This year, retailers everywhere will approach the holidays with an increased reliance on email marketing and ecommerce. But it’s not just that marketers will send more emails than ever this year; people will engage with your messages at never-before-seen rates too.
If you’re looking for some fresh, new email marketing elements to experiment with for increased holiday engagement, you’ve come to the right place. Because this blog explores three exciting email tactics you can start testing now!
Give loyal shoppers even more reasons to celebrate the season
Holiday promotions definitely help you drive new sales, subscriptions, and website traffic, but to tap into the true business potential of your email marketing strategy you can’t leave your loyal customers out in the cold. After all, you already know how to reach them and how to motivate them to buy—so give your VIPs the gift of rewards and special events like this Grove Collaborative email does.
Obviously, a GIF is going to be the first thing that catches any buyer’s eye with this interaction. But the smart, value- driven messaging supporting this visual-fueled content is our favorite piece of the (pumpkin) pie. Rewarding loyal customers with their own holiday before the holidays is a fun, interactive way to escape the all- too-common sales push this time of year—and for Grove Collaborate—an optimal way to inspire new purchases and increased engagement as well.
By rewarding their most loyal subscribers and customers with a celebration-worthy personalized experience, we also love the brand’s way-above-benchmark results. In fact, this campaign resulted in the brand’s best click engagement booster the quarter it was sent—as well as one of its highest revenue-generating emails ever.
What This Means for You: Don’t wait; get ahead of your peak holiday marketing period and target your best, most loyal customers with a special incentive ahead of everyone else. You’ll be surprised to see how stress-free Q4 can be if you don’t have to meet sales goals by selling your brand to every buyer first.
Let your customers shop from anywhere
Just like last year, the pandemic will make 2021’s holiday marketing initiatives a little more complicated than usual. With economic uncertainty, shipping delays, and in-store traffic approaching a standstill, this year’s messages need to be every bit as quarantine-friendly as last year’s campaigns. And that means giving your shoppers a variety of ways to browse and buy—exemplified perfectly by this Signet Jewelers experience.
Incentivizing surprise discounts and sales promotions that allow customers to shop however, whenever, and whenever they want was our favorite thing about this email. Signet Jewelers’ flash sale campaign gives online buyers everything they need to make a purchase. Weekly best sellers, shop-by-category capabilities, guidelines on safe shopping during the pandemic, and more are personalized touches that really knocked our candy cane-print socks off.
What This Means for You: Use your collected customer data and previous purchase history records to target buyers with a single threshold offer instead of multiple ones. By doing so, you build more straightforward, clear, and—most importantly—effective holiday email experiences. Testing these tactics now can result in increased Average Order Value (AOV) and conversion rates for key promotions and exciting flash sales throughout the holiday season and beyond.
Give your customers choices and complementary options
This year, there will be more online holiday shoppers than ever before. But will they be reading your emails for their own benefit, or on behalf of someone else? It can be tough to identify individual consumers’ intent and who’s shopping for whom. So, give your customers the best of both worlds like Fashion Nova did in this featured experience.
Beyond a clever display that accurately summarizes life amidst lockdown via visuals and copy, Fashion Nova’s holiday PJ party-themed message targets a single product category that’s relevant and engaging to self-buyers and gift givers alike. With options to browse pajama categories and complementary products like slippers, this brand turned a potentially sad stay-at-home experience into a special holiday event for its subscribers.
What we love most about this email is that it offers something valuable to every holiday shopper—no matter their motivation or who they’re buying for. By combining thoughtful, stay-at-home holiday messaging with highly relevant product recommendations and dynamic category combinations, Fashion Nova created a convenient shopping experience that gave every recipient great last-minute gift ideas. And after experiencing more click engagement than any other end-of-year email campaign, it’s clear that thousands of new and long-time customers took advantage of their personalized PJ party invitation.
What This Means for You: Cozying up at home will be a theme you’ll see across holiday messages in retail and media in Q4 2021. If you haven’t followed suit, prepare imagery that can support a holiday at home and holiday party look and feel in order to relate to potential customer behaviors.
But these three email marketing elements to experiment with aren’t all—they’re just the start of how working smarter not harder this holiday season can lead to even more success in 2021. For even more fresh, engaging email ideas, download our Work Smarter Not Harder Guide now!
Leading brands combined omnichannel personalization and dynamic features to create unique and compelling campaigns.
Sailthru, the leading personalized marketing automation technology provider for retailers and publishers, and Liveclicker, global provider of next-level personalization solutions for B2C marketers, both Marigold brands, announced that Thrive Market, a Sailthru customer, won a MediaPost EIS Award for email marketing excellence, and NASCAR, a joint Sailthru and Liveclicker customer, was named a finalist. Every MediaPost EIS Award honors “email marketers who are at the forefront of optimizing this powerful medium.”
Thrive Market – Winner, Transactional/Ecommerce – The online shopping experience on many websites can feel like being dropped in the middle of a warehouse — especially for something like grocery, where there are thousands of products to choose from. For Thrive Market, first-time visitors are immediately invited to take an interactive shopping quiz to help them find products perfectly suited for their individual needs, paving the way for a truly one-to-one personalized Member experience for the entire lifetime of that shopper — across content, email, mobile, and the site.
After that first visit, Thrive Market uses personalization from Sailthru to continuously increase the relevance of Member experiences, from personalized sales and content to personalized shopping experiences based on past purchases and preferences. Thrive Market saw huge growth through the pandemic and they continue to personalize experiences for loyal and new Members every single day.
NASCAR – Finalist, Best Interactive – Working with partners, Sailthru and Liveclicker, NASCAR improved on their birthday messaging until it found a winning combination. By combining the power of Liveclicker’s dynamic capabilities with Sailthru’s personalized triggers, NASCAR turned each simple email into a full-blown birthday surprise. Liveclicker’s platform and Sailthru’s A/B testing capabilities were central to execution as NASCAR tested a static image against a ‘click-to-reveal’ mystery birthday discount. The new click-to-reveal email transformed the passive promotion into a tactile, engaging experience. In the past year, NASCAR has sold more than 10,000 items through the campaign.
“We’re thrilled that two of our amazing customers were honored for their creative and engaging approach to email. Thrive Market and NASCAR both take dramatically different approaches, incorporating personalization and dynamic features to resonate with each of their unique audiences. We look forward to working with them on many more strategic campaigns in the future,” said Cat Orlandi, VP of Enterprise Customer Success at Marigold, the parent company of Sailthru and Liveclicker.
2020 accelerated ecommerce trends and online engagement like no year ever has. And yet, for many retailers out there, the pace of change and elevating consumer expectations has yet to slow down. Combined with record-high email conversion rates, this leaves a lot of opportunity for any retailer savvy enough to take advantage.
So, if your goal is to be one of Q4’s highest-performing digital merchants, here are four ecommerce trends you can use to increase your email conversion rate.
Personalize your welcome experience
Over the next few months, you’re going to see more new ecommerce shoppers than any other time this year. In fact, after surveying our retail customers, you can expect around one-third of your holiday sales to come from brand-new buyers.
And because our research also found that email is the most effective channel for converting new customers into loyal brand followers, your welcome experience needs to be on point going forward if your goal is inspiring success by incorporating ecommerce trends like personalization from your very first send.
Even something as simple as a customized welcome message based on where someone first engaged your brand can lead to massive conversion gains. Many retailers already use some kind of website referral process that immediately recognizes where a visitor comes from — so take advantage of this insight to personalize your hello in the context of each individual interaction accordingly.
If you want to take the ecommerce feel of your welcome emails to another level, ask your shoppers about the content they’d like to see and only deliver what’s relevant to their specific interests. By directing new subscribers and loyal customers alike to your email preference center as soon as possible, they can opt into the content they’re most likely to engage with — enabling you to deliver a more personal, relevant, and likely-to-convert communication right away.
Transparency and honesty are a refreshing ecommerce trend
If the past 18+ months have taught retail marketers anything, it’s that today’s buyers value trust and open communication more than ever. So, if you haven’t given it much thought yet, what does your brand stand for?
Online shoppers are increasingly basing purchase decisions on your societal impact—not products, services, or hollow mission statements. Are you working to create more sustainable practices? Do you care about climate change and fair trade? Let your engaged followers know about all the good you’re doing—then carry this approach over to your ecommerce environment.
Because, when it comes to ecommerce trends and modern customer expectations, an online experience that hides shipping costs, makes transactions overly complex and time-consuming, or features irrelevant products and messaging usually scares away more subscribers than it converts.
While there’s immense pressure to perform and convert as many shoppers to paying customers as possible, keep in mind that not every email or promotion you send has to push a product. In fact, shoppers worn out from seeing the same sales speak and pushy emails day after day are more likely to notice and appreciate your efforts for doing so.
Our 2021 Retail Personalization Index Consumer Survey found that two-thirds of all retail buyers believe a brand’s ethics and values are important — substantiating 5W Public Relations’ 2020 Consumer Culture Report that notes 71% of shoppers prefer to shop with brands that are aligned to their values.
Add value to every brand interaction
While personalized experiences and honest messaging is great, ultimately your ecommerce shoppers seek one thing above all else: value. And there’s a ton of ways to deliver value across every interaction without undercutting your competitors on price.
After all, a $20 toaster oven with limited functionality is likely to offer less value than a $200 model that will last 20 years or more. But if your product descriptions and marketing efforts don’t communicate this long-term value, how is anyone supposed to know? And—more importantly—how do you expect to compete against the online giants?
And where your email marketing effort is concerned, first-party data can be your key to creating the personalized value your customers crave. Did you know that retail marketing teams with a data-driven personalization strategy achieve 15% to 20% greater ROI?
Shopper-specific insights such as gender, birthday, brand-specific anniversary dates, customer acquisition source, Average Order Value (AOV), propensity to buy, purchase history, Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), personal product preferences, and whether someone’s shopping for themselves or someone else are all extremely valuable discoveries your team can use to make emails more engaging—and, more importantly, more likely to result in conversion.
Make buy now, pay later your best friend
Another ecommerce trend gaining massive momentum is Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). Unlike traditional ecommerce and in-store layaway payment options, BNPL gives your buyers the benefit of instant gratification—and your brand the advantage of actualized revenue and conversions as soon as you implement it.
Because someone doesn’t have to wait until payments are complete to receive their products, emails that feature BNPL financing options increase conversion rate by 79% and AOV by twice as much on average. No doubt a huge boon for any retail brand looking to better recent results.
Like us, you know that email has the potential to be your most effective, profitable marketing channel. And if you ever needed any more proof, the latest research affirms what email marketers have known for years: it beats print, direct mail, TV, search, programmatic ads, display/video messages, and audio experiences in terms of ROI for every department dollar you spend according to 62% of B2C marketers.
But email’s benefits don’t stop at B2C ROI—because this proven communication path also leads both digital and offline channels for acquiring new customers and for driving fast sales gains, coming in second only to paid search for ease in tracking and measuring results.
If you need further confirmation that email rules in customer engagement (in addition to ROI as we just mentioned), look no further than the massive Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp Outage of 2021 that just took place—and where email was a lifesaver in a nearly 6-hour sea of frustrations caused by offline platform alerts and configuration errors.
So, make this moment matter and jump on your opportunity to create catchy, engaging email campaigns that remind customers you’re never more than a click in their inbox away. And—more importantly—deliver maximum B2C ROI to keep your boss(es) smiling, too.
Make advanced personalization a priority
In the intro above, we addressed email’s value in general. But we’re well-aware that not all campaigns drive the same value. Or are even intended to/used to do so.
A broadcast email campaign will go out to major segments of your audience. But with little to no personalization or offer targeting their specific needs, your message will ultimately go ignored by most—obviously failing to generate anywhere near the level of ROI as a personalized campaign using collected customer data to create unique content for each recipient. And with automation added into the mix, the possibilities are endless.
5 email marketing best practices that maximize B2C ROI, revenue, and engagement
With the holidays bearing down on email marketers everywhere, retail and ecommerce teams are looking for last-minute campaign ideas that come with the promise of producing high-value interactions and building loyal, engaged buyers that visit your store more than once a year.
So, here are five best practices we recommend to reduce the stress—and increase results—this season and beyond:
1. Forget welcome emails. It’s all about the onboarding experience now.
The first email you send after someone opts in is the most important one your email marketing program will ever send. It does more than just say “Thanks for joining us.” It’s your first opportunity to sell directly to your new customers through email—and to learn more about their personal buying habits, shopping behaviors, product preferences, and more from your first interaction.
Opt-in is the point at which any subscriber’s interest in your brand peaks, so strike while the interest is high and sprinkle opportunities to go back to your website and shop later to drive engagement through personalization and the data insights you collect..
A few suggestions:
- Deliver opt-in discounts, incentives, and other promotions into a follow-up message after you confirm someone’s email address. This lets you strategically increase the number you send to new customers while managing cadence and maintaining relevance
- Include shoppable merchandise recommendations in every onboarding email you send, whether based on current promotions or clickstream and preference data
- Follow up several days later with a reminder to use the subscription incentive you sent
- Begin collecting data now through preference requests, simple surveys, or polls and then use these insights later to segment and personalize future messages
2. Build repeat purchases with dynamic triggered content
During the holiday season, you’ll have hordes of new customers visiting your site and buying in-store for the very first time. That first purchase is the easy one, though. Second and third purchases upgrade one-time buyers into long-time customers. And isn’t that really what your job is all about?
Fortunately, triggered and targeted messages can bring first-time customers back to buy again. But you need to offer more than the basic 20%-off discount to rise above the noise of all the other brands in your buyers’ inboxes. Because they too are trying to woo your customers into coming back!
Messages featuring product recommendations or displays that reflect customer preferences, purchases, and browsing sessions can make all the difference here. And you don’t need to call them out as “Suggested for You” buys, either. Instead, incorporate them in message images—a pair of skinny jeans by a brand your customer browses regularly on a model looks more interesting than a straight product shot with no context.
But who has time when you’re deep in December to create 50 versions of one email, each with a different hero product image? Nobody—that’s why dynamic content is your co-savior here.
With a little upfront rule-writing work, you can leave it to automation to choose the right product for each customer group, and you can think about other things—such as keeping your loyalty program members, well, loyal.
3. Reward your recipients with mystery
Persuading customers to join your loyalty program is one thing. Keeping them active, buying products, and generating streams of first-party data you can use to make your emails even more relevant? That’s an entirely different challenge.
Suppose your marketing budget doesn’t have enough room in it by the end of the year for anything bigger than a variable-size discount. No problem! Wrap it up in a fun, interactive mystery reveal-the-deal message that begs customers to click on it and find out what their special deal is. It’s not quite the same as unwrapping a present, but it’s the best digital alternative out there—and brands like NASCAR prove why.
Share this irresistible mystery deal with new VIPs or with loyalty program members who show signs of churning soon. Or, dangle it in front of members who need just a few more points or purchases to move to the next tier in your program. Mystery deals are flexible enough to accommodate every customer group from newbies to inactives—and effective enough to raise your B2C ROI simultaneously, too.
4. Make your customer experience more friendly and flexible
Credit cards did away with layaway at many big-box retailers, but multiple delayed payments are back in a big way. Because ecommerce has brought traditional retail tactics and technology together for a blended payment option known as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).
BNPL programs like Affirm and Klarna encourage customers to buy more often, increase orders, and more frequently buy premium products without loading up their credit cards all at once. Customers can enjoy their purchases right away, and you get the revenue right away. Everybody wins.
Promoting BNPL can increase email marketing performance KPIs like revenue per email (probably the best measure of campaign success) or average order value, to say the least. So, encourage customers to use BNPL within your emails. Send a stand-alone message that promotes your BNPL services,and features their logos and copy in every place where they’re relevant and stand a chance to increase intent to purchase.
5. Thank shoppers after the holiday season with special offers
When the holiday season is over, many brands simply move on to the next major calendar event. But this year is unprecedented, so why not shake things up a little bit by pausing to thank the customers who shopped with you all year instead of just one season? How you choose to express your thanks can depend on what you want your customers to do next. Here are some options:
- Include a bounce-back offer to bring loyal shoppers back to your site in Q1
- Segment out buyers who are not in your loyalty program and invite them to join
- Create a series of emails that show customers how to care for their new products. While this might not directly drive sales, you can extend the series into January or February when buyers might be ready to purchase again.
Want more tips? We have them!
Our new guide, The Smart Marketer’s Guide to 2021 Holiday Success, has tips and tactics from cover to cover, and all geared to help you achieve all your marketing goals and increase your ROI this season and beyond. Download it for free today!
The latest research from our sister brand Campaign Monitor shows that only around 15% to 25% of emails ever get opened. If you have a small to medium-sized business, that means you can expect subscribers to ignore roughly four out of every five emails you send.
But don’t get disheartened! Writing captivating email subject lines is an art. And, in this post, we’re going to teach you how to write subject lines your subscribers can’t resist.
But First: We’re Throwing You a C.U.R.V.E.
All good subject lines have one or more of these five elements:
Curiosity: Pique subscribers’ interest by telling them something they don’t know. The more shocking or surprising, the better. Or, ask questions—just not the yes or no kind.
Urgency: Your email subject line should make your readers stop scrolling and open their email RIGHT NOW instead of saving it for later. If they’re not worried about what they’re missing out on, you’ve still got work to do.
Relevance: A gripping subject line speaks directly to your subscribers’s needs, wants, and desires. It should feel personal, even if you didn’t personalize it.
Value: Explain—or hint at—how your email will change their lives, even if it’s just saving a bonkers amount on a popular product.
Emotion: How do you want your email to make your subscribers feel: Excited? Anxious? Happy? Comforted? Whatever emotion you want to evoke, just make sure you do it right away—don’t wait for them to open your message or miss the chance entirely.
Of course, you won’t be able to squeeze in all these things into your email subject line every time. Nor should you try. Which elements you use will depend on what your email message is supposed to accomplish.
Also, you should know which subject line templates drive your subscribers to click and convert most often (if not, that’s a good place to start your A/B testing program).
Which brings us to…
7 Email Subject Lines People Can’t Resist
Now, let’s look at seven tried-and-true subject line templates that incorporate the C.U.R.V.E. principles we just shared:
1. FOMO
No one likes to feel like they’re missing out, especially on a great deal. An easy, effective way to create urgency with nothing but your email subject lines is to add a deadline before an event ends or a product sells out to create the impression of scarcity.
Example: “Last chance! Just 5 spaces left on our exclusive training webinar.”
2. Self-Improvement
Ah, a dependable classic. Promising people they can be a better version of themselves isn’t new, but boy does it work. Put another way, it answers the customer’s most pressing internal question: “What’s in it for me?”
Example: “Get six-pack abs in just 10 weeks”
3. The If-Then Statement
If you know your target audience well enough, then you’ll have a good idea of which characteristics they share. Mention a situation that applies to most, if not all, of the people on your list starting with your subject line. Then, link this to the solution you’re emailing them about. That makes any reader think, “Oh, wait, that applies to me!” And just like that, your email is scarily relevant.
Example: “Struggling with staff shortages? You need THIS tool.”
4. Freebies
No, putting “free” in your subject lines will not drive your email to the spam folder. Everybody likes to get something for nothing. So, give your subscribers the impression that something real and tangible is waiting for them. This approach is always a winner because it’s a great way to cut through all of the competing noise in your customers’ inboxes—especially if you personalize it too.
Example:. “Hi Ben! This month’s free marketing tutorial is now ready for your viewing pleasure.”
5. Cliffhangers
Humans are curious creatures. Create a little mystery or suspense and we can’t help but peek inside. Don’t believe me? Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out why.
Example: “Pssst! Bet you don’t know this profit-boosting trick”
6. Keeping It Casual
Being informal with subject lines is an increasingly popular method, with good reason. The idea is to mimic the way real people write subject lines to each other, be they friends or colleagues, to eliminate the sales and marketing speak that scares most subscribers away from your emails.
Example: “Are you free for a 10-minute chat tomorrow?”
7. Controversy
Okay, so you need to exercise this subject line tactic with extreme caution. Making an outlandish claim or questioning a popular belief is a great way to get clicks. Just make sure you aren’t overdoing it, or you’ll lose people’s trust! And they won’t click through to your website, which is what your email is supposed to do in the first place.
Example: “Are you wasting money on Facebook advertising? Here’s why you need to stop, today.“
Two More Tips to Drive Even More Email Engagement
1. Front-Load your main point.
Most inboxes will cut off the subject line somewhere between 60 and 80 characters. Meaning that—if you’re offering a discount or have something specific you want your subscribers to do—you should put that info at the start of your subject line, not at the end, to guarantee it’s seen.
You might also have heard that short subject lines are better. That’s something else your A/B testing can help you prove or reject. An informal rule of thumb is that shorter subject lines drive more opens, but longer lines drive more clicks. And considering all of Apple’s recent changes, the door has never been open wider for new subject line innovation.
2. Use action-oriented verbs.
Use strong verbs that tell subscribers exactly what you want them to do. Some good examples to start testing: “discover,” “reveal,” and “learn.”
With email open rates becoming less reliable as a measure of customer engagement by the day, your subject lines need to amp up their click, conversion, and engagement-driving capabilities. This approach helps you measure what your customers are interested in, even if the click itself doesn’t lead to a conversion.
Along with this new focus on engagement-focused success metrics, pay attention to what people are clicking on in your emails. Do the clicks correspond with your subject line, or are people clicking on other things like secondary offers or in-email navigation? Knowing the answers to questions like these future-proof your campaigns and make your next send even more effective.
One last word of advice: Test your subject lines before you depart from any standard formats. What works for one brand may not fly with your audience, so don’t be afraid to try and do new things. If you’re looking for even more inspiration, download The Smart Marketer’s Guide to 2021 Holiday Success now!
Today, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection update goes live. If you’re scrambling to put together any last-minute planning or prep to evolve your email strategy, check out our press release or our Navigating an Evolving Privacy Environment webinar where we cover high-level changes that will impact every email marketer.
In the weeks leading up to today’s update, we’ve been taking time to understand the full impact these consumer privacy-minded changes will have on our products as well as the digital marketing community at-large. And we’re doing some exciting, new things to help you evolve your email strategy, navigate the uncertainty, and take advantage of every opportunity the future presents us all to think and engage differently.
If you’re curious about how to evolve or how Liveclicker can help you inspire more moments that matter, click here to explore the future of email with Adam Weissmuller, Liveclicker VP of Product Management, and Maria Braune, Sailthru and Liveclicker Senior Manager of Product Marketing.
From the pandemic, to supply chain issues, to big changes from Apple and Google on the near-term horizon, old ways of working have been tossed out the window. Now, marketers are scrambling to innovate and find new, better ways to connect with customers.
And the smartest email experts out there are succeeding by using the combination of automation and first-party data to personalize interactions like never before.
The shift to online shopping isn’t slowing down anytime soon
Today’s consumers are savvy online searchers, shoppers, and influencers. They seek out companies that offer the best customer experience and are quick to leave if they don’t get what they want.
In fact, 66% of consumers agree that the pandemic has made them appreciate well-designed technology more than before. And this has put a lot of strain on marketers—including 59% who have already considered quitting their current position at least once over the past year due to all of this added pressure.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the entire digital marketing game is shifting. Planning in annual cycles, relying on cookies to help with targeting, assuming that customers will do what you want them to—these norms are gone.
Now, you need to be more flexible, more agile, and less reliant on big companies so that you can move at the speed of your customers, capture trends, and remain relevant. And while this sounds like a lot of extra work, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you can probably achieve all of this with just a few tweaks to what you already have in place.
Download our latest resource—A Marketer’s Guide to Working Smarter Not Harder—to find out how you can add automation and first-party data into your email campaigns for extra flexibility, unlimited scalability, and even more impressive results going forward!
According to a 2019 Econsultancy survey, email is the most effective marketing channel, and it’s also an important link to other customer experiences on site, in store and on mobile apps. Getting email just right means making the entire customer shopping experience that much more relevant and effective. Hot Topic certainly does this, which is why the retailer won a MediaPost EIS Awards for Email Marketing Excellence in the Interactive Emails category.
Hot Topic used to have an animation in an email that looked like a scratch-off ticket, but wasn’t interactive. While the imagery was creative, it didn’t drive clicks to the site, and created a disappointing experience. The team knew that an interactive email experience could get people to go to the site at higher rates by increasing engagement.
Working with Liveclicker, Hot Topic created a fully interactive email design that would click to reveal a personalized, integrated offer based on data inputs from past purchase behavior. The emails showcased seasonally themed animation teasing either a 30%, 40%, or 50% discount that the customer would reveal by clicking.
The retailer then added both “copy to clipboard” and “shop now” calls-to-action to drive customers to the site easily. Similarly, if a customer can’t finish shopping in that session, a “remembering” feature ensures that the next time they open that email, the offer is already revealed and the code is waiting.
While Hot Topic and Liveclicker had done scratch-offs and coupons separately, the combination was new and innovative for the Hot Topic team. Liveclicker helped to streamline the back end experience so that both the engaging “scratch” interaction and the underlying coupon assignment could be integrated at moment-of-open in a consistent experience for all customers, and with minimal back-end work for the Hot Topic email team.
Hot Topic measured click-to-open rates and click-through rates to see if the new interactive feature was successful at driving engagement. Comparing the interactive mystery scratch-off emails to other campaigns that promoted equivalent offers showed just how valuable the concept was for Hot Topic. The newly interactive mystery campaigns on average saw a 30% increase in click-to-opens, 25% increase in click-through rate, and because they were driving more people to the site, a 14% increase in conversion rate over equivalent campaigns without the new feature.
This wasn’t the only EIS Award win for Marigold, either. RevZilla and Raise, two of our sister brand Sailthru’s customers, won awards as well.