SurfStitch, the winner of the 2014 ORIAS Best Pure-Play Award and Australia's number one surf and apparel retailer, spoke at Connections 2014 about the early wins they have seen from using customer, product, and purchase history data in their email marketing strategy.

In an industry where email marketing is a key way to reach customers, adding value and standing out is key. Tamara Falcke, Email Channel Manager for SurfStitch, speaking at Connections 2014 on behalf of SurfStitch, noted, "It's really important to ensure our customers have a personal connection to the brand."

SurfStitch subscribed to Windsor Circle's Retention Automation HubExchange App for two reasons: to help enhance their relationship with customers and subscribers, and to access data to help power personalized life-cycle marketing programs, thereby ensuring that every customer's journey is unique and delightful!

Connecting With the Brand

SurfStitch initially focused on identifying and targeting four main segments: New Subscribers, At-risk Subscribers, New Customers, and Churning Customers. Using product, purchase, and customer data imported to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud by Windsor Circle, SurfStitch has created a multi-stage welcome series that is sent to new subscribers and customers.

SurfStitch, being ahead of the curve, was already sending an automated welcome series through the Marketing Cloud. With Windsor Circle's App, they were able to include a smart coupon code, generated automatically and only included in the subsequent emails if a customer or subscriber has not used it already.

Re-Activating and Winning Back

SurfStitch also zeroed in on their at-risk subscribers, disengaged subscribers, and churning customers as three segments that needed some attention.

SurfStitch created a 3-part win-back campaign for churning customers. They also created an email campaign for at-risk subscribers and disengaged subscribers.

According to Falcke, "Reengagement has to happen not just when someone stops shopping, but when they stop engaging with our emails as well." SurfStitch uses data to automatically enroll subscribers into an at-risk or disengaged campaign based on how they interact with the promotional emails they receive. While the win-back campaign is aimed at getting churning customers to re-engage and make another purchase, the at-risk and disengaged subscriber campaigns have a goal of educating the subscriber about their ability to control their own journey by modifying the number and frequency of emails they receive.

SurfStitch has seen 40% more opens, 65% more clicks, and a 72% decrease in churn to date from their approach to data-driven lifecycle marketing.

Making the Business Case

While open and click rates are great for informing the marketing team on how customers and subscribers are engaging, having access to data such as Average Order Value, revenue by traffic source, and latency between purchases helped inform SurfStitch's longer term marketing strategy.

According to Falcke, "When making the business case for automation, it's all about the numbers and extracting the metrics that speak most to management. Each week I look at the previous week, record the numbers, and compare week on week. We can see how effective marketing was a year ago vs. today, based on these metrics and really understand the effectiveness of our acquisition techniques."

SurfStitch uses the Windsor Circle Retention Analytics Suite to track and report on this data. Everyone talks about how important data is, and most people have that data somewhere in one of their systems; however, only when data is available, accessible, and actionable can it become a game changer in the world of email marketing.

Download the SurfStitch case study to learn more.

Polly Flinch is a Content Marketing Coordinator at Windsor Circle doing whatever it is that needs to be done for the Marketing department. Whether writing a case study, updating collateral, or fighting with the website, every day at Windsor Circle brings something new. Windsor Circle is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud HubExchange partner. Their Retention Automation app connects your eCommerce platform to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you dive into customer analytics, and segmentation by purchase history. Check out their HubExchange app today!