How River Island Enhanced a Great Email Marketing Program With Bloomreach Engagement

Story Behind the Brand

Popular high street fashion brand River Island had a successful email marketing program in place. But as a tech-savvy company that is always looking for ways to innovate, test, and close the gap on any inefficiencies, River Island wanted to evaluate how its email metrics could be further optimized.

30.9

increase in revenue per email

increase in email open rate

12.8

decrease in unsubscribe rate

Challenge

The River Island marketing team was looking for a way to fine tune its email program. Specifically, the team wanted to improve domain reputation and build trust in the brand by offering a good customer communication experience. The team wanted to accomplish these goals while not losing revenue from email.

Sending too many emails to inactive customers can annoy them and lead to high unsubscribe rates — which can negatively impact your email deliverability. At the same time, sending too few emails to loyal customers could lead to a drop in revenue. The team needed to find that sweet spot of sending the right amount of emails to the right customer.

Solution

Since River Island is a Bloomreach Engagement customer, Bloomreach proposed running an A/B test for at least three weeks in which an out-of-the-box frequency management policy that had been developed could be tested. This policy was developed after consulting with our in-house email deliverability experts and data scientists.

The hypothesis was that this “smart newsletter policy” would lead to better inbox placement for River Island and it would result in a boost in engagement and improve revenue per customer. The frequency management policy segmented the newsletter audiences into eight broad categories based on historic engagement with email send limits.

Additionally, after running the initial A/B test, River Island set up campaign prioritizations. This is a system that ensures that if customers qualify for multiple campaigns with a brand, they still only receive one email in a specified time period based on the prioritization set by the River Island team.

We needed a tool that could not only achieve according to our plans but could create success going into the future.

Kate Vezina

CRM Lead, River Island

Results

After a two-phase A/B test in which incremental changes were made, there were significant improvements to River Island’s email marketing program.

River Island saw a 30.9% increase in revenue per email and a 30.7% increase in orders per email despite a 22.5% decrease in overall send volume. There was 0.2% increase in revenue per customer as well.

Open rates increased by 26% by creating segments and only sending emails to customers who were engaged. There was also a 12.8% decrease in unsubscribe rate due to limiting the number of emails sent to lapsing and more passive customers.

If you’re interested in learning how your company can become more successful with its email program, schedule a personalized demo of Bloomreach Engagement today.