CASE STUDY
Over £90,000 Generated in 90 Days
Brand Story & Challenges
This email marketing campaign case study shows how our email campaigns generated £99,582 (over USD 135,000) in 90 days for our client in the fashion e-commerce industry. This client is based in the UK and specializes in athletic clothing.
When they came to us, this client already had email flows set up with Klaviyo. Their campaign emails, however, were not performing well. Their open rates and click-through rates were very poor, and only generated around 5% - 8% of their total store revenue.
We began working together in late September and implemented a new email campaign strategy in October. Our goals were to: increase revenue from email campaigns, build engagement, trust, and retain customers. This email marketing campaign case study shows how we achieved this, with email campaign revenue reaching 44% of total store revenue in November.
This email marketing e-commerce case study will focus entirely on campaign emails. If you want to learn specifically about email flows, check out some of our other email marketing case study examples. For a comprehensive breakdown of the 5 fundamental email flows, start here: $540,000 Generated From Email Marketing in One Year.
Before working with us
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90 Days With Budai Media
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Before Budai Media
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Open rates below 10%
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Email campaigns making 5% - 8% of total store revenue
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Campaign emails limited to Sales and Promos
After Budai Media
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Open rates consistently above 20%
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Email campaigns made up 44% of total store revenue in November
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Trust and Content campaign emails implemented and driving revenue
How We Helped
Campaign emails are crucial to every successful email marketing e-commerce case study. While flow emails are triggered by a customer action (abandoned cart, purchase, pop-up sign-up), campaign emails are sent at the e-commerce owner’s discretion.
Campaign emails are divided into 4 main categories:
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Sales - sales announcements and reminders
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Promos - product promotions
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Trust - emails that emphasize social proof, such as customer reviews
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Content - long-form emails on subjects relevant to the e-commerce store
Before working with us, our client was only sending out Sales and Promo emails. Incidentally, this is one of the first problems we identified.
Sending Trust & Content Emails
This was our client’s email marketing revenue in May, 4 months before they began working with us.
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Whilst they were making an impressive 36% of their total store revenue from email marketing, only 5% of that revenue came from campaigns.
Let’s take a look at June:
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Here, campaign emails made up 8% of their total store revenue. This is the highest percentage we saw from campaigns in the months before our client began working with us.
And July:
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Finally, here’s how their email campaigns performed one month before we began working together.
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As mentioned, a key problem in our client’s previous campaign strategy was that they were only sending out Sales and Promo emails.
We strongly advise against an over-reliance on sales and promo emails. If you don’t provide your customers with varied and interesting content, they’re not going to open your emails.
Low-open rates were a big problem for our client. If your open rates are below 20%, it damages your sender's reputation and reduces your overall deliverability. Before working with us, our client’s open rates were below 10% for campaign emails.
One of the first things we did, therefore, was to introduce Trust and Content emails into their campaign strategy.
This had a hugely positive impact on their open rates and revenue. Here are their results just one month into implementation:
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Right off the bat we raised email campaign revenue from 5% to 22% of our client’s store revenue.
Let’s take a look at our open rates:
As you can see, our Trust and Content emails (blogs, in this case) had an open rate of over 25%. In turn, this increased the open rates of our Promo emails. Moreover, while Trust and Content emails are more focused on building a relationship with your customers than driving immediate sales, they consistently generated high revenue.
In this email marketing campaign case study, some Content emails actually generated more revenue than Promo emails (see Blog 10.16 vs Promo 10.23).
Segmentation
Decent list segmentation is equally important to improving open rates and customer engagement. Before working with us, our client was sending out campaign emails to their entire list or very small segments.
As you’ll see in our campaign strategy for October, we segmented their email list according to engagement. If you want to keep your open rates above 20%, ensure that you segment your list according to open rates, clicks, and previous purchases.
This does not only improve your deliverability and overall list health, it allows you to warm up your list before big sales events.
Standing Out on Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM)
Much like most of our email marketing case study examples, our client’s BFCM campaign did exceptionally well. In November, we generated over £70,000 from email campaigns, making up 44% of our client’s total store revenue.
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Here are the campaign emails we sent out in November.
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Amid BFCM competition from other e-commerce stores, why were these BFCM campaigns so successful? Let’s break it down.
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Start With a Good Offer
Before you even think about sending out BFCM emails, make sure that you have a good offer. This client offered discounts of 30% - 50% storewide.
VIP customers received a further 10% discount on top of that. We’ll elaborate further on this later.
2. Start Early
As you can see here, we sent teaser emails as early as November 10. VIP customers also received two BFCM pre-announcements before everyone else.
This builds anticipation and customer engagement.
3. Take Care of Your VIP Customers
List segmentation is just as important during BFCM as it is the rest of the year. For this client, we classified customers who had purchased at least twice as VIPs.
VIPs were told about BFCM earlier than everyone else, had an extra 10% discount, and were granted early access to the sale.
This is a highly effective strategy. As you can see, the VIP launch email made the most revenue out of all the BFCM emails. Giving VIPs early access to the sale generated over £14,000 with a single email.
We cannot emphasize enough how important it is to reward customer loyalty. Making your customers feel special and appreciated generates very high engagement and revenue.
If you would like to learn more about VIP tier systems, check out our podcast episode with Roshelle from Yotpo: The New Way to Improve Customer Lifetime Value.
4. Send Several Emails
We sent 14 emails in November. 12 were directly related to Black Friday.
Use announcements, reminders, and urgency emails to get through to your customers as much as you can.
We also used BFCM as an opportunity to promo new product releases. This worked exceptionally well.
Outside of a Black Friday Context, we send out 12 email campaigns a month. Before working with us, this client sent out around 4 - 8 campaign emails a month. This lack of consistency was detrimental to open rates and engagement.
We send out 12 campaign emails a month. As you can see from the revenue made in our first 90 days of working together, consistency is key.
5. Use Urgency and Scarcity
If you have limited stock in the last few days of your sale, let your customers know!
Adding scarcity to your urgency emails gives your customers all the more reason to convert.
If you would like to learn even more about building an effective BFCM campaign strategy, check out this email marketing case study: How We Generated $72,300 for a Fashion Brand on Black Friday’s Week.
CONCLUSION
This email marketing case study demonstrates the importance of brand-customer communication to generating sales revenue and long-term revenue. A successful campaign strategy involves:
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Consistency
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A balance of Sales, Promo, Trust, and Content emails
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Good segmentation
Above all, you need to be thinking about customer retention. Your most loyal customers are the most valuable people in your e-commerce business.