Case Studies

Xero and Campaign Monitor

We sat down with Charlotte Hinton from Xero to find out how they're using Campaign Monitor to automate their email marketing in some really clever ways.

Xero has got to be the first online accounting system that's been called "fun to use". Tell us all about it.

"It seemed like a pipe dream to make accounting as addictive as a video game, but it's happening."

Business is fun. Money is fun. Why is accounting so boring? It doesn't need to be. One of the main reasons that businesses fail is their poor cashflow management. They're bad at cashflow because they don't do their accounting because it's boring, tedious and painful.

Make it fun and it will get done. People will be happy and their businesses will do better.

Playing with money is something we've all done since we were little children. Many adults still play with money in video games all the time. We saw an opportunity to bring some of that fun into accounting.

It seemed like a pipe dream to make accounting as addictive as a video game, but it's happening. As you say, people are always commenting that Xero is fun, sexy and even addictive.

What made you choose Campaign Monitor for your email marketing?

Xero is a SaaS-based (Software as a Service) company, so we thought it would practical if we looked at using a SaaS-based newsletter application, rather than the ‘old-school' desktop application approach. We believe in practicing what we preach and that required something cross-platform.

Mailbuild and Campaign Monitor came highly recommended by a couple of people in our design team – Brock Abernethy an Interaction Designer and Philip Fierlinger the Head of Design. So I decided to incorporate them into the mix of applications I was evaluating.

The only drawback at the time was that Mailbuild had the client-based stuff I needed to send campaigns, but Campaign Monitor had the reporting detail that I also required, so then the waiting game began while we waited for the products to be merged.

Eventually (cue: glorious, angelic chorus), I got the announcement that it happened and that I should login and check it out. I did and Campaign Monitor soared to the top of the stakes and became a must-have product.

Campaign Monitor has a slick interface, it's easy to navigate around, full reporting at a click of a button, and from what I've experienced so far with the software and the team, they are willing to listen to what other functionality might be needed to make our experience better.

You guys are doing some fantastic things with our API. Care to share some of the ways you're using it?

"I'm able to automatically target specific groups for newsletters, campaigns, offers, events and invitations."

We use the API in Campaign Monitor to keep it in sync with our internal sales / CRM / ticketing system (known affectionately as BOSS).

Fletch Brown, one of our Senior Developers, created a scheduled task that automatically takes our new subscribers added within BOSS/Xero and adds them to a subscriber list within Campaign Monitor. Fletch also set up a custom multi-select field that indicates the type of customer they are, for example; NZ Subscriber, Global Prospect, UK Partner, etc. Using this custom field I'm able to automatically target specific groups for newsletters, campaigns, offers, events and invitations.

The scheduled task sends only updated records to Campaign Monitor to keep the amount of data passed between systems to a minimum.

Our next step for the API, is to pull the list of all opened emails back into BOSS. The email description will then be added to the communications history of each of our subscribers, so we can see what communications they've received from us.

The next planned upgrade to the process is to update the custom field defining the user type automatically. This would allow for any new user types to be available in Campaign Monitor as soon as they are created in our other systems.

Any email marketing lessons you've learned that might help others?

I've learned that having the right email marketing tool at your fingertips makes all the difference.

It's great being able to log into Campaign Monitor – from anywhere, have all our templates there ready to go and any tweaks/changes that need to happen to the design can be done quickly and easily.

Having ready access to reporting has helped us clearly identify where the interest lies in our communications and given us insight into when is the best time of day (first thing in the morning, before 8am) to send out communications to maximise click through – this knowledge is really empowering.

Sample campaigns sent by Xero

Given the amazing design quality of the Xero site and application, it's no surprise that their emails are equally beautiful. Here's a small sample of the campaigns they've been sending through Campaign Monitor of late.

Event invitations

Free trial follow ups