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Movable Ink

ESPN’s NFL Draft

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This week’s most innovative agile email marketing campaign comes from ESPN. ESPN used multiple agile elements to create a one-of-a-kind user experience around the NFL Draft. To do so, they incorporated a dynamic countdown clock, real-time information on the current draft round, and live sports commentary from social media.

Kyle Frey from our Customer Success team collaborated with ESPN on this campaign, and gave his view on what made this email so successful:

Brooke Burdge, Marketing Manager: What stands out to you about the ESPN NFL Draft campaign?

Kyle Frey, Customer Success: This campaign transforms the email into much more than a one-time communication. Instead of using the email as a way to redirect their audience to various other online locations, ESPN was able to deliver real-time information about the NFL Draft in a single location. ESPN made their viewers’ interests a priority by giving them what they’re interested in, and making this easily accessible from the inbox.

BB: Can you give more detail about how the agile elements of this email worked?

KF: Sure. The countdown timer showed how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds remained until the next NFL Draft round. Once the draft started, the countdown timer changed to a call-to-action button where fans could click to watch the draft live. The clock then restarted after each draft round ended, counting down to the next round.

The main display showed the current draft pick in real time on the left, coinciding with live social tweets from NFL commentators on the right.

BB: What do you consider the biggest lesson from this campaign?

KF: The biggest lesson here is to envision your email campaign as more than a static way to remind or educate your audience. Email has the power to deliver something unexpected, and to create an engaging and enriching experience. ESPN did an incredible job of maximizing the full potential of email with this dynamic campaign.

Thanks, Kyle! To learn more about incorporating live content into emails, visit the Movable Ink Platform page.

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