Industry: Travel Apparel and Accessories
Platform: Shopify Plus / Switched from MailChimp to Klaviyo
Wins:
- 100% increase in revenue in 60 days from two “flows.”
- Increased open rate by 100% and Click Through Rate by 60%
- 10x Organic List Growth by optimizing the opt-in and webpage for the Google spiders.
The Setup
Aquanutia specializes in high-quality men’s and women’s clothing for adventure travel. It started as a Kickstarter, and the founder has been traveling the world and building the biz since. It is a classic startup case where he “bootstrapped” his way to his first one million in sales. It was a laptop, a dude with an idea, and a handful of free apps. But his approach to email was chaotic. In addition to doing his own email marketing, he oversees all growth— with no marketing plan or background in anything at all.
I joined the company one and a half years ago as a blogging intern.
I wrote a few blogs and then offered to write a few email sequences for him, which I was starting to get into at the time.
The challenge was immediately apparent: without visibility into customers’ preferences and interests, how would I (a content creator, not a strategist) plan and execute a fully-optimized email marketing program?
Now, fast forward to the end of 2022. The email list has grown consistently to 10x its original size. And email has played a pivotal role in helping to develop the e-commerce side of the business, which is built on Shopify Plus and accounts for a substantial portion of company revenue (60-70%).
Read on to see how the switch to Klaviyo and the company’s email marketing approach evolved into a revenue-generating machine.
The Challenge
When I got access to the MailChimp logins, I was ready to upload some well-crafted copy and hit send.
But right from the start, I saw that MailChimp wasn’t an ideal fit for what Rishi (the founder) wanted to do.
Without visibility into shopper behavior, I found that Rishi was essentially sending emails into the ether without understanding purchase history or preferences.
Choosing Klaviyo
I began a search for an email service provider that would provide the increased visibility he needed to kick Taylor Stitch’s email marketing into high gear.
Luckily, I have a solid group of digital marketing friends. By then, I had a biz-ops coach helping me organize my freelance chaos. The feedback I heard was consistent: the gold standard for Shopify email integrations is Klaviyo.
One of Aquanautia’s core strengths was the beautiful photographs and videos produced by some of the founder’s friends in Spain. Using that content to help create an incredible brand experience on the website was the first step in accelerating our list growth.
Building Customer Segments
With a rapidly growing email list, we were determined to understand the optimal email cadence and targeting to drive sales. Because, after all, in email marketing, the most important stat is sales. Plus, it’s the easiest KPI to track and report.
We decided to start experimenting.
I used the “segment builder” in Klaviyo to divide the master list into groups for different email campaigns. I recorded the results from month to month.
I started by identifying and weeding out the lurkers and tire-kickers on the list with a super-simple 3 question survey. It was simply a link to a google form with a chance to win a free pair of shorts. I made sure to mention that it was only 2 minutes of their time, and in this way, I was able to create a few new segments:
- “Highly engaged” = Subscriber opened three or more emails in the last 180 days
- “Somewhat engaged” = We tagged this on those who responded to the survey.
- “Newly engaged” = subscribed from FB or Youtube during an Ad campaign.
For one test, we sent a short loom video from the founder to two different segments that, if watched to the end, would give a discount code for early bird deals on Rishi’s new Kickstarter design.
I designed this specifically to help me better understand customer behavior.
The first send went to the highly engaged segment; the second went to the rest of our list, which was double the size.
The differences between the two segments were startling.
The active segment was the clear winner, with 42% open, 4% click-through, and 39 purchases. Meanwhile, the other segment didn’t perform quite as well.
13% open rate. 0.7% click-through. Zero purchases.
Zero revenue.
With this strategy and the higher open rates that came with it, I could show the Email Service Providers we were sending messages that people wanted. And begin to build that sender reputation that improves overall deliverability. The approach also strengthened the subscribers’ connection to the brand. They started to feel nurtured instead of just spammed as user behavior triggered new flows and would customize which emails customers would receive.
Aquanautia continues to build out and test different types of segments, including ones that get even more precisely targeted. For example, in the final hours of the window for crowdfunding a waterproof backpack, I sent the same email to two different segments.
Group A: Customers who had opened at least one email related to the idea.
Group B: Customers who had opened three or more emails in the last 180 days
Even though this group was tagged “highly engaged,” Group B customers had never opened an email from this chain before.
The results speak for themselves.
In the first group — the subscribers who had opened at least one related email — we saw a higher open rate, higher CTR, and nine times more purchases than the other.
After running test after test and seeing similar results, I could scale the approach. Now, Rishi uses it to build out highly targeted audiences and offer each segment precisely what they want regularly.
This allows him to ask the most simple (but profoundly influential) question, “Who is going to be excited about this.”
With more targeted email campaigns, I realized another win: unsubscribes went down by 60%.
But even with this success, there’s always room for improvement.
Looking Ahead
Rishi and I have already started planning the next big campaigns.
Having reduced the number of non-targeted emails, Aquanautia sends out, our next step is identifying opportunities to increase the total number of precisely targeted emails strategically. The goal is to increase the emails we send and keep the same engagement levels.
If I can keep on this path, I will be able to deliver Rishi his next million in sales, twice as fast as his first million.
Now, it seems like we are onboarding a new employee every Monday as his company is growing fast. He introduces me to these new folks with respect as “the most profitable intern I’ve ever had the pleasure of hiring.”
“Working with Jacob is like buying money at a discount,” He says.
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