Loxa Beauty launched in 2013 and was acquired by Sally Beauty shortly thereafter. Email has played a key role in growing the business and enhancing its relationships with customers.

When Carla Truex, the marketing and public relations manager at Loxa Beauty, joined the company, they were sending one marketing email each week to a small list of just 50 customers. With the help of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Loxa has grown its subscription list to more than 100,000, and the company now sends five segmented emails per week.

But this growth didn’t happen overnight. Through strategic email segmentation, content that appeals to the unique interests of its consumers, and an attention to customer behavior that relies on regular analysis of email and web analytics, the company has made email a cornerstone of its marketing activities.

Building a new program can be daunting, but Truex offers three pieces of advice to help.

1. Consistent tagging is critical to success

“Some of our best campaigns don’t actually offer any discounts. It’s always the assumption that if you offer deep discounts you’ll have a good campaign, but we’ve really been able to prove that wrong through consistent tagging in our emails,” Truex said.

Tagging content within emails plays an important role in giving Loxa the information necessary to serve up targeted and relevant content to its customers.

Additional data showed that Loxa customers were much younger than the company initially suspected. Based on that information, Loxa shifted the tone of its emails to make them more conversational.

The company also pays attention to where the customer signs up for emails. If, for example, they’re coming from the blog, the first emails the customer gets from Loxa will be very content heavy with little emphasis on sales. If the customer signs up for emails through the sales process, however, they’ll be put into the funnel for future product recommendations.

2. Test, test, and test again

“One of the most underused features of the Marketing Cloud is the ability to A/B test emails,” said Truex. When the company adapted its email content to appeal to a younger audience, it rigorously tested subject lines and send times.

The result was a significant increase in opens.

Loxa found that customers are in buying mode Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays but engage with content most on Sundays. “We never would have figured that out without the A/B testing,” Truex said.

3. Partner with reputable brands

“For us it was really important to partner with reputable brands who already had audiences,” Truex said. Being the only authorized online retailer to sell Paul Mitchell helped.

As the company began growing its lists, it relied on Paul Mitchell’s network to help get the word out about the website. The validity Loxa gained through this endorsement paid off in the form of new customers and further brand exposure.