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Aon Corp. plans to extend its CRM e-mail newsletter program to all of its 15,000 clients. The newsletter was initially sent as an experiment to 1,500 people.

The reason this tiny initiative — the responsibility of three men who squeeze time from their regular jobs to work on it — captured the attention of the corporation's decision-makers is simple. It works. It saves money. And the need for it may have become even more crucial after Sept. 11 when 176 Aon employees were lost in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Compared with the existing customer relationship management program — a 12- to 16-page paper newsletter that's mailed quarterly, the weekly e-mail newsletter NetNews “achieves an 88% savings,” said Steve Keogh, a director in Aon's technology and telecommunications group, who helped start the e-mail publication.

The CPM for the e-mail newsletter is $66 per thousand, compared with approximately $550 per thousand for the hard-copy newsletter, Keogh said. When NetNews rolls out across the company, the e-mail CPM will cost closer to $5 per thousand.

As important to Aon decision-makers, NetNews has strong CRM value. The 1,500-name database comprises 15% of a niche target that includes risk managers and other top-level decision-makers.

Executives and sales staff painstakingly built the list by opting in executives one by one at Aon-sponsored seminars, speaking engagements and face-to-face meetings.

“They were collecting business cards from a very niche group that is hard to reach from any other channel,” said Michelle Frost, vice president of CRM and strategic services at YesMail, which handles Keogh's e-mail program. “You just don't rent a list of those people.”

The opt-out rate for the nine-month-old newsletter is virtually zero. “The only time anybody has opted out is when they've been fired or were lost in the tragedy of Sept. 11,” Keogh said.

Best, though, is the viral success of the newsletter. Subscribers pass it along so often, Keogh believes the actual reader database totals about 10,000.

E-mail service providers can only track pass-alongs if the original recipient presses the “e-mail to a friend” button embedded in the e-mail. But most recipients use the “forward” button instead.

Some of the viral activity occurs when Aon brokers who also sign up for the publication pass it on to their clients or prospects. The nice thing about that is the brokers tend to personalize. “If a broker knows someone's company is involved in a patent infringement suit, the broker can send them a personal e-mail pointing out an item on that issue,” Keogh said. Then the client can respond to the broker immediately by e-mail.

Others regularly transmit the newsletter to a core group, like the broker who sends it to 75 clients each week.

Pass-alongs have also produced a solid bank of prospects; and 10% are qualified leads, according to Keogh.

NetNews was the brainchild of Keogh and two colleagues, Patrick Donnelley and Kevin Kalinich, directors in the same group, who were looking for a way to keep Aon top of mind.

“In our business, it's tough to turn over the relationship; it takes six months,” Keogh said. Yet brokers, pressed for time, only spoke with clients about specific business. The loss of so many in the New York office on Sept. 11 deepened the problem. Third-quarter profits across the company fell 48%, and new business dragged.

NetNews gives brokers an excuse to keep in touch — an easy CRM solution.

But, the content keeps their clients as subscribers.

In whatever spare moments they can carve out, the three directors search dozens of sites including Aon.com, looking for the sharpest news, research, white papers and other intelligence each week. “We try to find out what keeps risk managers up at night,” Keogh said.

After a couple of months of managing the database and transmitting the newsletter on their own through Aon's internal e-mail system, the men hired YesMail to automate the process, and add amenities like a subscribe button on Aon's Web site. Now, the group compiles the content and YesMail does the rest.

The newsletter consists of a TOC, six to 10 succinct, snappy headlines followed by a one-sentence summary of each item and a link that readers can click if they wish. An example: “Top 20 Security Vulnerabilities” and “Insurance Industry Solid After Attacks.”

“It is short and to the point; nothing gets in the way of facts,” Keogh said.

As other companies are approaching e-mail with sweaty palmed urgency after the hard luck that's hit direct mail in a down economy, Keogh's group has figured it out.

“I look at Aon as the poster child for this type of program,” YesMail's Frost.