CLIENT OVERVIEW
This client was from the UK and they were a health supplement brand with a mixed audience in terms of demography, but 80% of people were from the UK while the rest were from the US and Canada.
Their main goal was to start sending out high-quality newsletters to their audience and to be able to see the engagement level of their subscribers.
Interestingly, they didn’t think about email as a potential revenue source at the beginning, but I knew we could change their perception after a few weeks.
CHALLENGES
They already had an email list of 12,200 people, and most of them were previous customers or subscribers from a giveaway contest.
My experience with giveaway contents as a lead generation tactic was not good because they usually attract bad quality people, so the engagement level of the list was questionable.
It was important because the client insisted on removing the unengaged part and keeping the most engaged subscribers on the email list.
Also, the list had been emailed occasionally and irregularly before, so we had to ensure the engagement level of the subscribers first.
Plus, we had to lay out an all-around email marketing plan for this e-commerce store and find the best content for the audience.
OUR SOLUTION PLAN
With the Budai Media team, we decided to clean the email list first by using a few warm-up emails and then cleaning the list from those who didn’t open any emails sent to them.
The client provided us with the results of a previous survey, which helped us to see the demographics and psychographics of the audience.
Once we had a clean list, we had to ensure that the lead generation worked well on the website, and we started building our automated email sequences.
We also created different segments based on the engagement level because the client asked us to do that.
Finally, we started sending out weekly newsletters to the subscribers and we decided to test several different approaches in terms of email content in order to see which converted the best.
HOW WE HELPED THE CLIENT
1. Warm-up emails and list cleaning.
Our first job was to clean the email list of unengaged subscribers.
The client emailed the list irregularly in the past, so while some people opened and read those emails, most of them didn’t.
We sent out four warm-up emails to re-engage the email list with different content.
We sent out one email with scientific content, another one with the best-selling products, and then combinations of these.
The open rate wasn’t great, so we decided to draw a line in the sand after three emails and sent a fourth and last email to the non-openers saying goodbye.
Then, we deleted those who hadn’t opened any emails in the last 6 months.
As a result, the email list shrank to 4,050 people, but at least these were engaged.
2. Flows
We set up several automated email flows such as:
Welcome emails to new subscribers with a discount code presenting our best-selling products and directing them to our most read articles
Thank you emails and upsell emails to the new customers
VIP email to the best customers offering a lifetime free shipping
Abandoned cart emails
Browse abandonment emails
Win-back emails
And here’s my favorite: the reason why I love supplement brands is because if their engagement is high and they’re satisfied with the products, people will come back to buy again after a very predictable period of time (for example if there are 180 capsules in one package and they should take one per day, it’s child’s play to find out when to schedule an upsell email).
So, we set up upsell emails based on the size of the supplement packages and scheduled them accordingly.
3. Segmentation and campaigns
The client provided us with the results of a previous survey they did with the participants of the giveaway contest.
By interpreting the results, we got tons of useful information about the audience.
We noticed two very distinct types of subscribers.
One group was in their 20-30s and interested in general health and wellbeing and they were mostly looking for health supplements and vitamins while the other group consisted of older people above 60 looking for bone and joint supplements.
The audience was more interested in the quality and strength of the products and the results of the related scientific research than the price of the products.
Also, they expected promotional offers in future newsletters.
At first, we tried to segment the audience based on their age, and we expected significant results.
Interestingly, the two distinct groups of people mentioned above were interested in the same type of content and products.
This was a prime example of the fact that the results of a survey don’t always match the actual results of your marketing campaign. Many times, people act differently from what they said before.
Then, we separated the audience based on engagement levels. We wanted to create a highly engaged segment and a segment of less engaged people.
The next question was which emails to send out.
Again, we relied on the results of the survey.
We sent out emails containing content, emails with products only, and used different approaches.
After testing for months, it turned out that people reacted the best to those campaigns where we picked scientific articles from well-known sources educating people about the beneficial effects of certain supplements and we sold 1-2 products related to the content.
So, people got educated by the scientific content, then we encouraged them to take action in the second part of the email.
END RESULTS
After we cleaned the list and had 4,050 engaged subscribers, we activated the flow emails first and we could already see a huge improvement in the email revenue.
The real hit was the implementation of the manual campaigns.
As you can see below, 66% of the email revenue came from the campaigns after three months.
Another great result was the open and click rate of the engagement segment. As you can see below, the open rate was between 60-80%, which is way over the industry average (16.61%).
Three months after cleaning the list, we generated more than $36,000 within 30 days from email marketing.
This was a huge improvement for the company, but even more importantly, we finally found the most engaged fans of the brand.
CONCLUSION
A UK-based supplement company wanted us to clean their email list (12,200 people) and start sending out quality emails matching the values of the brand and meeting the interest of their mixed audience. They also wanted us to find the most engaged segment of their list.
As our first step, we sent out warm-up campaigns and then we unsubscribed those who hadn’t opened any emails in the last 6 months.
Secondly, we set up automated email flows to generate extra revenue for the store on demand.
Finally, we started sending out weekly newsletters to the audience containing educative blog posts and articles, and related promotional offers.
For the segment that loved reading the newsletter, we achieved 60-80% open rate with them which is higher than the 16.61% industry average.
Also, we generated more than an extra $36,000 in the third month of our cooperation.