulting in an annual volume of 468,000,000 messages.
• The composite organization increases its click rate 33% with Cheetah Digital by Marigold, from 1.5% to 2.0%. This increase results in additional traffic of 2,340,000 visitors.
• With a sales conversion rate of 25%, the composite has 585,000 incremental orders with Cheetah Digital by Marigold.
• The average order value for the composite is $125, and its operating margin is 3%.

Risks. Results may not be representative of all experiences and the benefit will vary based on the following variables:

• The number of subscribers, average email cadence per subscriber, and deliverability in the prior environment.
• Online and in-store sales conversion rates.
• Operating margin and average order value.
• Data and analytics use to fuel marketing and campaign strategies.
• Engagement with the Marigold deliverability team.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.6 million.

Increased Customer Acquisition

Evidence and data. Targeted welcome journeys, nuture programs, and dynamic content with Cheetah Digital by Marigold enabled interviewees’ organizations to deliver messages that left lasting and memorable impressions with prospects and new customers. As interviewees supplemented their direct mail efforts and in-app notifications with email marketing through Cheetah Digital by Marigold, they boosted redemption rates, grew subscriber lists, and increased new customer demand.

• The head of CRM in the retail industry said that their organization established relationships with prospects and new customers faster using Cheetah Digital by Marigold and built different journeys to target each group: “Our welcome program is when you sign up for email, but you haven’t purchased. So we have a welcome journey where the objective is to make that first order. Then, the  nurture program, where you’ve placed your first order and we’re getting to know the customer and preparing them for the second order, is definitely part of building that relationship. We have a whole series of emails that are five days, seven days, and 21 days, etc. We’re building that relationship with customers through the content. We tell them the story of our brand. We showcase products that we hope are of interest to them based on what they’ve purchased in their first order.”
• The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry noted an improvement in integrated marketing conversion rates: “We can now tell customers who are new to the brand about our key value propositions. We are in their inbox to get them back for [in-store] visits. In this [welcome] program, if we only send a postcard, we get around a 10.9% redemption [of the welcome discount]. But if we send an email and a postcard, we get 18.9% redemption. And if we send a postcard, an email, and an app message, we get 20.6% redemption. People still use that postcard to physically redeem in many cases, but we always double the redemptions just by adding an email message.”
• The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry noted that with Cheetah Digital by Marigold, “The sales trend and the compounded annual growth rate for email was 10%.” Due to email marketing, the redemption rate for discounts for the organization grew between 10% and 15% compared to direct mail, which was less timely for promotions, and, notably, more costly for testing discount effectiveness. The interviewee added, “We’re seeing a 9% year-over-year increase in demand.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite’s annual subscriber growth rate with Cheetah Digital by Marigold is 10%.
• Total subscriber growth with Cheetah Digital by Marigold totals 300,000 in Year 1, 330,000 in Year 2, and 363,000 in Year 3.
• The average number of marketing messages per subscriber is 156 (i.e., three per week).
• The click rate with Cheetah Digital by Marigold is 2.0%.
• The sales conversion rate is 25%.
• The average order value is $125. The composite’s operating margin is 3%.

Risks. Results may not be representative of all experiences and the benefit will vary based on the following variables:

• The number of subscribers, average email cadence per subscriber, the role of direct mail and in-app notifications in the marketing strategy, and email deliverability in the prior environment.
• Online and in-store sales conversion rates.
• Operating margin and average order value.
• Customer acquisition marketing strategies, such as promotions and welcome discounts, and testing these strategies.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.8 million.

Improved Subscriber Retention

Evidence and data. Cheetah Digital by Marigold helped organizations retain subscribers by reengaging inactive or unresponsive contacts, improving deliverability, and empowering customers with the choice to opt down rather than opt out of marketing messages.

• The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry described exploring new opportunities to engage customers: “Cheetah Digital by Marigold works well and we’ve partnered with Marigold to ensure good deliverability. We engaged with their deliverability team more recently and that has been a help to our business in that we’ve identified universes where we can go deeper into our file and still be productive and generate money. Before that, we were a little bit concerned that we might end up in spam if we went too deep into our file. So that has been a plus for us in terms of contribution and reengaging customers.”
• The same interviewee described reaching out to contacts that the organization was previously cautious of contacting due to deliverability issues, particularly with specific inbox providers. The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “[Marigold] gave us a tool to see our inbox placement for all the different emails and how they’re doing for different domains. Somebody’s watching it for us every day and then calling issues to our attention. Before Cheetah Digital by Marigold, we had an issue with a specific domain, so we cut back. We didn’t even touch that domain, even if the customer had purchased with us in the last year. But Marigold helped us improve this. That was a universe that we weren’t even touching before because we didn’t think it was safe. We were leaving money on the table.”
• The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry said: “One of the problems we’re leveraging Marigold to fix is attrition. They’re helping us by giving more relevant communications. We’re able to send fewer communications to each and every user. So we’re able to drive down the attrition rate and keep contacts in our file longer, which drives up our audience size. If you think about it, we’ve got a steady stream of people coming into our site and registering, and they’re on our site for X period of time. Let’s say they have an 18-month average lifespan or a 12-month average lifespan. If we extend that lifespan, slow the attrition, and keep the front end of it the same, we’re able to grow the daily audience.”
• Interviewees also remarked on the value of giving email subscribers the option of opting down instead of opting out. The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “If [customers are] getting too many emails, they can change their preferences. So if they click to unsubscribe, we say, ‘Are you sure? Would you prefer one or three emails a week?’ So we use Cheetah Digital by Marigold for that to maintain our file. And we have seen a lot of people opting down as opposed to opting out. I would estimate that 20% choose to opt down as opposed to out.”
• The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry said: “I think the biggest measure is getting those opt ins, the value being an incremental $10.00 per subscriber in the first year. Seeing if we can get them to reengage is an interesting quantifiable learning for us.” The typical return visit for a new customer is 23% to 24% for this interviewee’s organization.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Prior to Cheetah Digital by Marigold, the baseline subscriber loss for the composite is 0.21% due to opt outs and 0.62% due to deliverability issues.
• Improved deliverability with Cheetah Digital by Marigold improves retention 50%. The volume of marketing messages for retained subscribers due to improved deliverability is 156 per year (i.e., three per week).
• Retention due to opt downs (versus opt outs) with Cheetah Digital by Marigold is 20%. The average number of marketing messages received per subscriber opting down is 52 per year (i.e., one per week).
• The click rate with Cheetah Digital by Marigold is 2.0%.
• The sales conversion rate is 25%.
• The average order value is $125. The composite organization’s operating margin is 3%.

Risks. Results may not be representative of all experiences and the benefit will vary based on the following variables:

• The rate of subscriber loss in the prior environment due to opt outs and deliverability issues.
• Online and in-store sales conversion rates.
• Operating margin and average order value.
• Engagement with Marigold’s deliverability team.
• Customer acquisition marketing strategies, such as promotions and welcome discounts, and testing these strategies.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $73,000.

Avoided Hires From Campaign Labor Efficiencies

Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that Cheetah Digital by Marigold enabled their organization’s marketing teams to execute campaigns more efficiently and improve results compared to the prior environment.

• The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry said: “Campaign creation with Cheetah Digital by Marigold has saved us time. I don’t even know if we would have considered or had the capacity for the growth strategies that we now do without a developer. We would have needed an internal hire or a contractor if we didn’t have Marigold.”
• The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry described improving digitally appropriate content while reducing resources and expenses: “Historically, we just created the online version of our direct mail campaigns, and that’s the way it had been for a real long time. Leveraging Cheetah Digital by Marigold, we’re set up to have our content library there and use the automation to create the email in a much less laborious manner. We’re about 25% to 30% more efficient. We’re able to get the content created and executed in a much more targeted manner. We have reduced about 75% of our previous resources and are delivering more segmented, targeted content. So we improved the targeting while reducing the internal expense.”
• This interviewee continued to detail the impact of easily creating dynamic content with Cheetah Digital by Marigold: “We’ve reduced the quantity of campaigns to [particular] users because before, we were sending out, let’s say, four campaigns to 100,000 users, each one segmented by 25,000. Now we’re able to send the single campaign to that group of users and target the content and have the campaign leverage more data, so based on historical conversion metrics from that particular user, we’re able to stream the content in the redirect URL for the appropriate user.”
• The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry described being able to keep contact lists updated via automation versus manual processes: “We’re able to create an active audience very easily in the tool. For example, we can easily identify people who’ve purchased in the last year, or clicked in the last year, or signed up in the last six months. And then we set it up as a calculated field. So that is refreshed every night, and every day when we send out a new email, the tool is pulling in the most current audience. That was impossible before.”
• The same interviewee also described the ease of tasks like summarization and campaign set up: “We’re able to measure the impact of a campaign on business through the course of the day, actually. And then the next day, we’re able to summarize it all. The main advantage of the tool is the ability to target customers and get all that information. And then obviously, campaign set up is easy. The tool allows us to do dynamic content blocks in a simple fashion, whereas before it took longer because we had to set up one whole campaign for one thing and another whole campaign for another thing. Cheetah Digital by Marigold has definitely been doing a great job in terms continuing to advance their tool and then share what it does with us.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 10 content strategists, writers, editors, designers, and database administrators and analysts involved in campaign creation and execution.
• The average fully burdened annual salary for an employee involved in campaign creation and execution is $105,000.
• The composite gains 50% labor efficiencies with Cheetah Digital by Marigold.

Risks. Results may not be representative of all experiences and the benefit will vary based on the following variables:

• Marketing department size.
• Marketing strategy evolution and Cheetah Digital by Marigold feature use.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.1 million.

Maximized Savings From Retired Solutions

Evidence and data. Interviewees mentioned decommissioning previous point solutions  and reducing professional services hours after switching to Cheetah Digital by Marigold. In doing so, interviewees saved prior solution licensing costs and benefited from greater time efficiencies.

• The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry described their organization’s prior tool taking 4 to 5 hours to process an email sent to the subscriber list. They said: “But now, our email campaigns on Cheetah Digital by Marigold get out within 15 minutes, and it’s still about 2 million emails. So that impacts our business because we’re able to send the emails to the customers’ inboxes before the store is open to help drive store traffic. And we also send more emails now than we have in the past. Before, we weren’t sending even one email a day. It was probably four or five a week. And now, we’re sending two or three a day.”
• The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry described needing to find the right expertise: “When I joined [the organization] seven years ago, we didn’t even have email as a channel to engage with customers. We were very heavily reliant on direct mail. When we instituted email, we used a provider that we had already been using for part of our direct mail solution and some of our other digital solutions. I would say we grew out of it. As we were growing email, we needed [a provider with] better systems and solutions.”
• The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry said, “We were with another ESP for a number of years prior [to Cheetah Digital by Marigold], and we learned the prior tools better than that previous vendor knew the tools themselves.” Switching to Cheetah Digital by Marigold opened their organization to product expertise.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization retires one solution or third-party service.
• The average cost per solution or third-party service is $400,000.
• The rate of retiring a solution or third-party service is 50% in Year 1 and 100% in Years 2 and 3.

Risks. Results may not be representative of all experiences and the benefit will vary based on the following variables:

• The number of point solutions used in the organization’s prior environment and the licensing costs of the solutions.
• The organization’s use of third-party professional services before and with Marigold.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $732,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Shifted resources from direct mail and catalog to email. Interviewees largely described their organizations as reliant on direct mail and recognized the growing role of digital campaigns in supplementing and reinforcing customer communications. The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry described a previous direct mail campaign that worked well to reengage customers and the team’s plans for digital implementation. The interviewee said: “We used to do a one-to-one direct mail program based on visit behavior, so we would know if they went to a different vendor and could send the customer a message to reengage them. In that lapsed program, 48% of the volume we sent was direct mail because we have a huge database of 30 million customers compared to 6.3 million for email. So we have a lot of upside for growth. That’s why we’re so focused on growth and getting more people into that [digital] channel.”
  
  The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “What’s harder to measure but extremely important is that email allows us to contact our most loyal customers at a moment’s notice with a new offer. With catalog, you can’t do that. You can’t get into somebody’s mailbox the way we can through email. You can’t target them directly. You might experience payout there, but you have to rely on a customer to come see you or your signs in a store. They have to drive by it. But email allows us to get right to the customers. It’s hugely important.”
• Deepened relationships with the Marigold team. All four interviewees noted the remarkability of their relationships with the Marigold team, describing them as responsive, supportive, and knowledgeable when identifying and addressing customer needs. Interviewees highlighted how valuable guidance from the Marigold team helped streamline processes and unlock new opportunities to drive business impact.
  
  The head of CRM in the retail industry said: “If there’s ever an issue, I’m really confident that Marigold is straight on it. They will pick up any issues and do absolutely everything they can to resolve them. So I have a lot of confidence in them, and that’s really important. They have the campaigns and the creative teams available to us if a big project comes up. We’ve used them before. We had a rebrand a couple of years ago and had to rebuild so many emails with the new logo, font, and styling, and we were able to make use of [Marigold’s] service to act as an additional resource to our team.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Cheetah Digital by Marigold and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Venturing into new channels and features. Some interviewees noted that their organizations had negative experiences with SMS as a marketing channel using previous tools but they were reevaluating the option with Marigold. Interviewees also described exploring mobile push notifications. The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry said: “We are talking about moving our push notification messaging or app messaging over to Marigold. That’s a conversation we’re having soon. We haven’t used SMS as a marketing channel to date. We had a bad experience well before my time, back when it was still pretty new, to the point where the head of the company said no SMS. We’re working with Marigold to help build the case for why we should reconsider.”
• Growing customer loyalty programs. Interviewees highlighted the potential of loyalty programs with dynamic content and personalized offers through Cheetah Digital by Marigold and expressed excitement about relationship marketing with Marigold Grow and Marigold Loyalty. The senior director of email and SMS marketing in the retail industry said: “We have point balances that we’re conveying, personalized at the loyalty level. It would make a ton of sense to be working with Cheetah Digital by Marigold on this to target our customers. The loyalty program includes retention efforts and, to a degree, gross efforts. Our loyalty program targets customers that generate about 80% of our total company demand. We have a very rich loyalty program and very loyal customers. So we’re excited about that with Cheetah Digital by Marigold, but that is new.”
  
  The head of CRM in the retail industry said, “We did a trial with loyalty, and it did uplift spend per customer. We’ve taken the learnings from that and identified that there are certain things we can do within overall retention strategies.”
  
  The vice president of marketing and communications in the personal care industry said: “We will launch loyalty, and we will launch it with Marigold. We have a path to loyalty that we’ve been working on. [It’s] very important and [we’re] very excited about it.”
  
  The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry said: “We have an internal loyalty program. It’s interesting. I just had Marigold in last week to demonstrate their loyalty platform to my team. They’ve got a pretty robust one. I like it. I’m exploring it more deeply.”
• Unlocking the “art of the possible.” Interviewees expressed interest in achieving additional success using new features introduced by Marigold. The vice president of digital operations in the direct marketing industry said: “I engage [Marigold] to help me with what’s called ‘the art of the possible.’ We have one way of thinking, and we’ve been very successful with that one way of thinking. But times have changed; technology has changed. So I often have sessions with the Marigold team as well as select members of my team to talk about the art of the possible: ‘Here’s what we’re doing today. How do we make this more dynamic?’ We take it in bits and pieces, in small chunks. I found trying to do a global revolution tends to scare people. So we’re now taking the approach of selecting the function and [figuring out] how we can automate it. How can we leverage this new technology that Marigold offers? We have this data. How do we want to leverage it within our email platform and email communications? How can I get into the platform with actionability so that I can alter the content, stream, or communications plan?”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A).