Going against best practice brought Soulmatefood a 39% click-to-open rate

Analyzing customers’ behavior led them to using more images in email, but it delivered great results.

Company name: Soulmatefood
Designed and developed by: Victoria McNeil
Website: soulmatefood.com

Campaign details

Subject line: 60% off! Join the Juice Revolution!
Open: 20%
Click: 39% of opened

Context

Who was the campaign targeted at?

Soulmatefood subscribers – profiled as health conscious and fitness-minded.

Objective

• Inform their subscribers about their latest promotions, and use strong visuals to entice them to take advantage.

What makes this a performing campaign?

Sometimes going against conventional wisdom can pay off. Soulmatefood used to build their email campaigns using the best practice advice of keeping a balanced ratio between text and images. However, for a company like Soulmatefood images in email are really important, as they are a very persuasive method of enticing people to buy food products.

Looking at the Email Client Report in MessageFocus, over 60% of the company’s subscribers open their email newsletters on mobile, with a vast majority doing so on iPhones.  What’s more, the number one desktop email client is Apple Mail. This means that images in emails are automatically downloaded for the majority of subscribers. Employing a more image-heavy approach to their email marketing would cause less problems. And indeed, the Campaign Reports showed considerably improved results after switching to a more visual approach.

This campaign is no exception. It was built around the offer of 60% off the juice product line, with the subject line and above-the-fold promoting this. The image used for this was very visually appealing, and promoted the products in a fun, vibrant and enticing way.

As this campaign was sent to their entire database, the rest of the email focused on providing content for a wider audience. It contains information about new flavours, what makes their juices special and articles about sportsmen associated with the company. The sport focus endorses the relation between Soultmatefood products and health and fitness.

The results

The nature of the offer appealed to the Soulmatefood subscriber database as the subject line convinced 20% of them to open, which is significantly above the average for the retail industry.

Knowing your audience is key to effective marketing campaigns. By analyzing the email clients they use, Soultmatefood worked out that using lots of  images in email campaigns wouldn’t overly negatively affect their campaign performance. It’s no surprise that it achieved a fantastic 39% CTOR.

Looking at the Heatmap Report, the main objective of promoting the juice sale was achieved, as it accounted for 82% of the clicks.  The Heatmap also showed that the rest of the clicks were spread throughout the email, which means the receivers were interested in the rest of the content as well.

While we don’t normally recommend the use of an image-heavy template for emails, it worked for Soulmatefood. The key takeaways are a) know your audience and b) test, test, test!