5 Email Marketing Success Stories to Inspire Your Next Campaign

Want to be successful at email marketing?

The road to success often means leveraging data and continuously refining your strategies.

We're here to guide you through the process.

In this article, we'll share five email marketing success stories and explore the case studies behind them.

By the end, you'll have the insights needed to start optimizing your own email marketing campaigns. If you're just starting out, don't miss our Guide to Email Marketing Basics to build a strong foundation.

Let's dive in!

Why Read Email Case Studies?

Marketing is a technical field, but it's also a very creative one. Different products, unique customer pain points, and varying market conditions mean that successful campaigns require innovative thinking and fresh ideas.

Learning about how other marketers have successfully attracted and engaged real audiences can inspire you to approach your marketing challenges differently and discover new solutions.

Marketing is challenging because it involves convincing people to part with their hard-earned money, often in highly competitive environments with many companies vying for attention. Reading success stories can remind you that big wins are achievable and worth pursuing.

So, with that said, let's dive into the list of success stories for email marketing!

5 Amazing Email Success Stories

Women in Tech SEO

Women in Tech SEO (WTS) is a global community for people who work in search engine optimization, marketing, and related industries. It includes an active Slack channel, dozens of in-person and online meetups, and conferences in Europe and the U.S. WTS has also built a mailing list of more than 5,000 people - one that recently boasted an eye-popping 69.6% open rate.

The weekly email’s format varies, but tends to include a mix of curated content from around the web, content created by WTS members, and career interviews with other members.

So … how did WTS achieve that 70% open rate? While the newsletter’s contents may not seem groundbreaking in isolation, the magic is in the large, devoted community WTS has created.

Here’s a look at their strategy:

• Deliver consistent value: Each email includes curated content from women in the SEO community, which tends to be under-represented in many other places. By bringing this content together, WTS’s emails deliver unique value.

• Build bonds: One of the community’s goals is to create networking opportunities. By creating spaces where people get to know each other, WTS has also built a very loyal and connected audience that is more likely to open its emails.

• Be consistent: WTS uses their emails in the way they use a lot of other platforms: to shine a light on community members. You’re more likely to open and share an email that includes content from someone you know, someone you admire, or someone who shares similar goals and interests as you.

• Provide personal touches: Emails are sent from WTS’s founder, Areej Abuali, and often include personalized text from her as well. This makes the emails feel like something from a friend.

Here are a few snapshots from WTS’s most popular email (so far!)

SparkToro

SparkToro is an audience research and intelligence tool. It’s targeted at marketers and aims to be a leader in marketing strategy. In other words, it needs to walk the walk.

Its consistent 40-44% open rate on its bi-monthly newsletter shows that it does just that.

SparkToro’s strategy is a little outside the box for a lot of marketers because it relies on what’s referred to as “zero-click marketing.” That means marketing that doesn’t rely on a click but instead aims to create extreme value and engagement for users.

Here’s how it works.

The Strategy

• Offer zero-click value: The newsletter is designed to be fully digestible in the inbox - no clicks required. This provides value and reduces the time it takes to consume the content, which makes repeat opens more likely.

• Follow a template: SparkToro has settled on a 3-3-3 structure that includes three audience research tips, three articles or resources, and three social media posts. This consistency lets the audience know what to expect when they open an email.

• Provide diverse and helpful resources: The emails provide highly curated resources that readers are likely to find helpful. SparkToro knows its audience very well and provides an interesting mix of valuable and hard-to-find educational materials, LinkedIn posts from thought leaders, and even humorous memes that apply to the profession.

Here’s a sample of one of SparkToro’s bi-monthly emails:

The Results

SparkToro has built a loyal list of more than 60,000 email subscribers. They've honed in on a successful strategy that has earned them consistent open rates that rarely dip below 40%. The average open rate for emails in the marketing/advertising industry is closer to 30%, which makes SparkToro a clear success story.

Prowise Healthcare

Prowise Healthcare is a manufacturer and retailer of premium-quality vitamins and supplements. Working with digital agency Naxisweb, the company tackled email marketing to increase customer engagement and, ultimately, online sales.

The Strategy

• Segmentation: Prowise split their list of email subscribers based on customer behavior and purchase history.

• Personalization: Prowise implemented dynamic fields into email templates to address recipients by their names as well as suggest products based on their past purchase history.

• Automation: Prowise set up automated email flows, including welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups.

• A/B Testing: Subject lines, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and email designs were A/B tested to settle on the versions that had the most impact.

• Compelling Content: Prowise carefully crafted each message, ensuring they were delivering valuable and interesting content to their audience.

The Results

Over the course of a 90-day campaign, Prowise saw the following results:

• Open Rate: 18% to 27% (+50%)
• Click-Through Rate: 3% to 7% (+133%)
• Conversion Rate: 1.5% to 4% (+167%)
• Revenue: Email pushed sales up by as much as 60% over ninety days.

Instantprint

Instantprint is an online printer focused on small businesses. Craig Wassell, the head of its digital marketing team, made a relatively simple update to the way the company does email marketing: he created email marketing automation sequences.

In fact, his impact was much bigger than that. He moved much of the email work away from manual data entry to streamlined, automated workflows. This sounds simple, but there are many businesses out there that still haven't made this switch! In fact, data from G2 suggests that about 36% of marketers are not using automations regularly.

The Strategy

• Determine triggers: Wassel’s team collated data from multiple sources to create various triggers, including order frequency, average order value, and other factors.

• Set up the right email marketing software: The change in strategy required an upgrade in email marketing software. The team prioritized options that would integrate with existing systems and had staff test it for fit.

• Crafted sequences one by one: The team crafted email automation sequences to deliver personalized sequences and ensure every email had a purpose.

• Testing and optimization: The team operates a perpetual cycle of testing and optimization to continue to enhance email effectiveness.

Here’s what their welcome email sequence looks like:

The Results

Since implementing email automation, Instanprint’s welcome sequence has:

• Increased second orders from clients by 10%
• Improved client retention and loyalty
• Created a more coherent brand message

The email marketing software you choose can have a huge impact on your workflow and capabilities in email marketing. If you’re looking to make a switch, we have a handy tool to help you compare email marketing software. We also have a list of the best email marketing software for ecommerce businesses.

The Results

Since implementing email automation, Instanprint’s welcome sequence has:

• Increased second orders from clients by 10%
• Improved client retention and loyalty
• Created a more coherent brand message

The email marketing software you choose can have a huge impact on your workflow and capabilities in email marketing. If you’re looking to make a switch, we have a handy tool to help you compare email marketing software. We also have a list of the best email marketing software for ecommerce businesses.

Edstellar

Edstellar is a corporate training services company that wanted to boost leads for some of their training offerings via email marketing. However, their first attempt wasn't successful.

According to Arvind Rongala, the CEO of Edstellar, their initial campaign set a goal of 50 leads for their DevOps training program.

“Challenges like ineffective subject lines, plain text templates, poor timing, and lack of personalization resulted in only 5 leads from 20 opened emails out of 390 sent, with a 5.13% open rate,” Rongala said.

So, Rongala and his team went back to the drawing board with a new strategy. Here’s what they did.

The Strategy

• Optimized subject lines: The team focused on action-oriented language and rigorously A/B tested subject lines to find the best fit.

• Tinkered with send times: The team also A/B tested various send times to boost open rates.

• Improved deliverability: Avoided spam and trigger words to avoid email spam filters and improve deliverability.

The Results

After refining their tactics, the team launched a campaign for Six Sigma training and got the following results:

• 51.64% open rate (well above general industry benchmarks)
• 102 leads generated, for a 15% conversion rate

Ready to Go and Build Your Own Email Success Story?

Now that you’ve seen some successful campaigns, we hope you’re ready to go and build your own. Remember to follow the data and keep testing!

And, if you’re looking for email marketing software to help you along the way, check out our list of best email marketing software.