Nurturing email subscribers for the holiday sales

Our client had not done any surveys or customer interviews in over 12 months. There were hundreds of anonymous subscribers on their email list, many of whom had been acquired in a multi-brand giveaway years before. What’s more, the brand was not known for sending regular emails to keep the relationship with subscribers going.

With this in mind, I decided to start with an incentivised subscriber survey to prime people for opening emails from the client.

The incentive would entice them to open the email, while the questions would pique their interest, and we’d gain enough insights into our client’s readers to draft emails that would resonate.

First, I checked up on the brand’s Mailchimp account to get to know their setup, run some reports, and see if we needed to work on their GDPR compliance (we do not have lawyers on the team, but I studied the rules for copywriting purposes).

I also audited the website to identify friction points that would keep visitors from buying.

Then, I compiled a list of recommendations for the client to work through in order to optimise the entire customer journey for conversion and compliance — divided into priority levels and with detailed instructions (these actions were outside the scope of our project).

The survey had two purposes:

1. Tell us what made past customers buy and what kept other subscribers from buying
2. Help me develop the messaging for the email campaign designed to drive sales traffic to the website

Our client was quick to come up with an attractive prize for the survey takers.

We agreed the questions within a couple of days. Then I set up a Typeform and invitation email to collect the responses.

Next, I drafted the email invitation. Our client was famous for their witty, provocative voice and tone. Emails tended to have evocative subject lines, but at around 21%, open rates were average. To get as much insight as possible, I needed to dramatically increase open and click through rates.

Because this email was so different from the (irregular) ones that had gone before, I chose a clear summary of the incentive:

“Take my 5-minute survey, get gorgeous knickers for Valentine’s day”

We also started the survey off with a rating question right there in the email — which was going to give us more engagement (people love interactive content):

Next, I worked through the results to come up with a profile of our client’s ideal customer and their reasons to buy or not to buy:

Including the survey email, we had 4 emails to play with for this campaign.

In line with this audience's values, I decided to get subscribers ready to buy by first getting them to shift their mindset. This was particularly important because we were writing to an old list of relatively “cool” subscribers who had not been nurtured in a long time.

So, while the first 3 emails were reminding people of the relationship they had with our client, email 4 was asking for the sale.

When planning an email sales campaign, it’s usually a good idea to roughly follow the 3:1 rule of adding value three times for each time we’re asking for the sale. New ideas and points of view are extremely valuable to readers, especially when presented in an entertaining way.

In this project, the pressure was on! We were limited to 4 emails in 4 weeks. So I decided to make two sales pitches — a humorous one and a more serious, informative one.

The number 1 mistake we see in emails: diluting their power by overloading them with lots of different ideas.

To keep each email on point, I set the following big ideas:

1. Survey email → let’s make buying lingerie great again
2. Great gifts are based on shared values
3. The holidays are about letting yourself off the hook
4. Lingerie that allows freedom of choice and freedom of (physical) movement makes a perfectly loving holiday gift

Once we had agreed the campaign plan, I was ready to create the emails.

Because this brand has such a distinctive personality, capturing their voice and tone was essential. At the same time, these emails were more action-focused than previous ones. It was going to be interesting to see how subscribers would react.

A lot of product-based businesses only ever send advertising newsletters. They’re all about the product and do not write about the company and founders, or the questions their customers face. Those emails are usually full of calls to action (CTAs). If those get no clicks, it’s usually because

• the email fails to engage the reader
• none of the products shown piques their interest
• there are too many CTAs, leading to analysis paralysis and decision fatigue.

Our client’s previous emails were quite different in that respect.

Many times, they did not include a single CTA. There was nothing for the reader to do at the end of the email, so they did not do anything.

It was important to change this pattern before the sales email in order to establish CTAs as the gateway to additional value — thereby increasing the likelihood of clicks in the sales email.

The subject line of this email, “Seriously rhymey”, was in line with the brand’s previous, trademark style of combining the word “seriously” with an adjective.

Continuing the feminist theme, the email started with a confession:

I had decided to write that sales pitch as a poem with internal and end rhymes (hat tip to Lucy with a Why for the inspiration!)

Reminiscent of theatre and the stage, this fits the burlesque aspects of the brand, as well as their style of selling in the most “obvious” ways, without trickery or undue pressure, while cautioning against overconsumption (sometimes called “sufficiency-driven” marketing).

The final email had the subject “Seriously listy” — both a play on the popular Christmas song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, and a means of foreshadowing the list at the end of the email.

It continued the slightly rant-y, empathetic style of the previous emails:

The middle part brought in customer reviews from Facebook (real-life screenshots for added authenticity) and a step-by-step guide to selecting the right product on the website, complete with product photos and links.

To finish off, I added a self-referential, ironic lead-in to a list of people who’d really benefit from our client’s lingerie — adding the value of a laugh or a giggle. Positive emotion and the likability factor of this approach were going to make readers more likely to consider a purchase.