Case Study: ACR Electronics
Transforming email marketing from
0% -> 10% of store revenue in months
ACR Electronics manufactures and sells safety equipment for boaters, hikers and pilots around the world. Having set up an eCommerce store to sell DTC in the last few years, they wanted to maximize their ad and marketing ROI by capturing more ongoing revenue with email marketing.
The problem: not enough time or expertise
Mikele, ACR’s VP of Global Marketing, knew the power of ActiveCampaign and email marketing. But his team just didn’t have the bandwidth to learn how to use the platform with all its bells and whistles. Often, they would rush to get an email out for a seasonal holiday or Black Friday promotion, without a consistent system behind what they were sending.
In particular, Mikele was worried about their dropping open rates, as well as figuring out the ROI of each email.
First step: cleaning up the list
Starting my email marketing audit, it quickly became apparent that ACR had fallen into the trap of low email reputation, and many of their emails were going directly to spam. By cleaning up their list, we were able to recover their reputation, and bring open rates up to a consistent 40-50%.
Note the lift in domain reputation from Low -> High
Second step: fixing broken automations
ACR had set up an abandoned cart automation in ActiveCampaign, but it had broken over time due to changes to their website, and they just hadn’t had the time to fix it. They also had a welcome email for new subscribers, but it was very short and minimal.
Knowing that abandon cart automations and welcome series are some of the highest revenue-generating emails for any ecommerce, I fixed them and fleshed the welcome series out to a full 5-email series personalized to subscriber preferences.
These automations now contribute to $1000s of revenue each month with no effort on ACR’s end.
ACR’s personalizaed welcome automation
Third step: eye-catching optins
Before working together, ACR simply collected subscribers from their website footer, and user accounts for shopping.
Popups paired with an offer really do work (despite how annoying they may seem). That’s why I set up popups offering free shipping.
These popups now generate 20x more new subscribers than the basic website footer form they had before.
Popups with a valuable offer
Fourth step: measuring the results
The ACR team wasn’t quite sure how their emails were performing, and how to identify what was working, and what wasn’t.
I built them a robust monthly dashboard, as well as my self-devised “results map”, which gives an easily digestible visual overview of emails and their impact.
My unique results map: a visual, zoomable whiteboard of email results
The end result
In the space of a few months, we were able to completely turn around ACR’s email marketing systems, and email now contributes to 10% of ecommerce store revenue on a consistent basis.
In addition, we are continuously testing new popups, automations, and campaign designs to further optimize their ROI.
“My team just didn’t have the time to try and learn all this stuff in ActiveCampaign, and so we ended up being rushed to “get-it-out-by-tomorrow!”.
Jacob quickly earned back the money we spent on him by getting a better deal on our ActiveCampaign plan, fixing our broken abandoned cart, and setting up high-performing campaigns that we can see contributing to $1000s in revenue.”
Mikele D’Arcangelo, VP of Global Marketing at ACR Technology
