Free People was experiencing notable growth and strategic innovation. Their commitment to sustainability, innovative marketing strategies, and a seamless omnichannel approach helped solidify its position within the URBN portfolio. The brand's digital strategy contributed to increased visibility and customer loyalty. The email program, in particular, played a crucial role in driving sales by providing personalized recommendations, exclusive offers, and engaging content that kept customers connected to the brand. Overall, Free People's adaptive strategies and focus on customer satisfaction enabled it to outperform other URBN brands, maintaining a competitive edge in the evolving retail landscape​ (SEC.gov)​​ (ComFactAffMktBlog)​​ (Think with Google)​.

To keep up with increasing demand and achieve annual sales goals, the FP digital team was tasked with sending more emails to customers, ultimately reaching a frequency of 2-4 emails per day. As the sole individual responsible for coding these emails, managing this volume was a significant challenge. Additionally, the content of the emails was primarily driven by the merchandising team, focusing on showcasing specific products and creative elements they prioritized. This approach often overlooked the insights from the marketing and analytics team, which could have optimized email performance by targeting products based on customer file segmentations and market trends. This disconnect led to a high workload and missed opportunities for more strategic, data-driven email marketing.

THE EMAILS: PREVIOUS LOOK

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The email marketing team faced significant challenges due to understaffing and high operational demands. The process involved creating unique email layouts for various markets—China, the UK, and the US—each requiring custom coding, file segmentation, and distribution. Market-specific issues such as variable product availability, pricing, and language added increased complexity. Delays in merchandising and layout approvals further impacted the workflow, causing cascading delays for all teams involved. These interdependencies compounded the complexity, emphasizing the need for a more scalable and efficient strategy to support our growing email marketing needs, particularly as we were managing multiple email dispatches per day.

GOALS + EXPECTATIONS

Teams were keen to expand the email template portfolio for increased design flexibility, but wanted to understand risk - do they perform equal or better than the layout we’ve been sending for years?
Ultimately, the goal would be to prove that emails will perform better if they are shorter, and the products are determined by the analytics team.

HEAT CLICK MAP ANALYSIS

Time Period: 4 months

Conclusion: 78% of grids that were 10-19 products long saw full interaction (uniform distribution of clicks throughout grid products);
66% of grids that were 20-29 products long saw a significant drop-off in interaction (i.e. minimal click activity after 20 products)

Lift in number of full interaction grids when grids are 10-19 products

• All grids should be 20 products or under (21 products for a masonry style grid)

• Test various grid sizes under the 20 threshold: 10, 14, 18, etc.

• Products featured in the grids do not need to match a creative story. Rather, they will be chosen by analytics reviewed on the digital marketing team.

In light of our research indicating that longer, merchandised emails did not necessarily yield better results, we gained the freedom and opportunity to develop a library of new, shorter email templates. These templates simplified the process significantly, as they could be efficiently coded with just the input from the analytics team, bypassing the need for the merchandising and graphic design teams. This strategic shift not only expedited our email send process, but also enhanced our performance without increasing our email volume. This streamlined approach allowed us to focus on quality over quantity, promising a more effective and agile email marketing strategy.

• Grew the email database from 1.12 to 1.59 million customers in the course of two years (~42%)

• Measured for an increased CTR of 34%.

• Revamped company processes and improved internal time savings for email creation by 90%.

• Formed a more positive working relationship with Graphic Design and Merchandising teams.

LOOKING AHEAD

These new findings will provide a solid foundation for further A/B testing of our email designs, allowing us to continuously iterate and enhance our email template library. As we refine our approach, we aim to incorporate dynamic personalization tools in the future. This advancement will enable us to tailor the email content more precisely to individual customer preferences and behaviors, making our communications even more effective and customer-centric. By leveraging these tools, we can ensure that our marketing efforts are not only efficient but also highly targeted and relevant to each recipient.