CASE STUDY
How we made mid-6-figure extra monthly revenue with emails in a unique niche
Brand Story & Challenges
The brand sells customizable pet products mostly in the US and they already had the product-market fit, their front-end sales funnels were also on point, however, they didn't have their email marketing and back-end sales funnels set up properly yet.
They already had many customers, their list was 96.000 people and more than 30% of them were customers.
They had a few emails set up but the strategy wasn't a great fit with their front-end sales funnels. Also, one of our biggest concerns was that they used popups to generate website leads and it converted very well but the quality of the leads was questionable.
The store had 6% of its revenue from emails in July 2019 and our goal was to increase it incrementally every month.
Andreas König, eCommerce entrepreneur and consultant
My business partner and I got a referral from a mutual friend with Daniel and his team.
We wanted to increase our revenue using emails because we didn't have time and energy to learn and implement it properly.
The Budai Media team changed the way we think about email flows and campaigns.
When we started Q4, they generated a 6-figure amount using emails and tripled the sales from our website popups.
No hand-holding required, these guys know what they're doing.
Results after the first 9 months
Before Budai Media
- 6% of the monthly revenue from email marketing
- 16% subscription rate from popups but highly unengaged subscribers
- Irregular email newsletters and campaign revenue
- 96,000 email subscribers with low engagement rate
After Budai Media
- 33% monthly email revenue during Q4 of 2019 and 24% email revenue after 9 months of working with the client
- New branded popups and 289% purchase rate increase of the welcome flow from mobile traffic and 464% from desktop traffic
- Over 115,000 email subscribers with high engagement rate
- $231,000 extra revenue from email marketing in one month (November 2019) and $1.19M extra revenue after the first 9 months
How We Helped
First of all, we reviewed the email software account of the client and we found a few emails and content in them which we could use later. They already had a brand voice, the emails were sent by a cute dog and his owner. If you use the story of your brand, it always engages your audience.
They also had a few flows set up such as the abandoned cart flow and short new customer flow. We decided to completely renew them because we changed our approach. We decided to use longer flows with more emails involving content, trust-building emails, and cross-sell emails as well.
The welcome flow had a relatively high conversion rate and not everyone was on the same page about this if we should still use it or change it. This welcome flow was connected with a "lucky wheel" popup which is quite infamous among marketers.
The "lucky wheel" popups usually have high conversion rates (at many stores, higher than anything else), however, it attracts many bad leads because people give you their emails in the hope of a free product or a huge discount, they roll the wheel, and if they don't get what they expected to get, they never buy or open any of your emails.
(So, even if you use a similar tool, make sure that you manage expectations properly before they give you their emails.)
The list was close to 100K people because of this but we had doubts about its quality. We planned trust and win-back emails to test the engagement of the list.
HOW WE CHANGED GOOD POPUPS TO GREAT POPUPS
When we reviewed the "lucky wheel" popup it had a crazy 16-17% conversion rate! Once someone subscribed, they received emails to get them to buy in the store.
As you can see, 2.9% of the new subscribers purchased from the first email and 3.9% overall from the welcome flow.
Our goal was to have fewer subscribers but a higher % of customers from the welcome flow.
Why?
Your email list will be cleaner, you will have a lower unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, your engagement, and list quality will be higher and ultimately, your inbox rate will also be much higher.
We expected a lower conversion rate for our 3-step popups where we tell them what they get if they provide us their emails but actually the conversion of these popups was between 8%-25% as you can see.
You can see the conversion rate of the old "lucky wheel" popup on the left and the conversion of our new popups on the right
The next step was our welcome emails which were shorter and punchier than the ones before.
As you can see in the screenshots, 10% of the new subscribers purchased from the first email right away from mobile traffic while 16.7% from desktop traffic.
Regarding the whole welcome flow, 18.1% of the new subscribers purchased from desktop traffic and 11.3% from mobile traffic.
It means that we could increase the conversion rate by 289% on mobile and by 464% on desktop!!
See the purchase rate of the old welcome flow connected to the "lucky wheel" popup in the first column on the left and see the purchase rate of our new flows connected to our new popups in the second and the third row on the right
How were our popups different?
We used three-step popups, at first visitors had to hit the 'Yes' button on the popup if they want to subscribe. If they don't want to they could choose the 'No' button either.
In the next window, they could give us their email and the third modal window was a thank you window where they could see the discount code.
OUR STRATEGY SETUP
Besides changing the popups and the connecting welcome flows we also revised the existing flows and created more ones with more approaches and emails.
This is the list of email flows we created:
- New customer upsell flow
- Returning customer flow
- VIP customer flow
- Win-back flow
- Welcome flow - Mobile traffic
- Welcome flow - Desktop traffic
- Abandoned cart flow
- Abandoned cart One-Click Upsell flow
- Browse abandonment flow
Since these flows are based on the behavior of people, they outperform other email marketing tactics.
The email list of the client contained 96.000 emails when we started working together, however, a big part of this was unengaged because of the previous lead gen method.
Since the client hadn't sent out any email campaigns since the last Black Friday, at first we turned on the automated email flows which usually have high engagement. Therefore, we warmed up the email infrastructure to avoid a low inbox rate.
After one week, we started sending out our first email campaigns without any sales intent. We surveyed people, we sent out positive customer reviews and even jokes..
Then, we measured the inbox rate and it was 85% which was relatively good. So, we decided to send the first sales email campaigns.
We could define a highly enthusiastic segment of subscribers who are OK to buy many times again and again to their loved pets. We also found a big segment of subscribers who were inactive.
We sent them a few win-back email campaigns with the best-selling products. These segments brought in sales and the campaigns had high open and click-through rates so we decided to monetize this segment again and again before we really identify the most unengaged subscribers.
We tested different approaches, products, engagement and we achieved great results during Q4 with a record number of sales.
RESULTS
In July, when we started working together, only 6% of the monthly revenue came from email marketing which was $35 773 in that month. As you can also see in the first screenshot above, it was almost only from automated flows because the team of the client didn't have time to implement email marketing.
Then, we joined the team and helped them to find a new and better way of lead gen, we created new and more effective flows, and finally, we took care of the high inbox rate and we created email campaigns.
Due to our efforts, we could achieve a 6-figure email revenue in October which meant 25% of the monthly revenue of the store
In the first screenshot, you can see where we started our work at and below, you can see our results in October and November
And why is this a great number?
Because the profitability of email marketing is much higher than on traffic from paid ads. The business pays only for the email software and the wholesale prices of the products. No ad cost, at all.