Who doesn’t love a good makeover story? Whether it’s re-organizing a messy closet or giving your calendar a total overhaul, there are few things more inspirational than seeing real people make life-changing improvements.
That’s why we were so excited to do a live Email Makeover.
See, our email experts are always showing our clients and prospects new and innovative ways to amplify their email campaigns with context. We wanted to share those Email Makeovers with the world – so that’s exactly what we did.
We invited brands around the world to submit their email campaigns for a chance to have their emails re-imagined with contextual elements.
Click here to watch the recorded version of our Email Makeover webinar.
The Email Makeover winner: Tails.com
Choosing a winner was tough, but after seeing Tails.com’s website and email campaign, we knew they’d be a great fit. Tails.com is a UK-based online retailer that makes tailor-made dog food. (What’s not to love?!)
They have a comprehensive survey on their website for their prospective customers that asks about everything from their dog’s breed to any health issues they’ve encountered. Then, they recommend a custom, nutritionally-optimized food.
We knew we could leverage all of that great customer data using contextual email marketing.
The email that Tails.com submitted for their Email Makeover is sent to anyone who fills out that initial survey on their website, but doesn’t complete a purchase. It does a great job of using a customer testimonial, first name personalization and includes a recent 4-star review. It was the perfect jumping-off point for contextual marketing.
6 ways we redesigned Tails.com’s email with contextual marketing
Targeting based on dog breed
In Tails.com’s original email, they sent everyone the same testimonial from Claire and Kobi – but they have a variety of testimonials on their website. With contextual marketing, can automatically pull in testimonials based on dog breed. That way, every person receiving this email sees a testimonial that is relevant to their furry friend.
If we wanted, we could go even deeper than that: we could target based on health issue, age, weight, gender, taste preferences or any combination of the data Tails.com has on their prospects.
Image personalization
We wanted to maintain the name personalization that Tails.com was already using, but we also wanted to add something a little extra special. Using image personalization, we added the subscriber’s dog’s name to an image of a dog food bowl. Image personalization is ideal for grabbing and holding your reader’s attention and driving engagement.
Creative optimization
It’s an email marketing best practice to always test one part of every email you send. Testing your CTA copy will tell you which type of language resonates with your audience and drives them to click on your offer.
Creative optimization automates that process by sending multiple versions of your email to a percentage of your subscribers, determines a winner and sends that winner to the rest of your subscribers.
This gives Tails.com an easy way of testing multiple versions of their email creative – including one version with their subscriber’s dog’s name.
Content automation
Email content can be a huge challenge for email marketers. Namely, what to content include, how to consistently deliver great content and keeping that email content fresh and relevant. Content automation is an easy way to solve these problems.
For a brand like Tails.com that posts regularly on their blog, content automation is a simple way to integrate their blog content strategy with their email content strategy.
Here, you can see how content automation automatically pulls in the latest blog post from the Tails.com website, so their subscribers will always be up-to-date on the latest content. If the Tails.com team updates the blog, the email will update in real-time with the newest post.
Live 4-star reviews
Tails.com has plenty of 4-star reviews on their website, and content automation would ensure that they are always displaying the latest reviews in their emails. We can also filter reviews by star level, so subscribers only see the best and most recent reviews.
Live social feed
Adding a live social feed to your emails gives you the opportunity to showcase user-generated content. UGC is powerful stuff, and no one tell your story better than your customers.
Live socials feeds are also incredibly powerful for engagement, encouraging subscribers to become a part of your community. In Tails.com’s case, it doesn’t hurt that their community is full of adorable customers.
Before and after with contextual email marketing
Here is Tails.com’s “Before” email:
And here is their “After” email with all of the contextual elements we’ve discussed.
Tails.com was on the right track with their existing email campaign. But with the addition of context, their campaign is transformed into a customer-centric, time-saving, relevant email that creates an amazing experience in the inbox.
Want to check out the recorded webinar of our Email Makeover? Click here to watch it now!