Barnes & Noble College | A Master Class in Email Engagement

The Challenge

Over 6 million students and faculty members from 800+ campuses nationwide rely on Barnes & Noble College (BNC), the nation’s leading college campus store, for their academic needs. But with so many audiences across different schools, time zones, and states, how can Barnes & Noble College deliver the right message at the right time? With a best-in-class email marketing program, of course. 

The Approach

Class is in session: With a track record of successful CRM applications, DEFINITION 6 was quick to design a highly personalized and dynamic email program, one that enabled Barnes & Noble College to tailor each message to every campus and segmented audience. Tapping into localized on-campus content and an automated cadence of emails, this strategic approach was executed across a national platform and has consistently resulted in higher click-through and conversion rates. The D6 team also overhauled and rebuilt 50+ brand new email templates to match the newly migrated bncollege.com.

Keeping the full customer experience top of mind, we expanded our strategy by adding SMS to the marketing mix. We’re making Salesforce Marketing Cloud the center of excellence for all BNC messaging, which brings all subscribers under one digital roof. 
 
Our team now distributes over 1 billion emails every year to Barnes & Noble College’s growing database of students, parents, and alumni. In addition to email-specific consultation, reporting, and analytics, our team implemented segmentation logic to micro-target specific parties with key messages. 

The Work

The Results

800 +

RETAIL STORES

6 M+

STUDENTS

70 %

INCREASE IN CLICK-THROUGH RATE

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