Email marketing is such a powerful strategy, yet if the right tool isn’t being used or the right approach isn’t taken, the benefits that come from it will never see the light of day.

Don’t become victim to an email marketing strategy that falls flat. Instead, check out our case study with Katie’s Clothing and see how they used Benchmark Email to tackle email marketing the right way.

Meet Kate’s Clothing

Kate’s Clothing is an online alternative clothing provider that offers a range of styles from gothic and steampunk to vintage and maternity.

Why Does Kate’s Clothing Use Email Marketing?

“Being an online store, it is important to tap into various digital strategies to not only engage efficiently but also convert ads, banners, and discount codes into sales,” says Kate Whitegroatt, owner of Kate’s Clothing.

“Email Marketing is a great way to do this. It allows us to include links and visual banners to direct our customers and subscribers straight to the product they wish to see. Email marketing also reaches a different audience type – one that is not on social media, rather that has engaged with us via our site. These users signed up to our newsletter through our website, gaining access to our discounts and the latest news.”

What  Does Benchmark Email Help Kate’s Clothing Achieve?

Kate’s Clothing has three main goals with their newsletters:

• Increase sales
• Promote their products
• Share general and exclusive news and updates

Their weekly campaign is a massive contribution to their sales. And more often than not, they notice a spike in orders the day it gets sent out.

“The purpose of our weekly campaign differs from a newsletter. It can share an exclusive discount code or push a brand or sale. Our content is almost always different every week, but if there’s a repetition, our layout, banners, or wording is different enough to continue engaging our audience.”

Why Did Kate’s Clothing Choose Benchmark Email?

“Finding a cost-effective email marketing service is almost always the goal,” Kate says.

Kate’s Clothing’s Most Effective Email Marketing Strategies

Discount Codes

When asked for the kind of campaign that works better for her company, Kate says she loves the discount codes feature.

“Our discount newsletters do exceptionally well. They usually include a subject line like, ‘Your discount code inside…’

With this type of wording, we are enticing our customers to not only open our campaign but also engage with a click.”

Whatever their discount code is based on, they also include a visual banner with a link to that page on their site. And with the help of some handy Benchmark Email tools, they’re able to see how engaging their banner was.

A few days after Kate’s Clothing sends a newsletter,  they take a look at its performance, particularly links and opens, to get a visual representation of what percentage of people have clicked on each link. This provides them with immediate results on just how successful their email was at converting, as well as any adjustments they may need to make for the next one.

Here are  some examples of the discounts Kate’s Clothing is able to send  their customers using Benchmark Email:

Segmentation

“Recently, we started segmenting our subscribers. Again, with the help of Benchmark’s advanced tools, we can indicate who is most active with our campaigns and who engages the most against who doesn’t really engage or open our emails regularly.”

Since segmenting their list based on various engagement metrics, Kate’s Clothing has noticed a huge increase in user activity.

“The majority of our emails now go to our most engaged subscribers. Not only does this help us engage with the customers that are boosting our sales the most, but it also helps us avoid being marked as spam and lower our rate of unsubscribes.”

Since using this approach, Kate’s Clothing’s campaigns are more effective and have helped them achieve a bounce rate as low as .4 percent.

Switching It Up

Segmenting is a useful tactic, but Kate’s Clothing likes to switch it up from time to time by sending an email to their entire subscriber list. This approach enables them to re-engage dormant leads without negatively impacting their email performance.

“Our overall subscriber list is just over 7,000. Although we use our segments more often now, we do send the occasional email to all of our subscribers, which in turn has proven far more effective than sending to the same list every week.”

Their latest email sent to their full subscriber list saw the following results:

• Open rate – 27.91%
• Click-through rate – 36.23%
• Bounce rate – .19%
• Unsubscribes – .134%

We compared those results with the average email performance of our retail users:

• Open rate – 17.62%
• Click-through rate – 1.87%
• Bounce rate – 6.31%
• Unsubscribe rate – .109%

With the exception of unsubscribes, Kate’s Clothing performed impressively above average within their industry.

Want to see how Benchmark Email can help your business send better emails that engage, convert, and boost sales? Sign up for a free account now!