Media & Print

The Client: ITN Source

, an ITN business, is the world’s leading aggregator of moving image content, housing over 700,000 hours of footage across a diverse range of collections including such well-known programmes as Coronation Street and Survival. It is adding around 15 hours of new material every day, its revenues have trebled over the past two years and continue to grow by 35% year on year.

Headquartered in London, ITN Source employs over 70 people globally with sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Berlin, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney and Tokyo. The business offers a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all kinds of moving image content and its customers work in a range of sectors that include television, film, corporate production, advertising, education, online and other creative media sectors.

Changing Times, Changing Brand

ITN Source is ITN’s fastest growing business, but this also brings challenges as its customers, especially newer entrants, are increasingly keen to be able to view footage online prior to purchase. In order to meet this need, ITN has made a major investment in digital technology and created the world’s most advanced online footage source. It is now beginning to digitise some of the most iconic film and television content that was previously only available on tape.

At 3pm on 19th June 2006, ITN launched a new corporate identity across the globe, one designed to project its emergence as a global multimedia content business and reposition the range of services it now provides. The company re-branded its six business divisions, each of them with an individual identity, yet all of them unified under the new global identity. As part of this global launch, ITN Archive became ITN Source, launching its own, new corporate identity while simultaneously unveiling a new-look website. Rocketseed became a key component to both communicating the re-brand and driving increased traffic to the website.

We spoke with Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source to get his feedback:

The success of the re-brand exceeded all expectations. During the Rocketseed pilot that we ran prior to its roll out across our business, we achieved click-through rates of 3%-5%, which we were already pleased with. Yet our re-branding emails had a click-through rate of 7% – all the more pleasing because it happened during a period normally quiet due to holidays.

In 2005, our main marketing channel had been advertising but Rocketseed now provides us with a lower-cost and highly-measurable marketing tool that enables us to engage customers and prospects in a more personal and interactive manner.

Rocketseed spearheads re-branding success for ITN Source. On the first day of the launch a bulk mail was sent to over 14,000 existing customers and contacts. Using Rocketseed the mail was personalised to each addressee and it also contained an animated image that communicated the move from the old brand to the new with a call to action to view the new website. Over the three-months that followed, every email sent out by members of the business contained animated banners with templates produced in several languages so that in each country consistency of brand message was achieved.

The ongoing digitisation of ITN Source’s content will drive further growth and efficiencies in customer service. This is a major change for the company that will bring enormous benefits to our customers. However, it is key to keep them informed of these changes, and we see Rocketseed as critical to the success of this.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

It was also people as well as process that contributed to the success of ITN Source’s rebranding initiative.

Rocketseed could not have been more helpful. They worked alongside us and our brand agency throughout the re-branding project, using their experience to recommend what we could do to optimise the results. Interpreting a new, changing brand guideline brief into a useable, compliant email design was quite a challenge but they delivered to a very tight schedule.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

Ease of Implementation, Ease of Use

ITN was approached by Rocketseed shortly before the re-brand and one demonstration was enough to convince ITN Source to conduct a pilot in order to prove the technology could be deployed, scaled and a measurable return delivered.

We reviewed Rocketseed alongside a similar tool linked to our CRM system. But it was soon obvious that Rocketseed was in a league of its own, offering greater scope and functionality, not to mention the hi-impact templates and use of visuals. Above all it had significantly greater flexibility and it is simple to use. We also tried to find other products to compare Rocketseed with, but in fact it is unique as we found nothing that can do all that Rocketseed delivers combined with the quality of service we receive.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

It took just three weeks from the first meeting to test Rocketseed using four (4) of its worldwide offices and multiple templates to determine optimal responses. There was very little work required from ITN’s IT team and, somewhat to their surprise, there were no hitches or obstacles – even when asked to integrate with ITN’s Salesforce.com CRM system, where Rocketseed recommended changes to workflow to optimise results.

Rocketseed is intuitive to use and the process of setting up new templates is extremely easy. It takes just a matter of minutes to make simple changes to templates. To date design work has been produced for us by Rocketseed, but we are looking to manage this internally in the future.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

Consistency, Continuity and Customisation Bring Success

Fully integrated marketing campaigns have been a major focus for ITN Source both prior to and since the re-brand, with Rocketseed now playing a central role.

Rocketseed is now an essential part of our integrated marketing strategy. It enables us to use, and effectively measure, our daily email communication as a key marketing channel. Using Rocketseed we can continually feed messages to our customers through our daily company email, but because it is non-intrusive it allows customers to click for further information only if they want to.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

The level of reporting and analysis available through Rocketseed provides additional ROI and marketing benefits.

Being someone who is very numbers-driven, it was essential for me to be able to measure the usage of Rocketseed and the behaviour of both senders and receivers of our email templates, I can now easily get statistics on usage of email and how our customers are responding to them.

Most importantly, we can use this information to customise our email messaging and banners to our different audiences. Since implementation, we have achieved more than 90000 brand impressions via our everyday emails resulting in more than 1600 leads. We know exactly where the interest comes from and what drives our clients to request further information. We are able to split test different messages without hassle delivering real-time results.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source

The Future

In October 2006, itnsource.com will begin to unveil the latest developments to its web platform that will make it the most advanced digital video source in the world. Customers will be provided with a comprehensive e-commerce platform enabling them to view some of the most popular footage digitally prior to purchase. They will also be able to set up project areas, select, share and order clips, and manage their own accounts.

The new website will be a key strategic tool in driving growth into new markets, particularly the US. With new footage being added constantly, Rocketseed will provide by far the most cost-effective and efficient means of updating customers on relevant new footage in a timely manner. The depth of reporting available and the flexibility of Rocketseed will also make it easy to target and tailor our emails so that we can promote different content to different customers – potentially even down to an individual level, which is extremely powerful. I certainly envisage using Rocketseed’s unique capability as a vehicle for developing our presence in the US and other key growth markets.

- Mark Tuban, Marketing Manager for ITN Source