The challenge: A newsletter campaign for an online store selling eyewear
For opticians, the summer season is crucial. They all try and outdo each other, each wanting to offer the biggest discounts. Often this comes at the expense of their margins.
In the fashion segment, marketing newsletters have an average open rate of 12% to 15% and a click through rate of 3%. This was an obstacle we needed to overcome.
In such a competitive environment, how do you showcase your customers products that are not discounted?
What steps did we take?
1. We segmented the client database
- By the average purchase value, where we divided clients into cheap/premium brand shoppers and regular/special offer shoppers (Black Friday, Christmas, sales, etc.)
- By gender due to wording and product offer in the campaign
- By brand loyalty
- Fans of luxury brands needed no introduction to premium collections. Instead, we reminded them of a prior purchase and reassured them that they have excellent taste and really know their way around this segment
2. We chose a fashion icon
With premium brands like Cazal, Chrome Hearts or Maybach, customers aren’t necessarily concerned about the amount of discount offered. They want to feel ‘premium’, they follow trends and fashion icons and are happy to pay that bit extra.
So what would happen if local’s most famous rapper sent everyone an e-mail? What if he addressed customers by name and gave them some advice?
For the purposes of this article, we’ll call our influencer the King of Pop.
3. We prepared the campaign and approved the wording of the content
The famous influencer’s Instagram videos helped us tap into his characteristic linguistic style. He approved the second version of the campaign wording without any hesitation.
Our aim was to send a campaign in his name, not in the name of DUOS opticians. In addition, we stripped the email campaign of the graphic elements usually found in a standard template.
This way, it met all the standards of a native email campaign. We wanted people to think that the real King of Pop was writing them a personal email.
4. We sent out 6 versions of the campaign
Customers who shopped luxury ranges and brands were complimented by the rapper on their good taste. Women were recommended models worn by his equally well-known partner.
We also sent the campaign to the rest of the database so that we could compare the effect of segmentation.
What is key when it comes to native newsletters?
No one will get to see the content, unless they open the campaign first. Therefore, focus on the subject line, the time of day that the campaign is sent out, and the sender themselves.
The subject line should be as engaging as possible. Contradictions, lists or bizarre wordplays work well. Instead of using your brand email address, try changing the sender to a board member, a call centre team member or a celebrity.
As a result, some email service providers will categorise your campaign as main mail rather than ads and promotions (giving you an additional extra open rate).
This is because the filters might read the sender’s name as a specific person, and when combined with campaign content that is heavily textual (with few images), the campaign gets a higher rating.
The results of DUOS online store’s newsletter campaign
Thanks to well-known influencers and campaign segmentation, we were able to increase online store sales by 74% month-on-month.
Normally, the average open rate of newsletters in the fashion segment is around 15%. With native emailing, where the King of Pop was the sender, we pushed the open rate up to 55.9%.
The click-through rate of the newsletter was 5.3%. Engagement also increased by 272% compared to the previous month.
Push sales beyond any boundaries
Have you got a quality product, but it’s sales could be better? The problem can lie in incorrectly set up campaigns, brand differentiation or even the UX of the site.
If you can’t seem to get to grips with it, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
