In 2008, the remarkable film A Jihad for Love had one of the top three documentary openings in the U.S. Visible Shops made a significant contribution to the film's success with an email marketing campaign packed with compelling content.

With our client's newsletter, we only sent emails to individuals who signed up. We never participated in spamming, as we believe in the merits of building relationships, not merely lists of email addresses. We provided valuable content such as scheduled showtimes, news about the movie's performance at various film festivals, the director's personal messages to subscribers, and responses from online users, critics, and industry authorities.

Because of the socially important subject matter of the documentary film, we encouraged and facilitated readers to visit related social media websites. In the newsletters we linked to various online media, such as the official trailer on YouTube and the director's personal blog, as well as to Facebook Groups for networking purposes. We also provided a flyer download for printing and distributing on the streets. Subscribers were given enthusiastic reminders to forward the emails and to sign up for volunteering in a promotional team out on the streets.

Our methodology paid off. Since the first email launch, A Jihad for Love's had an average open rate of 33.43% and an average clickthrough rate of 27.2%. According to sources, marketing emails have an average open rate of 13.6% and an average clickthrough rate of 10-20%.* The movie opened to strong audience numbers, and it is currently slated for many premieres across the United States in the coming weeks.

*The average open and clickthrough rates can be found at: www.emailstatcenter.com/Segmentation.html and www.emaillabs.com/email_marketing_articles/average_email_click_through_rate.html.