Commentary

Fender: Leveraging What You Already Have

by Staff Writers , December 10, 2018

What do you really know about a visitor at the point where you get their email? Probably not too much. At Fender, people come in from so many places. That whole path happens after you trigger the welcome email from that subscription model. So many things happen before they leave the site for the first time.

How would your email change if you knew about a purchase or a product category someone was interested in, have they created an account, what platform they are on? This data probably flows into your ESP but if you trigger your welcome email and someone enters their email address into that form or when someone creates an account before they actually check out as is the case for many of our businesses, you’re really missing an opportunity.

The welcome email is meant to drive traffic and transactions. If you trigger the welcome email while someone is still on your site, what good does it do you? Think about how you can personalize that experience, leveraging what you’ve already learned. For Fender Play, we were triggering that account email at the moment of signup, which happened right before someone has decided whether they were going to start a subscription, virtually firing two welcome emails.

Starting to personalize this email knowing if someone has started a trial. We know if it’s a monthly or an annual and we’re getting into what instrument are they playing.

How does your welcome email change if you know about a purchase, category/product endgame net, account creation, platform. Who has a checkout flow that starts like this, he asked, citing Groupon’s.

Dynamic content based on instrument + genre + platform. Knowing if someone is starting a trial, getting into which instrument, genre. It all starts with one email.

Send a second welcome email. We turned our first on-boarding email into a message from one of our instructors. And we saw real results. Same open rate as normal email; 7% response rate to ask Matt questions in Fender Play. We get to build a real customer relationship with them. 12% increase in people taking lessons through their first two weeks by just adding this one email.

Design with the result in mind.

Ask, what is our goal here? We release limited-edition models of guitars throughout the year. Image, lot of detail That is already on the site. We dropped email down to image and few words. Got a higher conversion. But didn’t get job quite done for us. Shot amazing videos. Jim Root, Slipknot. 46% life in CTR, 111% lift in revenue. Tell brand stories. Not integration, content we’re already creating.

Test the simple things. AI subject lines.

Groupon Goods email. Biggest change was adding deal. 2% lift by adding more deals every time. Adding that you have secure checkout with logos.

Make a list of things you want to test. Evaluate the value of items on that list based on how it changes the customer experience or impacts their journey. Makes them feel more secure in the transaction.

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