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How a Stellar Campaign Nearly Tripled Industry Average Click‑Through Rates

Space ambassador Zach Thomas used Mailchimp's personalization tools to bring outer space into inboxes.

Published: September 26, 2024  —  Education and Training  —  Annapolis, Maryland, US 

It's no small feat to bring the importance of space exploration, quite literally, down to earth.

But for Zach Thomas, a volunteer with an ambassador program that supports space exploration with NASA, he did just that. For this program, the Solar System Ambassadors, the success of space exploration and affiliated science programs relies on everyday people getting interested in what's out there—or at the very least, supporting the scientists who are investigating it. 

That's why the Solar System Ambassadors program was launched by NASA more than 25 years ago. This public engagement initiative, led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), leverages the passion and expertise of over 1,400 volunteers throughout the US to communicate the science and excitement of NASA’s space exploration missions and discoveries to local communities.

Zach Thomas is one of those ambassadors, as well as a seasoned design and business strategist. He's spent 15 years making highly advanced scientific discoveries easy (and appealing) for anyone to understand. By bringing together his 2 roles—as a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador and marketing and user experience consultant—Zach used Mailchimp to help the Solar System Ambassadors program bring the wonders of space to email inboxes in a unique, compelling way.

"We let people know that they can trust in us by focusing on what's uniquely human in what we can provide and communicate."

The challenge: Re-engage lapsed audience members with a compelling, personalized campaign

Part of Zach's responsibility as a Solar System Ambassador is to keep his local community of fellow citizen scientists and space enthusiasts engaged with what's going on in space exploration. But of course, it can be tough to keep people's attention. 

So, in October 2023, he strategized a campaign that would win back the interest of audience members who had become disengaged. He tied that strategy to World Space Week and Asteroid Autumn—a fall science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education initiative—and he set out to create an advocacy campaign that would captivate his more distant audience members with the marvels of space. The key? Making space personal.

"I think it’s really important that we leverage our uniquely human elements to let people know that there is a person behind those emails and we are sending them to another person," he says. "We let people know that they can trust in us by focusing on what's uniquely human in what we can provide and communicate."

This campaign needed to be both innovative and personal, leveraging existing extraordinary research to provide a memorable experience for the recipients. He came up with an idea to send the audience AI-generated "selfies" from asteroids. But to make it particularly special, no 2 selfies would be alike—each would feature Zach pictured with a unique asteroid, each on its own path through outer space. 

The tools: Segmentation and dynamic fields for impactful personalization

Zach knew that when it comes to meaningful engagement, nothing beats email. So he turned to Mailchimp to create a campaign that would get space exploration enthusiasts excited about World Space Week and Asteroid Autumn.

Zach began by segmenting his audience, which is made up of people in his community who want the latest updates about space exploration research and discoveries. But for this campaign, he wanted to re-engage about 1,000 audience members who hadn't been responsive in a while. 

His plan was to recapture this segment's attention with personalized selfies—styled like a digital postcard—of himself with a unique asteroid. To create the images and content for the email, he combined the power of AI-generated photorealistic images and data from NASA's small body database to generate selfies and give details about each asteroid.

The next trick was to deliver a unique email to each recipient. To do so, Zach created a spreadsheet, in which each contact was assigned an asteroid from which they'd receive a distinct selfie. He collated each image and contact with the asteroid's corresponding data like name, size, and location. Then, he imported that spreadsheet to Mailchimp as a CSV and each of those data points were associated with the contact's profile. Then, he crafted an email template in which he used dynamic fields to pull in that information, as well as each audience member's name, giving each email a charmingly personalized feel.

The results: More than double his industry-standard clicks and an enthusiastic audience response

As numbers go, Zach's ultra-creative campaign did really well. It saw a 62.2% open rate, and also an 8.4% click-through rate, which is 2.7x higher than the benchmark for educational emails (3.2%).

But more importantly, he received explicit enthusiasm from the audience. People responded directly to the email with the awe he intended to stir in them. They were curious about how he'd generated such a cool, personalized email experience. The email also resulted in sign-ups for the upcoming space-related programs listed in the email. And prompting that kind of engagement is precisely what he hopes to accomplish in his role as ambassador.

To inboxes and beyond

Zach believes that it's the particularly human, personalized touch that Solar System Ambassadors can offer their followers that make their emails worth subscribing to. So he plans to continue segmenting and using data even more thoughtfully to keep his local, space-curious audience reading NASA news and signing up for events and programs. He encourages other marketers to follow a similar line of thought.

"My advice to people in thinking about personalization is to try to understand what unique value you can provide," he says.

He'll continue to count on Mailchimp to demonstrate to this audience that as their local space ambassador, he is still out there, sending news from the cosmos. 

Looking to personalize your marketing and boost engagement? Discover how segmentation can help.

  1. Zach Thomas is a 2024 Mailchimp Forward Awards winner.
  2. This content is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or approved by NASA, and any references to NASA are for informational purposes only.

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