Category Archives: Email Automation

How Ferguson Enterprises Increased Email Capture 188%

Case Study - Resource, Email Automation


Who: Ferguson Enterprises is the largest U.S. distributor of plumbing supplies, PVF, waterworks and fire and fabrication products. It is also a major distributor of HVAC equipment and industrial products and services.

Challenge: Despite running sophisticated email marketing campaigns, Ferguson was missing email addresses for approximately 70% of their large, national customer base. Ferguson realized requiring associates to capture customer email addresses equated to a multi-million-dollar opportunity, but entailed a huge procedural change across their nationwide organization.

Solution: Ferguson Enterprises teamed with digital agency Whereoware to make customer data quality a company-wide priority, but needed an effective and compelling communications strategy to get internal stakeholders, associates, and customers on board with the procedural change.

Download the case study to see how Ferguson Enterprises executed a three-tiered communication strategy, ultimately increasing email capture 188%.

Want more? See how Ferguson Enterprises took a modular approach to email and cut their email design and build time in half. 

Email Tip: Re-engagement Emails 101

Email Automation, Marketing

This month, we welcome a guest blog post from our Digital Strategist, Allison Cutsinger.  Allison is responsible for the overall email strategy, production, scheduling, delivery, and reporting of behavior-based, targeted email, website, mobile, and search campaigns for B2B and B2C e-commerce clients.

Allison

In the age of personalized content at your customers’ fingertips, email marketing campaigns are a must. After all, it’s a simple algorithm. You send engaging emails, make millions of dollars, and skip off into the sunset to live happily ever after.

While this may be your story, it’s often not that simple. Estimates suggest that by 2021, we could reach an all-time high of 320 billion emails sent daily around the globe. Competition for inbox placement and your customers’ attention is a universal challenge.

Every savvy email marketer struggles with subscriber disengagement. Broadly defined, email contacts are considered disengaged if they do not open any of your emails within the past 6 months.

It’s not uncommon for contacts to become disengaged. In fact, you can expect to lose roughly 22% of your subscribers on an annual basis (either from disengagement or from opting-out).

With heightened competition, even the best subject lines might not save disengaged customers. Today, we’ll cover engagement basics and how to re-engage at-risk subscribers.

Continue reading Email Tip: Re-engagement Emails 101 →

Ad Council and Code Perfect Featured in a Litmus Case Study

Case Study - Resource, Email Automation

Whereoware’s client Ad Council was recently featured in a case study by Litmus, the email industry rockstars behind the robust enterprise marketing platform.

The case study covers how Whereoware builds bulletproof email templates for Ad Council using our modular email design tool, Code Perfect.

Ad Council: “Code Perfect has been a lifesaver for our team, allowing us to be more nimble with our designs. It’s super easy to use and since it comes pre-tested across all email clients, we’re confident that it always looks great no matter which order we place our modules in. The monthly subscription fee gives us added peace of mind that the Code Perfect team is on top of the latest changes in Outlook, Gmail, iOS, and others, ensuring our modules are in line with best practices.”

Read the Litmus case study here, or check out our recap.

Continue reading Ad Council and Code Perfect Featured in a Litmus Case Study →

Gmail Accelerated Mobile Pages Coming Soon

Email Automation, Marketing

Wouldn’t it be cool to interact with website content, answer a survey, RSVP to an event, or schedule an appointment without ever leaving your Gmail inbox? Imagine the opportunities for increased interactions with your audience, if they could convert directly within an email. Well, it’s your lucky day. Google announced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) will be released for Gmail later this year.

Today, we’ll talk through how email marketers can prepare for Gmail AMP.

Google Accelerated Mobile Pages

Continue reading Gmail Accelerated Mobile Pages Coming Soon →

3 Valentine’s Day Emails We Love

Email Automation

L, is for the way you look… at an email. Okay, that’s not how the song goes, but Valentine’s Day is a great day for brands to share the love with their customers. Brands got creative this Valentine’s Day, not only by offering discounts, but creating new content specifically for the holiday.

Fall in love with our favorite Valentine’s Day emails. We’ve rounded them up to share what we love.

Curated Content

This Valentine’s Day, BHLDN (Anthropologie’s bridal line) skipped a discount promotion and instead, focused on what they and their customers know best: love.

Their CTA links to collected stories and photo collages of their favorite stylists and bloggers wearing BHLDN on their wedding day. The quick read shows a photo collage, blurb about the couple’s relationship, and links to the specific dress or items worn in the photos.

BHLDN-Email

Continue reading 3 Valentine’s Day Emails We Love →

Combining Predictive Analytics and Email to Win Back At-Risk Customers

Case Study - Resource, Email Automation


Challenge

Mud Pie knew a small subset of their customers churn, resulting in lost revenue. Mud Pie teamed with Whereoware to proactively identify these customers, so they could engage them differently and retain consistent repeat revenue.

Solution

Whereoware worked with leading technology companies DOMO and the Big Squid Predictive Toolkit (PTK) to design a sophisticated predictive model to identify customers likely to churn.

By coupling this solution with automated email marketing, at-risk customers were intercepted, and engaged in a personalized email campaign.

Results

Download the case study to see how Mud Pie identified at-risk customers and converted 10% of this group.

Trending: Anti-Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing

Email Automation

Did you survive the biggest shopping weekend of the year?! While our wallets crave payday after the onslaught of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and steals, it’s retailers’ inventive marketing that really piqued our interest.

Surprisingly, retailers’ clever subject lines or design isn’t what caught our eye – it was the missing promotion. When inboxes are overloaded with holiday shopping deals, does skipping a promotion altogether differentiate brands?

We’re investigating the “anti-Black Friday/Cyber Monday” crew in today’s email roundup.

REI

Starting in 2015, REI bucked trends and turned out the lights on Black Friday with their #OptOutside campaign.

REI, an outdoors adventure retailer, closed their stores, gave their employees a paid holiday, and encouraged others to go outside on Black Friday with friends and family, instead of duking it out at the mall.

This campaign not only aligns with REI’s mission, but sets them apart from the myriad of other retailers vying for your attention during the holidays.

REI #optoutside

Continue reading Trending: Anti-Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing →

Email Tip – Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Email Automation

Were you inundated with emails between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday? You’re not alone – the biggest shopping weekend of the year filled up our inbox too.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the busiest days of the year for retailers and marketers. Many retailers didn’t even wait until Black Friday this year and instead, began their sales on Thanksgiving Day. Their early-bird approach paid off. According to Adobe Digital Insights, Thanksgiving online sales increased 18.3%, Black Friday dollars spent increased 16.9%, and Cyber Monday sales increased 16.8% from 2016.

Since we’re total data geeks at Whereoware, we set out to measure how our overflowing inbox correlated to retailers’ holiday sales success. Did retailers across industries send more emails this year compared to last year’s holiday shopping kickoff? We tracked the holiday email sends (Thanksgiving – Cyber Monday) of 15 major retailers, such as Old Navy, Amazon, Loft, Nordstrom, Kohls, and Bath & Body Works (see the raw data below), and compared the results year-over-year. Check out what we found.

BlackFriday-CyberMonday-Graph

Continue reading Email Tip – Black Friday and Cyber Monday →

Holiday Tip – Holiday Emails We Love

Email Automation

Another year, another holiday season is upon us. It’s nearly November and we’ve already been inundated with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and December holiday emails. But what makes a holiday email stand out from the rest? Sometimes it’s a particularly good subject line to pique our interest, a clever design, or a unique offering. We’ll be sharing some out-of-the-box ideas in this round-up of holiday emails we love.

Holiday GIFs
GIFs are a great way to grab your readers’ attention and entice a click through. You can choose to use a GIF in place of a static hero image, or you can animate just a small aspect of your email.

Mark and Graham
We love this announcement email from Mark & Graham not only for its use of a GIF but for the omni-channel approach of inviting you to peek at the online holiday catalog. They easily could have showcased a few new product offerings and linked to the holiday category page. Instead, they used a GIF to “flip” through a few of the pages of the online catalog as a sneak peek.

Continue reading Holiday Tip – Holiday Emails We Love →