The Goal
The main objective was to improve revenue. They already had a good strategy in place, but some things needed to be improved to keep email revenue growing at the same time as top of funnel revenue.
222%
increase in campaign revenue
101%
increase in flow revenue
175%
subscriber growth
Challenges
Not enough campaigns
Although Sylvian Grant was sending campaign, they wanted to explore a more aggressive sending strategy while maintaining a high sender reputation and brand equity. They did not want to resort to discounts more than once a month and wanted to preserve the quality of their list.
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Strategic A/B-tests
Sylvian Grant had good metrics overall, but wanted to see where we could improve certain performance KPIs. It was important to establish goals and build A/B-tests in a way that we could benefit from them in the long term.
3
Flow Remake
A lot of Sylvian Grant's flows were older and did not fit the minimalistic and elegant brand aesthetic they were aiming for. Redesigning these flows had little chance of improving revenue very much, but was an important step to maintain a high perceived value with Sylvian Grant's customers
2
Segmentation
Sylvian Grant wanted to significantly increase the sending frequency to maximize revenue. With such strategies always comes the risk of losing list quality and future revenue to churn. Therefore, it was essential for us to segment very precisely, so that only people who were excited about the brand would receive all their emails, while others received a less aggressive amount of messages.
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The Strategy
We first set out to create a more aggressive sending strategy, which included establishing segments that were responding well to increased messaging. After testing different engagement signals (site activity, email activity, purchase behavior) with different timeframes for each, we established a 3-tiered segmentation plan which allowed us to boost revenue for a full year without sacrificing list quality.
1
While we were increasing revenue, we ran a series of A/B-tests on the signup form to understand what was most important to our customers. This allowed us to optimize the already good signup rate without changing the offer too much.
2
Our content strategy also contributed to the long-term viability of this strategy. As always, we wanted to lead with value and sprinkle occasional promotions in for an additional boost in sales. But the core strategy was always providing value to the customers. We tested many different concepts, including plain text emails from the founder with no branding at all, which did very well. Another successful concept was emails focused solely on reviews instead of products. Over time, we were able to improve campaign results simply by testing, observing, and following our observations.
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While working on the aspects of this strategy, we redesigned all of Sylvian Grant's flows to match their new branding aesthetic. This helped us keep a unified visual identity in front of Sylvian Grant's customers, which is particularly important for fashion and jewelry brands.
4
1-year results
123%
increase in email revenue
222%
increase in campaign revenue
101%
increase in flow revenue
175%
list growth
-41%
unsubscribe rate
-35%
spam complaint rate
Summary
Even though Sylvian Grant had a good email strategy when they hired us, we were able to increase their revenue with a strategy focused on sending more emails while preserving the list, and staying true to the brand identity. We were able to do this while keeping churn low, which led to the strong list growth and decrease in negative metrics you can see above.
Lessons Learned
Preserve your list
Being aggressive and maximizing revenue is good. But if you do it without careful segmentation and a good content strategy in place, you will also maximize churn, meaning sacrifice future revenue. On the other hand, if you do measure and adapt different segmentation levels depending on their interest and vary your messaging strategy accordingly, you can maximize your revenue with very low churn.
1
A good signup rate is not necessarily the best
Even if your signup rate is strong, you can often optimize it with subtle changes, leading to stronger growth in your email marketing revenue.
3
Set up A/B-tests correctly
Always know what question you are trying to answer before running an A/B-test. Pay attention to statistical significance and log data for future reference. If you do these things, A/B-tests are a powerful and comparatively low-effort way to optimize performance.
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Test different creatives
Test as many different angles and formats as you can. The concepts that worked the best often surprised us and, had we not tested them, we would have missed out on key information about our audience. Every test brings you closer to understanding how your ideal customer ticks, even if the test is unsuccessful.
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