Sports Reference Email Drip Campaign

A month-long email campaign to attract and remind students to apply to Sports Reference’s summer internship program.

Team
Kristiana Passeri, Maggie Walsh-Deaver, Jaclyn Mahoney

Skills
Email Marketing

Timeline
August 2024 - December 2024

Project Overview

After building a landing page for the Sports Reference website with information about its internship program, I wanted to find a way to keep prospective interns updated on the application process. I worked with the marketing team to build an email drip campaign that reminds students to apply to the program and provides tips for success.

Goals

  • Encourage students to apply to the internship program

  • Maintain a friendly, student-focused tone of voice

The Beginning

While we were drafting the “Ready to Apply?” section of the Interning at Sports Reference landing page, I thought about how the internship application is only open for a month-long period. If people wanted a reminder to return to the landing page or application once it’s open, how would they remember?

This sparked the idea of creating the email drip campaign. During the 11 months out of the year where the application is closed, students would be able to sign up for an email list that reminds them when the application opens.

The Process

Once the idea was shared with and approved by leadership, it was a relatively quick creation process from start to finish. We worked together to draft a high-level outline of each email, and then the exact copy. With marketing and executive team approvals, I built each email in HubSpot, using the Sports Reference brand elements adding the copy in blocks.

While my internship ended in August, I continued to work with the team throughout the fall to put the finishing touches on the campaign. We put all the emails together in HubSpot’s campaign builder and set the dates for launch.

Results

The campaign ran from December to January and had 349 enrolled contacts. The average open rate of all 5 emails (excluding the confirmation) was 44.12%.

The day that applications opened, the CTR from the email was 46.2%.

Testimonials

“We were very impressed over the summer by Lindsey’s dedication to her projects and work in the marketing department. Her work and research on social media, the intern landing page, and email drip campaign are legacy projects that we will use for years to come.”

-       Maggie Walsh Deaver, Executive Director of Marketing at Sports Reference

“Lindsey is a detail-oriented and creative marketer that would be an asset to any team. We worked closely on developing a landing page for Sports Reference's internship program, as well as creating an email drip campaign with recommendations for applicants and reminders to apply before the deadline. I was impressed by her dedication to these projects and during her internship at Sports Reference.”

-       Kristiana Passeri, Executive Operations Coordinator at Sports Reference