An unused campaign, split three ways.

The inheritance

AZoNetwork is an advertising network for the science industry. JEOL USA held a paid campaign commitment with it: an email campaign reaching 13,478 subscribers, researchers and engineers who follow scientific instrumentation. The commitment predated me. A predecessor had arranged it and left it unused.

The decision

Using it well meant answering two questions nobody had answered: who are the 13,478 subscribers, and what should each of them receive? The easy path was one email to the whole list. I chose the harder one and segmented.

One generic email, written for no field in particular, would have reached everyone and landed for no one.

The three emails

I researched the audience myself and split it into three segments, then wrote one email for each. The first covered JEOL's electron-beam lithography systems, the JBX line, timed to land before EIPBN, that field's main conference. The second covered scanning electron microscopes, with a secondary call to action for the 120i transmission electron microscope. The third covered electron probe microanalysis, aimed at readers in metals and geosciences.

I wrote the ad copy from JEOL's internal source material, carried it through approval, and managed the content and specification pipeline with AZoNetwork. I also built a campaign tracker, so the work has a written record.

Why it mattered

All three emails shipped, and the commitment was used in full. A campaign that would have expired in a drawer instead went out as three field-specific emails, each written for the people receiving it. A geoscientist never had to scroll past lithography to reach the instrument that mattered to them. That targeting was the whole point, and it was a writing decision before it was a marketing one.

An unused campaign became three targeted emails, each written for the people receiving it.

Next

Next, building a marketing function from nothing and running it alone for four years: Zero to a marketing function.