Email Experience Council Launches Email Marketing Program for Women's Bean Project

February 13, 2008 — The Email Experience Council (eec), the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) email marketing arm, today announced that it has helped the Women’s Bean Project, a Denver-based nonprofit, successfully design, create, and launch a new email marketing program from scratch. The effort, which began last summer, was part of the eec’s annual E-ality Focus project.

"One of eec’s goals is to demonstrate the incredible impact email marketing can have on a business," said Jeanniey Mullen, eec founder. "I can think of no better way than helping nonprofits like the Women’s Bean Project use email to accomplish their social mission of empowering women in need."

The Women’s Bean Project is dedicated to helping women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment, providing them with work and life skills through training in the organization’s gourmet food production and e-commerce business. The Women’s Bean Project produces bean soups, salsas and meat rubs, cookie and brownie mixes, and other sweets that are sold online and through several distribution channels, including Kroger stores and Ten Thousand Villages.

"We know our donors and buyers are using email to make donation and purchase decisions, but we didn’t have much bandwidth to take on building out this capability," said Tamra Ryan, executive director of the Women’s Bean Project. "That’s why the Email Experience Council’s help has been so timely and important. We are able to move from the dark ages of sending one-off messages through Outlook, to having email as an integrated part of our overall communications plan. Thank you to the eec!"

The Women’s Bean Project’s inaugural email newsletter has already generated an impressive 32 percent open rate and a 15 percent click-through rate. What’s more, email subscribers are spending twice as long on the Women’s Bean Project’s newly re-launched website as non-subscribers, which indicates that emails are already generating brand engagement.

Holly Woodbury, the Women’s Bean Project’s director of development, will be providing further details about the project and the results during a session today at the inaugural Email Evolution Conference, which concludes this afternoon at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego. Woodbury will be joined by four email marketing professionals and eec members, all of whom have been working as volunteers in this effort.

"It’s not often that you get to build an email program from scratch, and so the opportunity and challenge for us as a team has been a great learning experience," said Stephanie Miller, E-ality Focus project chair and vice president of strategic services for email performance company Return Path. "Not only did we get to work with a great nonprofit that is doing so much good, we got to learn from each other — a chance to see different perspectives from folks with varied backgrounds as well as different company cultures. I’m delighted at the depth of the work that has been done and really honored and proud to be a part of this volunteer team."

The team working on the project consisted of more than a dozen eec members from Return Path, Blue Hornet, Future Integrated Marketing, Blackbaud, Merkle, Industry Mailout, LeapFrog Enterprises, Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, and ExactTarget, which is providing the Women’s Bean Project with complimentary email delivery services.

The eec’s work with the Women’s Bean Project builds on the charity work provided to the Ryan Andrew Keiser Memorial Foundation, the 2006-2007 E-ality Focus project recipient.

For those interested becoming a member of the Email Experience Council and joining its E-ality Focus project, please contact Ali Swerdlow at ali@emailexperience.org.

About the Email Experience Council (eec)

The Email Experience Council (eec) (www.emailexperience.org), the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) vertical working group that is focused on the email marketing industry, is a global professional organization striving to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and advocating its importance in business, and its ROI value. The eec is committed to regularly conducting a broad series of email initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle, and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through Marketing Roundtables. The eec members are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients, and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices.

About the Women’s Bean Project

The Women’s Bean Project employs women from backgrounds of chronic unemployment and poverty, and helps them develop the work and interpersonal skills needed to function independently in the workplace and community. Through employment in the food manufacturing business, these women earn a steady paycheck, develop solid transferable work skills and strengthen self-confidence and personal responsibility. Sixty-five percent of the nonprofit’s revenue comes from its product sales. For more information, or to receive product samples, call 303.292.1919 or visit www.womensbeanproject.com.

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