Having worked together since 2018, we’ve hit a successful breakthrough with one of our longstanding clients by generating as much as 14% in additional email revenue for them. That’s 7 figures in email marketing revenue for this eCommerce beauty brand. ForChics is an eCommerce beauty brand committed to offering sustainable and cruelty-free products for women everywhere. They focus primarily on eyebrow and eyelash growth serums and they wanted to scale their business.
Their email marketing game currently stands at 7-figures, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
eCommerce Brands as Advocates for Sustainable Lifestyles
A lot of up and coming eCommerce brands are taking the sustainable route as they tie in their advocacies with their products or services. And it’s timely too! If you have a largely Millennial audience, there’s plenty of untapped opportunities when it comes to drawing their attention and business.
As they’re poised on the brink of their prime earning and spending years, Millennials are dominating the global eCommerce conversations from product research and strategy to marketing.
Luckily, catching the attention of the largest generation in the history of the United States’ according to Forbes, isn’t rocket science. Turns out, social responsibility and environmental friendliness are some of the key drivers behind their purchasing decisions. They’re more likely to shop based on social instinct, affinity to a brand’s promise and influence of their personal connections. This is why user-generated content was such a powerful tool in 2020 to leverage word-of-mouth user benefit and building loyalty.
So back to our success story, ForChics knew they had to build a healthy brand image and strengthen their customer relationships so their mission and advocacy could reach more people. With a large millennial-centric following, they knew that a strong email marketing strategy could be the next instrumental step to meet their revenue goal.
True enough we were able to help them generate an additional 7-figures in email revenue alone.
Ideally, email marketing should be the source of around 20-30% of an eCommerce store’s total revenue. But before we partnered with ForChics, their email revenue was only at 5%. However, this number eventually moved up to 20%.
We implemented four main strategies, which were all pulled from our years of experience working with over 200 eCommerce stores. The good thing about these strategies is that the overarching theories behind them can also apply to your very own eCommerce store.
Strategy #1: Diverse and advanced segmentation practices to target the customers’ pulses
Segmentation allows for more relevant messages that are more in tune with what your customers want. In fact, segmented campaigns can drive up to a 760% revenue increase. Prior to working with us, ForChics was only sending to two segments—buyers and non-buyers, resulting in 1% of email revenue. This was definitely a far cry from maximizing the true revenue potential of their email lists.
Here’s what we did to attain the 7 figures in email marketing revenue. We created new and more advanced segments based on a combination of website and email engagement metrics. We weren’t just looking into who was interested in the emails alone because our goal was to nurture and help the brand build a strong tribe of loyal and returning customers.
Here are some examples of the segments we created
We created a segment of people who opened emails in the past 30 days and another segment of people who were already interested in certain products.
Then we added exclusion segments. That way, emails were no longer sent to those who were unengaged and hurting deliverability. Again, email marketing is about targeting the right audience with the right messaging, at the right time. Excluding people who are no longer interested in your products, or hearing from you will, in turn, save you more money in the long-term.
Applying these changes resulted in an improvement in open rates and overall deliverability. In fact, open rates doubled!
The reason why segmentation is so effective is that it allows eCommerce stores to create tailored and more targeted messages for different groups of people depending on their preferences and their behavior.
The more advanced and targeted your segments and content are, the higher your conversions and revenue will be.
Strategy #2: Optimization of flows and campaigns for reliable automation and valuable content
Flows generated 4% of the 5% email revenue that ForChics was pulling in. They already had the basic flows in place such as the Welcome Flow, Browse Recovery Flow, and Cart Recovery Flow so we focused on optimizing these first.
When your flows are optimized, your email marketing automation strategy will be like a well-oiled machine working on its own. That’s why it’s essential to set up your flows in such a way that they can coax your subscribers towards the actions you want them to take. That’s why we also created additional flows for ForChics. We wanted to make sure that they could reach their customers regardless of where they were in their journey.
Here’s how we went about optimizing:
We conducted a series of AB tests that helped us get clarity on the preferences and behaviors of their customers. We also added more emails to the pre-purchase flows and post-purchase flows to include cross-selling opportunities for the best sellers.
By doing this, ForChics gained additional revenue drivers. In other words, setting up relevant email flows for various customer actions establishes a seamless customer journey. This provides more reliable back-end revenue channels for repeated sales and returning customers leaving you with more bandwidth to maximize sales with your email campaigns.
Applying these best practices and adjusting them according to the data allowed ForChics’ flow revenue to jump from 4% to 12%. With the flows optimized and generating stable revenue, we started conducting AB tests on their campaigns to maximize the newly created advanced segments.
For campaigns, we added social content, targeted upsells, and user-generated content. Social content, especially the blog posts on skincare tips, were very engaging. After 5 months, campaign revenue increased from 1% to 3%, pulling in six figures.
Strategy #3: Flexibility in approaching the email design and copywriting in the midst of rebranding
While we were working on their email marketing strategy, ForChics was also focusing on building their brand identity. This meant that their branding across all channels should be consistent, and this included email marketing.
In pursuit of creating a strong brand identity and messaging, ForChics rebranded twice. This required flexibility and agility when it came to adjusting the design and copywriting style for the emails themselves.
Why was this important? Email marketing is part of a bigger marketing strategy that involves other channels like social media or paid ads. If the email strategy, look, and messaging deviate from the other channels, it’s going to cause confusion for existing and potential customers. Email marketing, though it has the highest conversion rate compared to social media and direct mail, should complement your brand identity, not pull away from it.
Strategy #4: List utilization to maximize the value from subscribers
ForChics’ email revenue was increasing month on month. This surpassed their initial 10% target so they decided to aim for at least 15%. Here’s where we implemented the List Utilization strategy which involved increasing the sending segments for campaigns.
We did this by sending to more people who had recent activity or engagement:
- those who placed orders twice
- subscribed to their newsletter in the past 30 days;
- and those who placed an order in the last 45 days.
These were recently active and relevant segments. So deliverability didn’t go down while the chances for more conversions increased,
As a result, ForChics was able to get more value out of their subscribers. In just a month of implementing this homegrown Chronos strategy, email revenue jumped from 12% to 22%. This was way above their target.
ForChics now consistently generates 7 figures in email revenue. The brand continues to scale and make their mark in the beauty industry. By implementing data-driven strategies, their email marketing channel now provides a steady stream of recurring revenue from flows and campaigns.
Check out our case study for the specific steps. You’re free to access that and use it as a guide. Transform your email marketing strategy and reach 7 figures in email marketing revenue just like ForChics. And if you’re at a loss with your email revenue, you might be our next success story. Apply for a strategy session today, and let’s get started!
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