CASE STUDY Onward Reserve uses ecommerce data to segment weekly email newsletters into 4 variations, leading to: 41% more Opens. 183% more Clicks 233% more Conversions 278% more revenue 39% higher AOV Onward Reserve: 2.7x Revenue From Segmented Newsletters, 18x Conversions From Automated Emails. Onward Reserve uses Automated Emails based on Purchase Data to generate: 18 times the conversions of regular emails 49 times the revenue per-recipient
Background Onward Reserve is a premiere online retail destination for men of all backgrounds and lifestyles, and provides an online store that showcases both established and upcoming lifestyle brands. Onward Reserve s email newsletter, The Gazette, features Behind the Brand stories to share how established brands began, and introduce new and upcoming brands. Editorial staff includes pieces like How-To s, Advice & Opinion, Featured Products and City Guides to keep readers informed on fashion trends as well as to provide a lifestyle guide. Onward Reserve uses MailChimp for their email marketing, Magento for their ecommerce platform, and Windsor Circle for their retention automation. In this Case Study, you ll learn how any online retailer can use data-driven segmentation and automation to build great customer relationships.
Retention Automation Opportunity Onward Reserve became a Windsor Circle client to improve their email marketing ROI, get more out of MailChimp s automation functionality, and power triggered lifecycle emails to help their customers and subscribers enjoy more of Onward Reserve s brand selection. Windsor Circle s Client Success team helped Onward Reserve unlock value from their ecommerce data by connecting it to their email marketing software. Through ongoing analysis and scoring of customers based on their purchase history, Windsor Circle imports and updates a number of custom fields within Onward Reserve s email. This makes it possible to use autoresponders (triggered emails) based on certain criteria (for example, an email triggered 60 days after someone s most recent purchase date). The data integration also enabled the segmentation of Onward Reserve s regular marketing emails and email newsletter, The Gazette. We Send the Gazette 2 to 3 times per week, said Will Watts, Co-Founder and COO at Onward Reserve and Five Mile. The Gazette is a way to keep customers engaged while they re not shopping.
Segmenting the Newsletter Onward Reserve was seeing historical average open rates of 25%, click rates of 3.0%, and conversion rates of.03%. This sampling of campaigns is from the immediate period before taking a segmented approach were each sent to thousands of subscribers and customers. Email Campaigns before leveraging Magento ecommerce data via Windsor Circle: Regular Email Campaign Open Click Conversion Easter Ties Campaign 24.0% 2.7% 0.01% Hats Campaign 26.0% 2.7% 0.02% Memorial Day Campaign 25.0% 3.6% 0.06% Campaign Averages 25.0% 3.0% 0.03% Onward Reserve decided to test Windsor Circle s Integrated Newsletter concept, which helps a retailer transform a normal batch-and-blast email, where every customer receives the same message, into 4 variations, each mailed to a different segment. The variations are all based on the same template, but use a different message for each of the 4 segments. The segments themselves are exclusive, meaning customers receive only one of the 4 emails, and are defined using the custom fields built and maintained by Windsor Circle. We definitely see the benefit in segmenting out the Gazette because it gives us the ability to incentivize the people we want to with coupon codes, for example churning customers or people who haven t yet purchased, to get them to purchase, vs. sending loyal customers a newsletter without the coupon. With the combination of Windsor Circle s retention analytics, MailChimp, and Google Analytics, Watts can see who is using the coupons, their latency, conversions by segment, and more.
Segmented Campaign Results Onward Reserve ran 2 tests, segmenting a Father s Day campaign email, and an edition of The Gazette. Each test sent 4 variations to the same 4 segments: Best Customers, Non-Purchasers, Churning Customers, and OTHER. The results show significant improvement from the regular approach: Segmented Campaigns Open Click Conversion Father s Day Campaign Best Customer 50.0% 10.0% Non Purchase 22.0% 2.6% 0.05% Winback 26.0% 2.6% 0.15% Other Ecom 37.7% 8.7% 0.10% Gazette Newsletter Best Customer 58.0% 20.8% Non Purchase 24.0% 6.2% Winback 27.0% 6.4% Other Ecom 38.0% 10.7% Segmented Campaign Averages 35.3% 8.5% 0.1% Segmented Campaign Open Click Conversion Improvement from Regular Email Campaigns 41% 183% 233% Revenue 278% Average Order Value (AOV) 39%
Improvement Open : 41% higher Clicks: 183% higher Conversions: 233% higher Revenue: 278% higher AOV: 39% higher When email metrics are coupled with resulting ecommerce order data, tracked and attributed to the appropriate email campaign via Google Analytics ecommerce tracking code, the resulting increases in Revenue and AOV underscore an incredibly compelling reason for Onward Reserve to continue segmenting their regular email marketing campaigns and Gazette: Not only did Onward Reserve see more than double the conversions and 2.7x the revenue from a segmented approach to their email marketing campaigns, but they saw a 4.5x ROI during the first month of their Windsor Circle subscription. As Onward Reserve layers additional segmentation, personalization, and automation into their email marketing strategy, they stand to see a 10x or higher ROI through the life of their Windsor Circle subscription. The most beneficial thing that I ve gotten out of Windsor Cicle is actually being able to see our membership. When we started the business, we used to send the same batch emails to everybody, reflected Watts. In this day and age, everything is about personalization. There is no reason we should be sending the same email campaign to a best customer as to someone who has never made a purchase.
Understanding and Building the Segments Best Customers In the case of Onward Reserve, Best Customers were defined using the criteria Recency Actual is after 12/31/12 (ie, made these most recent purchase on Jan 1, 2013 or more recently), and Frequency Actual of great than 3, meaning that the customer has purchased a total of 3 times or more over their lifetime. Recency Actual and Frequency Actual are both custom fields updated by Windsor Circle, based on the ongoing analysis and integration of purchase history data from the ecommerce platform. These criteria help Onward Reserve target a group of customers who are considered retained and are thus generating high lifetime value for the business. Windsor Circle finds that for most retailers, a 1-time purchaser is simply a shopper, a 2-time purchaser is a repeat buyer, and not until 3 or more purchases should the purchaser be considered retainer. It is important to continue to keep these retained customers, because retailers do not have to spend valuable acquisition dollars for each additional purchase, and thus more of the total order value drops to the bottom line. The Best Customer segment can also be defined using RFM analysis, conducted in an ongoing fashion by Windsor Circle, and made available as custom Receny, Frequency, and Monetary Value fields. These are numeric values, from 1 to 4, where 1 indicates the customer is in the top 25% of customers by that criteria. A Frequency of 1 indicates that customer has purchased more frequently than 75% of customers.
Onward Reserve s MailChimp Reports demonstrate consistently high Open & Click from key segments. Churning Customers Windsor Circle defines churning customers as customers who used to be some of your best customer who are now in danger of being lost, potentially for good. This segment is identified automatically using RFM scores (see above) and purchase history. In Onward Reserve s case, the segment was defined by the criteria Recency Actual of older than 1/1/13. The resulting segment are customers who used have not ordered since 2012. All other Buyers This segment captures all people who have made at least 1 purchase, but are not included in the Best or Churning Customers segment. Their Recency Actual is after 12/31/2012, and Frequency Actual is less than 4, meaning they have purchased since 1/1/13, but have made no more than 4 total purchases. In some Gazettes, this segment may be given a coupon, in others, no coupon. No Purchases (Subscribers) This segment includes subscribers on the email list who have never purchased. Many retailers have a hard time separating their email list into customers vs. subscribers simply because they do not have access to purchase history data within their email software. Onward Reserve was able to separate and segments subscribers from customers by searching for all list members whose Recency Rank was none (ie, they had never made a purchase). States Watts: We re sending emails to people who have never place an order to give them an incentive to make their first order. Then, we re aiming to increase the chances that we can retain those customers.
Automated Emails The second way that Onward Reserve is leveraging their ecommerce data, as made available by Windsor Circle, is through automated emails which are triggered to send every day to individual customers based on the prior days order data. These automated emails include a welcome email to new customers, a social-focused email to get more followers, a sequence of 3 win-back emails targeting valuable Churning customers, and a best customer rewards email. Open Click Conversion Automated Emails Post-Purchase Welcome ema 58.0% 9.4% 0.5% Social 36.0% 5.5% 0.0% Winback Campaign, 3 month 39.0% 8.6% 0.6% Winback Campaign, 5 month 44.2% 9.3% 1.2% Winback Campaign, 9 month 35.2% 8.5% Best Customer email 55.9% 5.5% Average 44.7% 7.8% 0.6%
When looking at these results over time, we found that these emails were generating over 18 times the conversion and 6 times the revenue of regular email campaigns. Automated Emails Open Click Conversion Improvement from Regular Email Campaigns 79% 160% 1842% Revenue 659% Average Order Value (AOV) 89% Just as significant is the fact that Onward Reserve made 49 times the revenue per recipient when compared to revenue generated from the 3 recent regular email campaigns. This underscores the power of data-driven, automated emails that are sent at exactly the right time, to the right customer, with the right message. Other email metrics showed strong improvement from regular emails: Open rates were nearly 80% higher; click rates 160% better, and average order value was up 89%. Next, we ll showcase 2 of these automated emails: welcome and best customer.
Welcome Email This post-purchase welcome email is triggered shortly after a new customer makes their first purchase. It presents the shopper with a 10% off unique coupon code to motivate a faster second purchase, as Windsor Circle s analysis of Onward Reserve s customer latency data shows that the sooner a customer makes a second purchase, the more likely they are to become a long term, high value customer. Autoresponder configuration rules in MailChimp are based on the first order date field provided by Windsor Circle.
Best Customer Reward: Personal Shopping Assistant Once a customer makes it into the Best Customer segment, defined as someone who is in the top quartiles of Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value (or, having a value of 1 for each of these custom email fields updated nightly by Windsor Circle), Onward Reserve triggers an email notifying the customer that they now have a Personal Shopping Assistant. This non-discount based reward is a highly effective way to create an even more personal relationship with a best customer, and enables an even higher level of customer care, attention, and personalization going forward. With Windsor Circle we are able to ID our best customers even better than when we looked through our Magento data ourselves said Will Watts, CTO at Onward Reserve. Autoresponder configuration rules in MailChimp are based on ecommerce purchase data updated by Windsor Circle
We decided we would invest in the Personal Shopping Assistant once we realized we could segment out our best customers said Watts. It s an opportunity for us to say, hey, we ve identified that you love our products, and you re one of our best customers, so we re going to reward you with an even higher and more personal level of customer service. The cost of providing a Personal Shopping Assistant means that Onward Reserve cannot offer this benefit to just any customer, and thus must take a careful data driven approach to identifying and notifying a small but value segment. Yet with the lifetime value of a Best Customer so much higher, it is a cost that will pay dividends through even higher retention and loyalty. Says Watts, It s a side of customer service that not every retailer is doing, a way for us to stand apart. This program increases AOV exponentially, increases lifetime value, and these customers are going stay loyal in return. Onward Reserves promotes a variety of apparel brands including Peter Millar.
Reflections on the Shift to Segmentation and Automation Watts, reflecting on the process involved in shifting Onward Reserve s marketing process to take advantage of segmentation and automation, noted that Yes, there is a small cost in terms of time in segmenting each and every email, but they were very simple to set up, and didn t take much time at all. And, any time that went into setting up autoresponders was absolutely well worth it. We saw additional revenue as soon as those autoresponders started going out. Onward Reserve started off with email software Constant Contact, and then started researching MailChimp. We found that it had more functionality, template design was great MailChimp was just a lot easier. It felt like the reporting was leaps and bounds ahead of Constant Contact. Said Watts. As Onward Reserve grows, it is encountering a question that all ecommerce companies should face: How many emails should I send? While you do have to be careful with how many emails you send, argues Watts, as long as there is some kind of value in the emails to the customer, we will send them.
Connect. Analyze. Retain. Onward Reserve uses Windsor Circle s Retention Automation Platform to Connect Magento to MailChimp. This Integration Includes: Connect: Full syncing of historical and goingforward customer, product, and purchase history data Analyze: Rich analysis of retention metrics, including lifetime value by segment and revenue by email campaign Retain: Use of 50+ custom data fields + ecommerce 360 fields within MailChimp to Segment, Personalize, and Automate emails that increase Opens, Clicks, and Conversions.
LEARN MORE To learn more about Windsor Circle s Retention Marketing Automation Platform and how to keep your customers: Visit www.windsorcircle.com Email sales@windsorcircle.com Call 1 (877) 848-4113 Keep Your Customers! More Case Studies at windsorcircle.com/results Whitepapers and Guides at windsorcircle.com/resources Credits Author: Andrew Pearson, VP of Marketing, Windsor Circle Contributor: Brad Springer, Client Success Associate, Windsor Circle In Collaboration with: Will Watts, CTO, Onward Reserve