Email marketing Case Study: + 300K email subscribers and 66% revenue increase

Our customer provides an experience to create fully customizable photo products like books, cards, calendars, wall canvases, and more. With their free online editor, you’re not limited to static pre-designed templates; you have the freedom to edit to your heart’s content.

Research done by Campaign Monitor in 2018 proves what we with User Growth keep on saying to our customers, email marketing is still the king of marketing with a 4400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent.

As a result, our client asked us to increase their email subscribers and build their marketing automation for their current and new to-be-acquired subscribers.

Challenges

Revive an email list only used to get promotional offerings instead of value-based content of around 500K subscribers and increase sales.

Grow the email list with new subscribers that want to get inspired and look further than just the next promotional offering, an audience with who a long-lasting relationship can be built.

Use email to engage the audience to grow monthly organic traffic on the site.

Solutions

Our customer built a considerable email list with over 500K subscribers over the years. However, this list was missing proper segmentation.

The list was only used to get promotional emails (higher probability of being flagged as spam). Without any segmentation, there was no way to reach customers at the correct point in their journey.

Our solution to the customer was based on three pillars:

#1 Segmentation of the list with personalization tactics to deliver more relevant content to their subscribers based on their geographic location, interests, purchase history, and much more.

#2 Change the content of the emails to become more than just another annoying promo email, but to inspire its readers. As a company, you always steal time, attention, and money from your competitors. These competitors are not always the competitors you might think of at first and as a result, this creates a potentially big opportunity with the content you’re creating for your customers.

For example, the competitors of Netflix are not just another set of streaming services but are competing with any other form of leisure and entertainment. By looking into these indirect competitors, we identified a niche set of content that we could use to inspire the readers.

#3 Grow the email list significantly with new subscribers in the target demographic, women aged 25-40, moms, and householders who love to get original memories of life’s most beautiful moments.

The Customer Journey through the AAARRR Funnel

#1 Awareness

Clients in their current database are unaware of anything that the client offered except the occasional promo. This could be seen with the open rates of the email being at 7.2% (industry average 10%).

By introducing segmentation in the list and changing the way the content of the email, we managed to increase the open rates to a stunning 50.2%.

#2 Acquisition

While email marketing can generate a solid return for any business, if you’re not growing your email list and do not have a robust email capture system, you’re missing out on this enormous potential.

To keep increasing the size of our client’s email list with relevant, high-value subscribers, we returned to the basics with their website.

Our client’s website had significant traffic but could not capture the audience to become part of their list.

We created:

• personalized Call-To-Actions (CTA’s) for each page on site
• designed pop-ups and slide-in, using time-based settings and on-site retargeting
• exit-intent pop-ups on high bounce rate pages
• specialized landing pages (using Unbounce) with relevant lead magnets

#3 Activation

Some marketers often mistake the word “automation” and consider marketing automation as a robot that repeats the same task every single time.

Email automation provides many opportunities to personalize email content and, more importantly, for our customers at a scalable rate.

75% of users expect a welcome email after signing up. If they don’t receive a welcome email within the first hour, 90% of subscribers go cold.

To activate your subscribers, you need to set up a proper welcome flow and check in regularly with all your subscribers.

Some of the processes we put in place for this client:

• Creating more value-based, instead of promo-based content
• Engagement with a welcome drip campaign
• Using social proof: embedding reviews from the customers’ Trustpilot
• Personalized campaigns based on the customer’s place within the customer journey, their interest, and milestones (like birthdays, etc.)

#4 Retention

Retention is the first step on your way to creating revenue.

The biggest impact here was made doing segmentation.

We:

• We gave our readers more control by letting them opt out of certain types of emails. This results in “soft unsubscribes” but gives higher valued, higher engaged audiences
• Retention emails to dormant subscribers, using friendly email copy we remind them of what they were missing
• Asking for reviews/referrals from loyal customers. Asking for reviews brings the relationship to the next level by deepening the relation

#5 Revenue

As much as 75 percent of all online shopping carts are abandoned midway. That’s a lot of sales falling through the cracks that businesses could recover.

Many things interrupt the conversion process. But the main one is that so many things compete for our attention at any given time. A simple Facebook pop-up notification could be the reason you lose a sale.

To increase revenue, we started to send targeted sales messages at the right moments in the customer journey.

We used a combination of email messages (abandoned cart emails) and pushed notifications on-site (using Push Crew) to increase.

#6 Referral

People are only okay with referring your business if they are truly happy and if you ask them at the correct time.

The best time to ask for referrals for our client is the moment the ordered product gets delivered to your doorstep.

We used the Viral Loops product as part of our solution to get as many referrals as possible. Think of sharing a discount code with your friends, etc.

Impact

• Grew the subscriber list with over 1,000 subscribers per country per day in which the client was active. Resulting in a 60% list growth in four months.
• Increased email open rates from 7.2% to over 50%
• An increase in revenue from email marketing of 66%