email marketing brand case study

20 Email Marketing Case Studies: Examples & Results to Learn From

How would you like to read the best email marketing case studies ever published?

More importantly, how would you like to copy the best practices for email marketing campaigns that are based on real-world examples and not just theory?

Below, you’ll find a list of the top email marketing case studies along with the results and key findings from each example. By studying these email marketing case study examples and applying the lessons learned in your own email campaigns, you can hopefully achieve similar results as an email marketer.

Table of Contents

Top Email Marketing Case Studies

Getting 1,300 monthly donations – watsi email marketing case study.

In this case study, you’ll learn how Watsi crafted an email marketing campaign encouraging new and existing users to sign up for its Universal Fund. Using seven test-driven tools helped this organization knock huge campaigns out of the park. Learn how Watsi used email to make people feel more special, take customization to the next level, earn 1,300 monthly donations, and more.

Collecting 100,000 Emails In One Week – Tim Ferris Show Email Marketing Case Study

This email marketing case study has it all: tips, templates, and code to create a successful email campaign. Discover how Harry’s, a men’s grooming brand, launched its brand and how it collected nearly 100,000 email addresses in one week. You’ll learn everything they did so you can try to replicate the results.

The Science Behind Obama’s Campaign Emails – Bloomberg Email Marketing Case Study

Obama’s election success proved the true power of digital marketing, including powerful email campaigns. Most of the $690 million dollars Obama raised online came from fundraising emails. In this article, you’ll learn about the rigorous experimentation by a large team of analysts and the strategies that made the campaign so successful.

The Amazon Email Experience – Vero Email Marketing Case Study

In this case study on email marketing by Vero, you’ll get a complete analysis of Amazon’s email experience for the user. It takes you from the initial subscriber welcome message, to email receipts, shipping updates, thank you content, invites, Black Friday deals, the review email, and more. There are loads of data and useful tips you can gain and use for your own email campaigns in this post.

Boost Open Rates By 3X & CTR By 2X – Digital Marketer Email Marketing Case Study

How would you like to instantly boost your open rates by 3X and your click-through rates (CTR) by 2X with the next email you send to your list? Digital Marketer shows you 11 strategies you can use right now based on its own research and data to achieve similar results.

Increasing Reach, Impact & Subscriber Satisfaction – Content Marketing Institute Email Marketing Case Study

This article by Content Marketing Institute contains a breakdown of several case study examples for email marketing. Inside, you’ll learn about using list segmentation as well as advice on measuring and optimizing your email delivery performance. Popular brands discussed include SalesForce, Xerox, Noodles Company, and more.

Birchbox Boost Conversions By 25% – Braze Email Marketing Case Study

This is one of the top email marketing case studies that prove why you shouldn’t send out a one-size-fits-all message to your mailing list. It’s a short case study on email marketing, but you’ll learn quickly how Braze helped Birchbox use custom attributes culled from data gathered on customer behavior to switch from generic email content to a more personalized strategy that delivered better results: a 25% boost in conversion rates and 16% increase in open rates.

109% Revenue Lift for Dell with GIFs – MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Case Study

This is one of the best email marketing case studies available that shows the true power of using GIFs in your daily, weekly, or monthly newsletter campaigns. Discover how Dell lifted revenue by 109% with GIF-centered email effort.

$40,000 In Sales Without Annoying Subscribers – Yaro Starak Email Marketing Case Study

Here’s a complete breakdown of how Yaro Starak generated $40,00 in sales without annoying his subscribers during new product launches. It contains lots of tips, tricks, and expert advice on how (and when) to send consecutive emails, usiing videos in the campaign, creating a sense of urgency to buy now, and more.

$800,000 for Charity Water By Increasing Email Frequency – Money Journal Email Marketing Case Study

There are numerous email marketing strategies you can use to increase revenue for your business. However, not all email campaigns have to be heavily focused on giving customer discounts or free stuff to generate more money. This is especially true for non-profit organizations. Check out this case study to learn how Charity Water increased revenue by $800,000 by taking an unconventional approach to their follow-up emails that takes their audience on a journey.

Nanoleaf Recovers 30% of Abandonded Carts – Rejoiner Email Marketing Case Study

Are you an ecommerce brand, online retailer, course seller, or other type of website that uses a cart for the checkout process? If so, then this case study by Rejoiner will give you actionable tips to try based on data from Nanoleaf, which recovered 30% of sales with abandoned cart follow-up emails.

70+ Calls for a B2B Company with Cold Emailing – Growforce Email Marketing Case Study

Cold email marketing can be one of the best converting channels when done right. And this article will help you improve your cold emailing results. Read it to find out some of the top cold email best practices, get an example email sequence, and learn a powerful extra step you can use for marketing automation that works.

From Starting Blocks to Total Clarity – Email Marketing Heroes Case Study

Email Marketing Heroes is a podcast that offers free email marketing tips and a membership program to help business owners improve their email campaigns. In this blog post (and podcast), you’ll learn how one member got instant positive results by emailing her list more regularly, setting up automated email campaigns, and including links in a specific part of each message.

Hammock Increased Open Rate 48% with Shorter Emails – MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Case Study

Hammock is a B2B company that turned its traditional, content-heavy email newsletter into what they refer to as an “un-newsletter.” Discover how “The Idea Email” increased email open rates by 48% by focusing on one central topic and containing 350 words or less.

A/B Testing for Success – VWO Email Marketing Case Study

Most digital marketers don’t think about A/B testing their email marketing campaigns. However, year after year, email marketing delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) across all acquisition channels. In this article, you’ll learn how to incorporate A/B testing best practices, methodologies, and mental models to increase open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and more.

Building a Welcome Series from Scratch – HelpScout Email Marketing Case Study

This is not your typical case study on email marketing; however, it’s an important article to read if you need help setting up a good welcome series for your business. HelpScout takes you from the first email to the last you send to new subscribers while also describing the goal of each email message in the campaign.

600 Email Subscribers With 2 Blog Posts – Jacob McMillen Email Marketing Case Study

Want to know how to combine the power of SEO, blogging, and email marketing to get new subscribers on your list? Jacob McMillen teaches you all that and more in this case study. Learn how he used ConvertKit on a new blog along with SumoMe Pro popups, and a special SEO content writing technique to get 600 email subscribers from just two blog posts. Includes step-by-step instructions for you to copy this exact strategy for your website and email campaigns.

8 Steps to Building a Tripwire Email Funnel – Data Driven Marketing Email Case Study

If you’re serious about email marketing, then you need to have a good tripwire in place to make more sales from your new subscribers. Inside this guide, you’ll find a complete strategy for building an effective tripwire funnel that converts more subscribers into customers as well as using a follow up email sequence to capture the non-buyers.

10 Tripwire Examples – Autogrow Email Marketing Case Study

After reading the last previous guide on setting up an email tripwire funnel, you may want to look at this page to get proven examples of case studies that worked for this type of email marketing.

56% Rise In Open Rates with Emojis In Subject Lines – Campaign Monitor Email Marketing Case Study

A famous email campaign case study released by Experian revealed that 56% of unique open rates increased for brands that used emojis in their subject lines. In this article, Campaign Monitor offers valuable tips for using emojis like a pro email marketer.

What Is an Email Marketing Case Study?

An email marketing case study explains the process a business went through with a client to help them achieve specific results with an email campaign. Email marketing case studies provide a detailed examination of particular strategies within a real-world context to prove how effective it was for the client.

Are Case Studies Good for Email Marketing?

Case studies are good for email marketing because you can learn how to create email campaigns more effectively. Instead of just studying the theory of email marketing, you can learn from real email strategy campaigns to find out what methods deliver a higher return on investment.

Email Marketing Case Study Examples Summary

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best email marketing case studies that are based on real-world results and not just theory.

As you discovered, the email marketing case study examples above demonstrated many different ways to implement an effective email campaign. By studying the key findings from these examples, and applying the methods learned to your own business and email newsletters, you can hopefully achieve the same positive outcome with your email marketing efforts.

New email success case studies are being published every month and I’ll continue to update this list as they become available. So keep checking back to read the current sources of information on email marketing.

7 email marketing case studies to inspire your success

Email marketing
GetResponse University

Email remains the key marketing channel for a reason – it brings business results. With email, you can build a contact lis t with your target audience, learn what they need to know to become successful, and send them relevant information that helps solve their problems and decide whether to buy your products or services.

Also, when you use a professional email marketing platform , you can be sure that your emails reach everyone in your contact list, something social media algorithms cannot do for your marketing.

In this article, I’d like to highlight seven email marketing case studies showing how different business achieve their goals with email marketing:

Allakando email marketing case study – contact list management: remain personal while interacting with a large audience
InfoShare Academy email marketing case study – list building: use a lead magnet to attract the target audience
WOŚP email marketing case study – use online marketing tools to collect information from your audience
LandCafe.pl email marketing case study – educational email series with a 54% sales rate
TechSoup Polska email marketing case study – 1200% increase in orders value from email campaigns over a year
MobileFun email marketing case study – Automation and email marketing campaign A/B testing in ecommerce
Selsey email marketing case study – 2x more conversions from abandoned cart emails

I hope the case studies inspire you to make the most of this online marketing channel.

If you are about to start with email marketing, here’re a few resources that might help you develop a basic strategy and run your first campaign:

Email marketing for beginners
Email marketing best practices
Email marketing benchmarks

Seven great email marketing case studies

I wanted to emphasize the versatility of email marketing, so I’ve chosen companies operating in different industries, e.g., ecommerce, education, and NGOs, to provide different contexts of use.

1. Allakando email marketing case study – contact list management: remain personal while interacting with a large audience

Allakando is an innovative tutoring company based in Sweden. Its mission is to accelerate people’s growth – both educationally and personally with an innovative blend between traditional home tutoring and cutting-edge education technology.

Challenge: In November 2021, the company was connecting 5 900 passionate tutors with more than 26 000 students. The challenge was to remain personal while interacting with a large audience.

“ GetResponse makes it simple to talk to the right people in the right way at the right time. ” – Erik Schuss, CMO at Allakando.

Solution: The team at Allakando collects data from multiple sources and uses it to segment their contact list. At the time of creating this case study, they created eight segments and assigned ten custom fields to contacts in their email list.

Collecting and using the data allows the team to send relevant emails to teachers, parents, and students.

As Erik Schuss states: “ Over the years, the importance of quality and relevance has increased in all parts of marketing and communication. Especially when communicating with email, broad blasts of messages to large audiences will more likely see you ending up in the junk folder than driving revenue and value. We reached a point where we realized that we needed to really have a tool to manage all of our messaging in a way that ensures that what we send gives a positive experience. “

Key takeaway: Know your audience.

Make sure you understand the needs of people on your contact list: what do they need to know to follow your call to action? Once you’ve mapped it out, group contacts with similar needs together. Such groups are called segments. Send relevant information to segments of your audience makes your email marketing much more effective.

Check out the full case study:

If you’d like to learn more about segmentation, you can see How to Use Email Segmentation .

2. InfoShare Academy email marketing case study – list building: use a lead magnet to attract the target audience

InfoShare Academy offers intensive programming courses for beginners who want to start a career in IT.

Challenge: The key challenge was to attract Facebook users who may want to start a career in IT and invite them to sign up for a dedicated contact list where they’ll be nurtured with email marketing series on how to learn programming.

“We’re one of th e few companies in our niche doing content marketing. We use our newsletter to nurture the leads who consider taking up a programming course, providing valuable information on a regular basis. ” – Jakub Kłos, Digital Marketing Team Leader.

Solution: The team prepared a Facebook lead ads campaign using “The 125 coding terms for beginners” ebook as a lead magnet – a piece of valuable content for the target audience.

InfoShare's lead magnet – an ebook useful for their audience.

“ We wanted to reach people who only just started thinking about learning to code. We wanted to educate them. Our competitive advantage is the quality of our courses, confirmed by our alums. The quality of the content we offer reflects this. ” – Sylwia Tokarska, Digital Marketing Specialist

1200 new contacts in one month
1.31 PLN acquisition cost per contact

Key takeaway: Create lead magnets to grow your email list.

More on lead magnets: 25 Lead Magnet Examples That Build Your Email List & Convert

More on Facebook Ads: How to Optimize Facebook Lead Ads for Success

3. WOŚP email marketing case study – use online marketing tools to collect information from your audience

The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy “WOŚP”) – is a philanthropic foundation whose primary goal is providing health care, saving the lives of ill people, especially children, and promoting a healthy lifestyle, and preventive medicine.

The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity’s communication strategy is based on the idea of being closer to people.

Challenge: During The Orchestra at Home (Domowa Orkiestra) live event, the founder, Jurek Owsiak, spontaneously asked people if they would like to take part in Pol’and’Rock Festival and the foundation needed to create a place where people could express their interest, provide them with information, and sign up for updates.

Solution: WOŚP used one of the provided landing page templates, and in just 3 minutes, they created a simple web page where people interested in the festival could join a dedicated contact list.

“ As soon as we established that the Pol’and’Rock Festival is on, we started preparing a landing page. We later sent out an email with a survey. Through the survey, we learned that people want to meet face-to-face. Nobody at that time planned an offline event on this scale. Direct contact with people was crucial for our teams. “

“ In 2021, we decided that the Poland Rock festival would be a ticketed event. Suddenly, we found ourselves in need of custom communication with our audience, sending tickets, instructions, etc. One of the main tools we utilized was GetResponse. ” – Anna Sobieraj, Digital Marketing and Social Media Specialist

3 minutes spent on preparing a signup page
41.74% signup rate
51488 signups

Key takeaway: Use online tools like live webinars, landing pages, and email marketing to stay in touch with your audience.

More on landing pages: 7 Winning Lead Generation Landing Page Examples & Tips

4. LandCafe.pl email marketing case study – educational email series with a 54% sales rate

LandCafe.pl is an online store created out of love for travel and coffee, offering artisanal coffee beans.

Challenge: Quite common in ecommerce: to increase product awareness among the newsletter audience, speed up purchase decisions, and boost sales.

“ Our target audience is people who know the difference between the quality of mass-produced and artisanal coffee. Our customers make conscious choices, which gave us the idea for an educational campaign that could make our subscribers more aware and ready to buy. ” – Łukasz Janik, founder of LandCafe.pl.

Solution: Welcome email series based on the Learn > Like > Trust > Buy principle. The email sequence helps new subscribers better understand the brand and products so they can buy the coffee they like best. It starts with a welcome email explaining the idea behind the brand and inviting people to read more in the blog post. The next few follow-up emails explain the products in detail. The last email in the sequence contains a discount coupon and drives even more online sales.

Educational email series from LandCafe, created in GetResponse.

41.30% sales rate during the welcome series
13.30% discount coupon email sales rate
54% total sales rate

Key takeaway: Find out what your audience needs to know to purchase your product or service and use this knowledge to design a welcome email series. Use marketing automation to put the series together and assign tags to customer behavior.

More on welcome series: 11 Welcome Emails That Set the Standard

5. TechSoup Polska email marketing case study – 1200% increase in orders value from email campaigns over a year

TechSoup Polska Foundation actively supports community and social organizations by facilitating access to new technologies: software, hardware, and various solutions and by showing how to use them.

Challenge: Giving associated organizations access to new technologies, educating them on available tools and technology, and facilitating knowledge exchange between partners and associated organizations.

Solution: A newsletter fulfilling the information needs of the target audience.

“ The main goal of our email marketing comms is to inform organizations about products and support they can get thanks to TechSoup. Our newsletters contain information about new offers, training invitations, and tips that help you select the right tools for remote work. ” – Liza Nema, TechSoup Polska Project Coordinator

1200% increase in orders value from a newsletter over a year
8666 associated organizations
11 emails sent in March and April 2020
20 recommended solutions for remote work
3 trainings conducted

Key takeaway: Use your newsletter as a revenue channel. If you segment your list properly and send relevant content, the average open rate of your newsletter will be high. A newsletter with the same email structure might help your subscribers navigate through content and result in high click-through rates driving more traffic to your website.

More on newsletters: 21 Company Newsletter Ideas: Examples & How-to Guide

6. MobileFun email marketing case study – Automation and email marketing campaign A/B testing in ecommerce

Mobile Fun is the UK’s leading online mobile accessories retailer — offering the latest mobile phones and exciting accessories. Based in Birmingham, the company operates through offices and dedicated websites worldwide.

Challenge: To segment the contact list, send targeted newsletters, run tests, and automate processes.

Solution:

Automation: we automated our welcome and engagement program. The simplicity of setting that up and the actual results we get are pleasing to see.
Segmentation: we can segment our contact list and send targeted newsletters.
Drag and drop newsletter creator: we can quickly and easily create and tweak our designs for A/B testing.

MobileFun A/B testing their email campaigns.

“ With GetResponse, you can actually check what is driving your KPIs. We’re doing around 20 split tests at the moment. We’re testing how different colors, background images, and CTAs impact sales and revenue. ” – Matt Page, Email Marketing Executive.

With the A/B test creator, you can quickly test which subject line or content resonates most with email subscribers, resulting in higher click rates. This way, you can make data-based decisions on the messaging that drives email engagement and conversion rates.

A/B testing subject lines and content of emails in GetResponse.

11.69% Variant A test open rate
12.37% Variant B test open rate
49.17% Winning campaign open rate

Key takeaway: Run A/B tests to check the performance of emails before they get sent to all the recipients.

7. Selsey email marketing case study – 2x more conversions from abandoned cart emails

SELSEY is one of the biggest furniture and home decorations retailers in Poland. The company’s mission is to provide its clients with a comfortable space where they can relax, which is crucial for keeping daily activities efficient, and the mood positive.

Challenge: Encourage users to complete their purchase, maintain relationships with users and increase brand loyalty.

Solution: Abandoned cart automation cycle incentivizing purchases. According to the test, the simple tactic of including social proof in the email doubles conversion rates and turns website visitors into customers. If you add a discount, together with a personal touch from your satisfied customers, you can increase the conversion rate almost three times.

“ Abandoned cart cycle is dedicated to people who take their time when making a purchase. Usually, it does not concern spontaneous shopping. Deciding on purchasing furniture can take up to 6 weeks. Users treat the cart as their wish list, adding various products they liked, not necessarily focusing on buying here and now. ” – Weronika Andrzejewska, Conversion & Inbound Marketing Specialist.

Results of an email's A/B test, showing that 5-star reviews increase conversions.

202% conversion from an email with reviews of happy customers
239% conversion from an email with reviews of happy customers and a discount code

Key takeaway: A/B test incentives to purchase and create an automated abandoned cart series.

More on abandoned carts: 15 Best Abandoned Cart Email Examples and Best Practices

Time to level up your email marketing campaigns

Now you’re familiar with at least seven different scenarios where email marketing proved to be an effective marketing channel. I hope these case studies inspire you to use email in your business and find ways to be closer to your customers. Email might be the perfect channel to build relationships with your target audience – relationships that translate into more email-generated sales and revenue.

Help Center

Help articles for Vero Connect and Vero Cloud users.

Developer Guide

Setup and configuration guide for engineering users.

API Reference

Documentation of API endpoints and implementation.

Insights on enhancing product-first email and push messaging campaigns.

Template Library
Liquid Guide
Integrations
Sign up for free

9 Great Email Marketing Case Studies (and Counting)

News and Updates Updated August 2020 Posted: August 2015

What Startups Can Learn from Watsi’s Wildly Successful Email Campaign

Read it | Share it | Save it

This story is too nuanced to accurately summarize but here’s a primer.

Watsi is the first non-profit to be part of Y Combinator. They crowdsource healthcare funding for people all over the world. To drive recurring revenue, they broke out their monthly donation feature into its own product and launched it separately.

They used email to source early feedback, used social proof to create buzz and built a personalized newsletter to keep users informed about their donations.

Here’s a snippet from this post:

Part of showing people what they’re getting is investing in communications where you aren’t asking for anything. Instead, you’re thanking people for their business or their participation. You’re acknowledging your end of the deal where you’re committed to delighting and surprising them. This is something that for-profit startups tend to neglect – the importance of not just sending a receipt for a purchase, but honing that interaction to make customers feel something more.

Email marketing is isn’t a channel – it’s one layer of a customer-centric company. This case study reveals how complex (and truly valuable) it is to use email to grow a business.

Building a Newsletter Welcome Series from Scratch

Help Scout’s signature flair is purpose .

As they considered how to welcome to new subscribers – and there are more than 51,000 – they knew that aligning business goals with a great experience was key. They pulled it off by ensuring each email sought to achieve a single, measurable goal.

Each of the five emails in the sequence is explained in detail, including the intended purpose and suggestions based on their own learnings.

How The Skimm’s passionate readership helped its newsletter grow to 1.5 million subscribers

Building a profitable business with email is very different than using email to build a profitable business.

Watsi, for example, uses email to support their product. In The Skimm’s case, the email is the product. When newsletters become a business, it’s worth paying careful attention to their strategy. (We detailed an example of this in our Death to the Stock Photo case study .)

The Skimm’s email newsletter reaches 1.5 million daily. That growth has been fueled by an intense understanding of their target reader and an community that is eager to help. There are more than 6,000 “ Skimm’bassadors ” actively spreading the word about this business.

There’s a lot to learn here but if you take just one lesson, let it be this:

The Skimm focuses on women ages 22-34 in big cities throughout the country. They are busy, they’re on the go. It’s a professional audience. And we looked at what they do first thing in the morning. Your alarm goes off, you grab your phone, and you read emails from friends and family first. It really made sense to us to introduce a product that fit in with that routine. And email is very much in the routines of the demo that we’re going after.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Meet your target audience where they’re already active.

How to Gather 100,000 Emails in One Week

I hope you’re noticing a trend in these case studies: Pulling off a wildly successful email campaign isn’t easy.

Even when the goals are simple, the logistics tend to get messy. The smartest companies dig in anyway.

In Harry’s case, they used a landing page to gather 100,000 emails in the week leading up their launch. As a shaving company, they are competing against institutions like Gillette. The only way to outsell them is to out-maneuver them.

Harry’s drove traffic to a landing page, asked for a signup, then used a referral mechanism to incentivize people to share the product. Those who referred friends earned free products. They gave away a ton of free razors that week but it cost way less than broadcasting the upcoming launch on traditional advertising channels.

This post gets into the nitty gritty of driving the traffic, managing the flood of interest and actually delivering the free products.

The Art and Science of Turning Free Trials Into Happy Customers

If you’re a small startup, you’ll be able to relate to this story.

Alex Smith runs marketing at ContactMonkey . As a growing company with a small team, it became too difficult to onboard new customers one at a time. So Alex created a series of events in the application that trigger emails or pause existing campaigns.

The result was not only happier customers, but faster growth. Once the triggers were in place, ContactMonkey was able to guarantee that each customer received the right messaging at the right time.

This post shares the exact emails and triggers ContactMonkey uses to onboarding their users, along with some ideas for blurring the lines between CRM and email marketing.

The Science Behind Those Obama Campaign E-Mails

I think this line will pique your interest about Obama’s last campaign: “Most of the $690 million Obama raised online came from fundraising e-mails.”

The Obama campaign famously used a casual, conversational in tone in the email subject lines. The most famous subject line was simply “Hey.” Another – “I will be outspent” – raised $2.6 million on its own.

Source: Slideshare

This didn’t happen by accident. The folks behind the campaigns tested incessantly, sometimes playing with a dozen or more variations on a single email. Here’s one of the most interesting findings revealed by digital analytics directo Amelia Showalter:

…these triumphs were fleeting. There was no such thing as the perfect e-mail; every breakthrough had a shelf life. “Eventually the novelty wore off, and we had to go back and retest,” says Showalter.

They bottled lightening over and over through rigorous testing and exceptional copywriting. The viral effect was manufactured, not serendipitous.

What We Learned From A Week Of Prototyping A Newsletter In Public

When Buzzfeed began developing a daily email newsletter, the editors turned to Facebook for feedback. They shared their prototypes ( here’s an example ) with their own friends. They made each iteration of the newsletter public to ensure they could patch any holes before launch.

Interestingly, editor Millie Tran said the most useful part of this exercise was the intense focus on the product/market fit:

The most valuable thing about this exercise was that it allowed us to avoid getting too emotionally attached to any one idea early on and to keep tweaking and adjusting the product to be better.

As we’ve written before, email is an extension of your product and should be treated with the appropriate care.

Buzzfeed also wrote a follow-up to this post about using email to test early versions of their mobile app.

Learning vs. Selling

This is a personal story based on my experience here at Vero. Last year, we created 14-step campaign to welcome new subscribers to the blog. The open rates were decent and we heard some positive feedback from customers about the campaign.

Then we nuked it.

Because it a) wasn’t helping us convert readers into customers and b) it wasn’t helping us learn about our readers. We replaced the entire campaign with a single email.

Tons of people replied and we’ve been able to shape our content and emails to match our readers’ challenges and needs. The lesson is here to create opportunities to learn before you try to sell your product.

The Most Successful E-mail I Ever Wrote

A single email can change a business.

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, realized this after he created this masterpiece of a shipping confirmation email :

Source: Smashing Magazine

The email went viral. At the time, no one put any effort into their transactional emails . The personal touch resonated with a lot of people.

That one silly e-mail, sent out with every order, has been so loved that if you search Google for “private CD Baby jet” you’ll get over 20,000 results. Each one is somebody who got the e-mail and loved it enough to post on their website and tell all their friends. That one goofy e-mail created thousands of new customers.

Simon Schmid calls this finesse the “personality layer.” Here are a number of other examples.

A few more case studies from the Vero archives:

TripAdvisor’s Unfair Email Marketing Advantage
How Amazon Dominates E-Commerce with Email
How Death to the Stock Photo Built a Profitable Business with Email
Why Product Hunt’s Emails Are So Addictive
Evernote’s Simple But Useful Onboarding Emails

And here’s a few suggestions from readers:

How The New York Times gets a 70 percent open rate on its newsletters

Want to send more personalized mobile and email messages to your users?

Customer story.

How UNO uses email marketing from the data warehouse to deliver personalized mortgage broking

Check out Vero , customer engagement software designed for product marketers. Message your users based on what they do (or don't do) in your product.

Consider signing up for a free trial. No credit card required.

Don't have a Shopify store?

6 Practicable Email Marketing Case Studies to Inspire You

Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada

We’d venture to say that transparency is hot right now, but not in email marketing.

Many brands show the number of their Twitter followers. They even blog about their audience growth and share their subscriber count as social proof.

However, no one talks about open, click rates, ROI, or impact on the bottom line. It seems to be taboo in the email marketing world. That makes it quite hard to find email marketing case studies.

We’d like to make it much easier for you to read stories about great email marketing campaigns, so we collected 6 practicable email marketing case studies . Below is the criteria for the case studies we compiled:

They are real case studies, not best-practice pieces
They include real data/ outcomes to impress you

Now, let’s explore!

1. Digital Marketer: increased open rates by 3X with subject lines

Is it possible to increase your open rates by 3X whenever you send a newsletter?

The answer is yes. Digital Marketer did.

A responsive, engaging email list of customers is the only bulletproof approach to building a sustainable business. If you only concentrate on Google and organic search, you may not be able to build a sustainable business.

Digital Marketer is considered one of the leading marketing blogs out there. The company boasts of making money once their emails arrive in recipients’ inboxes. However, they don’t do this only for the money - that would just drive email subscribers away.

Instead, they engage subscribers via email, teach them how to do a specific thing (i.e., increase Facebook ad conversions) and enhance trust.

Sending millions of emails per month helps Digital Marketer understand their customers and prospects. This allows the company to segment subscribers by interest, pinpoint the exact solutions they are looking for, and deliver awesome value that these subscribers will never find elsewhere.

As a result, they got impressive results with their email marketing campaigns . Just look at their statics:

We will analyze how Digital Marketer increased its email open rates by 3X right below:

1. Use proven email subject lines

Subscribers will not open all of your marketing emails, it’s the truth. Most of your audience are also subscribed to other email lists, too.

Therefore, you have to differentiate your email subject lines from the generic ones.

According to Richard Lindney - the author of the Digital Marketer case study - their successful email subject lines fall into one of the following four categories:

Direct or benefit-driven
Urgency or scarcity
Proof or credibility
Blind or curiosity

Let’s explore each of these subject lines!

1.1. Benefit-driven email subject lines

This type has only one purpose: to directly state the benefit that the recipient will get by opening the email. For example:

Catch these email templates…
Start building your landing pages for $1
7 ways to write blog posts that convert

1.2. Urgency or scarcity-based email subject lines

If there is a need to act right now - let’s say, a discount that expires in a few hours - you may want to use this urgency subject line style.

It communicates urgency and motivates people to act immediately. If recipients fail to act now, they will miss out on something great. And people don’t want to miss out.

Actually, the fear of loss is much more powerful than the joy of gain . That’s why urgency subject lines often outperform direct or benefit-driven subject lines.

Digital Marketer recommends using urgency or scarcity-based subject lines to get more opens. Some examples include:

You’re going to miss this?!?
85% off sale ends at midnight
Final Notice [just hours left]
Closing down soon!

Related topic : 7 Artificial Scarcity Creating Methods

1.3. Proof or credibility subject lines

We know that you have results you can share with prospects, and many people or businesses have benefited from your products and services. That’s why you should apply proof/ credibility subject lines now.

You can simply speak about other people’s success in your email subject line . Craft it in a way that will get your recipients to believe those results are possible for them , too.

This type is best written as a case study. And don’t forget that case studies are one of the 15 types of content to drive traffic, sales, and revenue for entrepreneurs.

Below are some of the proof/ credibility email subject lines that helped Digital Marketer boost their open rates by 3X:

This guy makes 6 figures per month?
Mom of two “makes” $10K in 4 days
23,234 leads in less than 30 days

1.4. Blind or curiosity-based email subject lines

These email subject lines have a magic-like ability to make people open. After all, if you hint that you hold a secret, people will want to know it.

The curiosity gap is actually a robust copywriting technique that can dazzle your audience. It has been proved to lead to a 927% increase in clicks on a pricing page (Wow!).

Some of your recipients are lazy. If they get the idea behind your email, they will delete it or otherwise move on. Thus, use these subject lines to tease your recipients. Below are some typical examples:

Just one last thing to say…
Check out the letter inside…
Why he paid Facebook $30,500
1,356,789 free clicks from…

2. Using Unicode symbols and personalization

2.1. Unicode symbols

To make emails outstanding, Digital Marketer suggests that you use Unicode symbols - emoticons, objects, etc.

Richard says that “ You should not overuse symbols in your subject lines, but don’t ignore them either. ” These symbols will add flavor to your email subject line. It might look funny, but humor is one of the common reasons why content gets opened, forwarded, and shared.

2.2. Personalization

People decide to join your email list, not because they love getting emails but because they feel they can benefit from them. According to a survey, 38% of responders opt-in to an email list to receive relevant emails that can improve their lives and business.

One of the most common methods to make your emails relevant is to personalize them. Now, let’s look at these two subject lines:

“ You will lose $3,000 in a week if… ”

“ John, you will lose $3,000 in a week if… ”

Obviously, the personalized version with the recipient’s name “John” will outperform the generic one. For more tips on personalization, please read our Complete Guide to Personalized Email Marketing for Business .

Note : To make personalization much easier, effective, and systematic, you should create opt-in forms to collect first name and email address, like AVADA Commerce does:

2. Dell: increased revenue by 109% with a GIF

Dell is faced with a unique problem.

The company was actually in the process of launching the XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook, which is a laptop with a hinge design that enables it to transform into a tablet.

“ That sounds like a cool product. What is the problem, by the way? ” you may ask.

We will let David Sierk from the Email Strategy & Analytics department at Dell explain.

“ No one knows what a convertible is yet. It is not synonymous with products like the tablet is now or anything along those lines. ”

So, how did Dell solve this problem?

They innovated their way through the problem .

Instead of traditional email marketing tactics , Dell decided to create a GIF of the product that would complement their creative tagline, “ Go from dreaming to doing in a flip. ” The GIF showcased the convertible flipping from a laptop to a touchscreen tablet capable of running Windows 8.

This explained to customers exactly what the convertible was, as well as how it could impact their technological lives.

Besides, the GIF was paired with high-converting email copy:

“ XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook - The power of an Ultrabook and the ease of a tablet combined into one beautifully designed machine. ”

“ Buy a select XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook and get a $200 Dell Promo eGift Card to build your home entertainment system. ”

The results were really spectacular.

6% increase in email open rate
42% increase in click rate
103% increase in conversion rate
109% increase in revenue

Impressive, right?

So, what can you learn from this email marketing case study?

While some of you may think that the main message behind this case study is to start using more GIFs within your email campaigns , we disagree.

We think the best thing we can learn from Dell is the power of innovation .

The marketing team of Dell knew that simple text and images would not cut it. They also understood that linking to a Youtube video or some kind of product tour would likely yield a lower conversion rate. Hence, they tried to innovate their way out of the problem by using a GIF.

Do we recommend using GIFs in your email marketing campaigns?

Yes, absolutely. They are an amazing way to quickly convey your message and entertain readers.

However, if there’s one key takeaway from Dell’s success, it is that intelligent risk and innovation can lead to significant results.

If there is a marketing tactic that you’ve been dying to use but are afraid that it’ll eat dirt, give it a shot anyway. The worst that can happen is not that bad.

And who knows, you might even realize a 109% increase in revenue yourself!!!

3. Charity Water: increased donations by $800,000

Most companies, especially non-profit organizations and charities operate their email marketing campaigns under the “set it and forget it mindset.

After a donation or transaction has concluded, donors will often be sent to a thank-you page and receive a short “Thank You” email. This email generally does nothing other than to provide the donor’s transaction details, thank them for their purchase, and perhaps try and get them in on an upsell.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, there is a better way.

Charity Water has been crushing it in their email marketing campaign by taking an unconventional approach to their follow-up emails. Rather than follow the traditional route, Charity Water has created an email marketing campaign designed to take their donors on a journey.

With any non-profit organization, there is a long road from the time a donation leaves the donors’ wallet to the time that the project is completed.

For starters, the donation has to be sent to partners in the field and used to source supplies, transportation, and permits for volunteers and staff. Then, projects can take from 6 to 18 months, depending on the scope and size of the work. And most non-profit organizations leave their donors out of this process completely.

But Charity Water didn’t do that.

The organization sends you regular email updates, which explain where to use your money and how much progress to be achieved on the project. They even show you photo updates from the project site, which country your donation is impacting, and regular information on progressions within the organization itself.

They make their donors a part of the story .

Perhaps the biggest takeaway that we’ve gleaned from Charity Water’s email marketing campaign is that you need to build a sustainable relationship with your audience through regularly connecting with and updating them.

You might think this will mean increasing the frequency of sending out emails.

However, things don’t stop there.

This is not just about delivering more emails and trying to sell them new products or services. It is about building an authentic relationship with customers for life.

We know that this seems a bit mystical and woo-woo, so let us give you a practical example of using this in your business. Suppose you’re running an online fitness company and you’re promoting the “8-Week Fat Loss Challenge 2.0.”

By learning from Charity Water, you could try out the following strategy:

At the beginning of the week, send one email presenting a challenge to all of your recipients (i.e., most weight loss, biggest athletic improvement, best diet, etc.)

At the end of the week, send a follow-up email showing the challenge winner and progress pics from other participants. Plus, finish the email with a tip or trick to help them get more out of your product.

After they’ve completed the 8-week challenge, send regular follow-up emails asking how they’re doing and providing exclusive free content.

This strategy will generate a deeper level of engagement with your audience and build a community around your brand. And if you execute it properly, it’ll lead to an increase in open rates, easy upsells, and lifelong loyalty.

Related topic : Email Marketing for Non-profits: The Essential Guide!

4. Dropbox: created a $10 billion empire

A trend that we’ve noticed among many of the A+ players in the email marketing game is that they’re reducing their focus on fancy copy and increasing their focus on generating incredible designs .

Of course, long-form copy works great for email marketing. If you run a company built around your personality, we recommend you focus on well-written email copy.

Nevertheless, suppose your company’s success isn’t contingent on your consumers buying into you as a brand leader. In that case, creating beautiful and straightforward designs to sell products is a good way to go.

Let’s look at a typical email marketing case study for this - Dropbox .

Dropbox is a wildly common online storage service that has skyrocketed in growth and become an empire worth $10 billion. That is worth almost as much as Snapchat and even more than the GDP of many countries!

Something that has made Dropbox outstanding for years and helps them reach their impressive wild levels of success is the great simplicity behind everything they do.

From the signup process to the navigation and layout of their website, everything runs simply. One of the most typical examples of this simplicity in action lies in their “ Baby come back ” email.

We know it seems like a stretch to actually appreciate a company for sending an email after someone has canceled their subscription. However, by combining poignant and straightforward cartoons with a tongue-in-cheek emoticon, as well as some very simple copy, Dropbox admirably accomplishes this goal.

Dropbox basically ignores its copy and focuses almost on the design of the cartoon. Their email copy is short and product-based, instead of the long-form, benefit-focused copy you see from most companies.

Implementing this concept is quite straightforward.

Step out on a limb with your upcoming campaign and focus on design instead of copy.

If you’re not the artistic type, consider hiring an outside contractor with a proven track record as well as an eye for design, who can help you develop a campaign that catches your customers’ eyes.

Try your best to limit your copy to 100 words or less, and let the images within the article speak for themselves.

5. Hammock: increased open rates by 48% with less content

The typical rule of blogging and sending marketing emails is that you will get more traffic and, ultimately, more revenue if you deliver more content. More emails and more posts mean more traffic.

Well, while this isn’t wrong, the reality is that most businesses really don’t care about traffic. They care about their revenue. They would take 10 visitors/ 5 leads over 50 visitors/ 2 leads any day.

That’s the thought process Hammock had in mind when they decided to stop sending too much email content. Hammock is a B2B company creating marketing content and media for its clients, and collaborates with them to develop content strategies. They reduced emails to once every 2 weeks and reduced email content to about 350 words per email. To bring focus to these changes, Hammock decided to rename it “The Idea Email.”

The results?

Hammock realized a 48% increase in open rates , but more importantly, a significant increase in their lead quality. The right customers started contacting them after reading their emails. And that is really the entire purpose of an email marketing campaign.

Be intentional with email content . The first thing that Hammock did was cut the copy down to 350 words, which was really difficult despite their dedication to a minimalist approach. They recommend focusing on cutting email copy down to make it more targeted and less about the product.

Test subject lines and assess necessary changes . Hammock writes 3 headlines for each newsletter, and all of them are tested for every send. Which one has the highest open rate in the first hour is applied for the rest of the list.

Establish a repeatable editorial process . Often, the writing process of Hammock is done by Lavey and Rex Hammock - the founder and CEO, and they ensure it is engaging. Once the article is written, it’s handed off to other members to edit. It’s essential that the process of developing the idea is repeatable.

6. Doggyloot: increase CTR by 750% by personalizing emails

“Personalized” emails don’t always have to target a person. Email marketers can “animalize” them and see amazing results.

That’s what Doggyloot did.

The marketing team at Doggyloot segments and personalizes their emails based on “doggy data,” not people data. For instance, subscribers receive emails customized to the size of their dogs. Someone with a Chihuahua is offered different products than someone with a Rottweiler.

With its dog birthday emails, Doggyloot got:

Open rate: 28.1%
CTR (click-through rate): 750% higher than the company’s average
Contributes up to 16% of total daily revenue

Besides, we’ll describe some tactics Doggyloot used to power its campaigns. You can learn something useful here, for sure.

1. Collect new subscribers

Doggyloot’s homepage is dedicated to generating subscribers. Its headline and subheadline emphasize the value of joining their list:

Headline: “ Daily deals for dogs and their people ”
Subheadline: “ Discover chews, toys, treats, and more at up to 75% off ”

The first question is “How big are your dogs?” greets visitors as soon as they arrive in the sign-up process. Once they register, the website reveals current flash sales.

2. Personalize by “style”

Since it doesn’t make sense to offer a 10-pound bone to a 5-pound dog, Doggyloot segments its email lists into 3 groups:

Small dogs (under 20 pounds)
Medium dogs
Large dogs (over 40 pounds)

The team uses this data to choose products for promotional emails. In a typical campaign, they send the same email template to every subscriber, and the products vary by the size of the dog. For instance, only the email for owners with a large dog will offer a 3-foot duck chew.

As a result, the promotional emails targeted to large dog owners have a CTR 410% higher than the company’s average.

3. Happy dog birthday email

Wishing someone’s dog a happy birthday seems bizarre, but not at Doggyloot.

As the company has the birthday of a subscriber’s dog, they schedule an automated email to send about 2 weeks before the date. This email features birthday-related products, treats, and toys under a “happy birthday” header.

4. Emphasize urgency to abandoners

The company earns amazing results with cart abandonment emails. By automatically reaching customers who add items to a cart and leave, Doggyloot earned an additional day’s worth of revenue per month.

This abandonment email reaches subscribers about 1 hour after they leave the website. It aims to win a sale with the following features:

More urgency . The subheadline mentions that the items in the shopper’s cart are “almost sold out.”

Clear CTA . Two large CTA buttons encourage recipients to “restore my cart.”

Product images . Products from the shopper’s cart are featured with a lower “Doggyloot price” and higher “retail” price.

Final thoughts

When it comes to creating a valuable and memorable experience for your email subscribers, there are some experts and case studies for us to learn from.

We hope these 6 practicable email marketing case studies have helped you a lot. Keep learning from the best till you become one of the best.

So, what is your favorite email marketing case study? Please leave a comment so that we can talk about it together. Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

--> --> --> -->