Our worst performing campaign (and why using Video is so great)

One of our customers asked us recently to help them with a re-engagement campaign to target their old customers.

They were curious to learn how impactful video might be when there had been a fair bit of "radio silence" in the relationship for the past few months with each customer.

We expected the campaign should perform well, as compared to a standard email campaign:

• video tends to perform better than email (2/3 consumers prefer video over text according to Wyzyowl); and,

• because these were past customers, we would likely to see better response rates than prospects - Superoffice research found 45% of subscribers say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from).

The results from sending 1:1 videos over email using CX Video blew us away, so much so we thought we should write them up here.

Video Email Campaign Overview

Although we won't mention who our customer was, they are a specialty recreation equipment retailer with a Shopify store.

This was a tactical marketing campaign to reconnect with 50 customers who hadn't purchased for a minimum of 6 months ago or longer.

CX Video would be used to send each past customer a personalised thank-you video from the store owner to their email.

Results - Video Email Campaign

Our customer was really pleased with the results of this campaign.

Out of 50 emails, a 40% open rate and 80% click through rate was fantastic given the amount of time passed with these dormant customers.

Very pleasing though was the click-to-open rate. This measures how many clicks through's were created for every open, in this campaign's case, almost two clicks per email (39 clicks to 20 opens).

What isn't in the chart below is that there were 25 opens out of the 20 unique opens - so depending on how you measure open rates, it could be 50%.

Put another way, their customers loved the videos that much they watched them multiple times!

It's worth noting the other "hygiene metrics" were all in good shape too - 100% messages were delivered, with no unsubscribes.

We also were conservative in treating how we counted email opens, by ignoring "machine opens" - this is when apple devices register an "open" to an email when saving it into the apple mail client, even though it may not be viewed by the recipient.

Comparing industry performance

A proper analysis of the campaign our client ran wouldn't be complete without comparing to industry stats.

We chose to compare popular email marketing providers Hubspot, GetResponse and Mailchimp given the volumes and reputations they have in the market. Campaign Monitor also break out their engagement results into industries, so have selected their retail industry benchmark being the closest to this organisation.

From these engagement rates it's clear 1:1 videos sent via email definitely resonates with consumers.

The data in the table above has been placed in the chart below if you're more of a visual person.

You can explore these industry benchmarks below:

Hubspot, GetResponse & Mailchimp - Email Marketing Benchmarks: What Are Good Email Marketing Engagement Rates? (myareanetwork.com)

Retail Industry: Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics for 2022 | Campaign Monitor

Analysis & Hypothesis

Looking at the campaign results we asked ourselves "why can this be", and to see what we can deduce that will be relevant to other organisations.

We think the answer lies in two parts.

First, the open rates were a result of a past transactional relationship. These aren't totally "cold" emails, and given the retailer sells equipment that is largely recreational it makes sense that past customers would be somewhat interested in at least opening the email to understand its content.

The click through rate - arguably much more important - is a different story.

As with every video sent on our platform, we include minimal copy - instead displaying a large video thumbnail with a play icon inviting the recipient to click through.

The interest created by (a) the email coming from a brand the user (at least partially) cares about helped drive good open rates.

The mystery (and interest) was enhanced further by the recipient clearly seeing a video that had been recorded just for them.

Our hypotheses: customers have an inherent desire to connect and develop relationships with brands they care about.

Takeaways

With all of this, we believe personal relationships still really matter in business, and these extend to ecommerce.

It's backed by data too: Harvard Business Review noted that "fully connected" customers are 52% more valuable (1:1 videos help drive a "sense of belonging"), and we know from our other campaigns that the uplift in repeat sales is significant with video.

Videos also help a lot in gaining consumer loyalty - 13% are more likely to remember details from a video, and customers can retain up to 95% of the content in a video, but only 10% of it when reading it. (Wordstream).

So, it's worth sending 1:1 videos to your customers where you can do so cost effectively. You'll get better engagement rates and likely improved repurchase rates too.

Finally - we recognise that 50 emails isn't necessarily "statistically important". But for many small retailers, their mailing list may only be in the hundreds or low thousands of contacts.

So we chose here to look at a specific campaign for a specific retailer, as knowing more about the company and their intents enabled us to come up with more meaningful hypotheses.

How CX Video helps ecommerce retailers drive more repeat sales

If you are a retailer where you value having quality customer relationships, we recommend you consider sending 1:1 post-purchase videos to your customers to drive deeper loyalty and more repeat sales.

CX Video automates the entire process of sending personalised videos, except the 30 to 60 seconds required to make the recording.

We make it easy for ecommerce stores using Shopify and other popular eCommerce platforms to thank every single one of their customers.

We offer a free trial that includes unlimited video sends, so check out our Shopify App Marketplace listing to get started, or learn how retailers can increase their sales using CX Video here.