— CASE STUDY -->
Consistency + Strategy = ✉️ 💰
Email marketing is the elder marketing channel in the room. She's got a bit of a bad rap thanks to some sleazy marketers in the dot com boom but she's still the powerhouse in the room.
Much like the two millennials that run this very agency, email marketing still has plenty of fuel left in the tank for taking on challenges.
The kicker though is that most businesses won't commit to the long-play that is required. This company was the same way, but we showed them just how powerful email marketing can be, especially for a direct-to-consumer business like theirs.
THE CHALLENGE.
Plant-based milk company Elmhurst Milked Products was originally founded as a large dairy operation in Upstate New York. In 2017, they decided to make the switch from a traditional dairy to only producing plant-based milks.
They pride themselves in producing some of the finest quality plant-based milks on the market featuring clean, simple ingredients and a desire to keep it that way.
Like many companies working through fast expansion but gaining a passionate customer base, they needed help bringing consistency to their email marketing efforts to increase e-commerce revenue. Email, like it often is, was viewed as an afterthought for sales. They had used Klaviyo as their platform, but just never found a way to leverage it properly.
Their problem wasn’t lack of trying. It was a lack of being consistent and truly understanding the platform.
Enter Handshake Digital. Elmhurst reached out to us in November of 2020 to help them show just how reliable email marketing can be for an e-commerce business.
OUR ApPROACH
Taking over an existing account always presents a challenge. There is some
good data available and a good list size. How do we leverage it?
The first thing we did was to build out audience segments that make sense to
everybody. You see, email marketing is not just throwing as many emails out
there as possible and never adjusting. That’s a surefire way to get your emails
blocked and marked as spam.
We try to identify the following users:
By doing this, we can identify the key players who want to purchase products and begin sunsetting those who just don’t care to open emails at all. This helps to raise open rates, reduce spam complaints and bounces, and increases overall list health.
After that, we optimized their automated flows, split test creative and began sending out campaign emails. Automations will keep revenue flowing in continuously with minimal interaction from the business. This is the true power of email marketing – the automated parts of it.
WHAT WE ACHIEVED
RESULTS
To say we found optimizations and success for them would be an understatement. Our results included a steady increase in revenue, open rates and click rates, plus a steady decrease in spam complaints.
In January of 2021, we monitored stats closely on three campaigns Handshake sent and three campaigns that they sent. (Yes: they still fire off some emails themselves every month.) Handshake showed significant improvements in almost every measurable statistic.
These results were not just a one-off, flash-in-the-pan thing either. Consistently from November through mid-February, our campaigns outperformed their campaigns time-in and time-out. By hiring out a portion of their marketing efforts, they increased their revenue and even their profitability.
