Email Pays Big For Silver Jeans Co.

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

November 2016 Innovative Retail Technologies

How Silver Jeans Co. increased sales more than 25% via strategic, personalized emails

When Mike G. Girardin joined Silver Jeans Co. as the director of ecommerce more than two years ago, he and the marketing team devised a plan that would leverage new email strategies to considerably increase the Canadian fashion retailer’s sales. Here’s how they did it.

Girardin explains that when he joined Silver Jeans, the retailer wasn’t using email as a revenue-generating tool, as emails accounted for only 3 percent of overall sales. “We knew we needed to use email more effectively, and once we were able to do that, we were hoping for 20 percent growth,” explains Girardin.

The company had implemented The Bronto Marketing Platform, which Girardin began leveraging immediately. “The e-commerce department works very closely with the marketing department on email creation and configuration; we off er direction for the email, and marketing comes to the table with ideas of their own,” he says. “Because marketing knows our product line, they use The Bronto Marketing Platform to create our emails. Bronto allows the Marketing team, who has less knowledge about fancy HTML and CSS emails than I or my team, to create sleek, feature-rich emails. We’re able to test the emails in various browsers, and The Bronto Marketing Platform allows the marketing team to create the emails based on the permissions I’ve set for them in the system.”

Personalization Via Email
Silver Jeans revamped its email marketing efforts in a few important ways. First, the retailer cleaned its email mailing list by deleting dormant accounts and then slowly and steadily added new customer data. To connect with those new customers, Silver Jeans launched a “Welcome” email series that engages with customers on a weekly basis with product information specific to them.

Girardin and his team also implemented abandoned cart emails. “We developed an informative emailer that actually shows people the items that were in their cart and reminds them that the merchandise may soon be out of stock,” says Girardin. “Our abandoned cart emails have been very effective, because they’ve generated a 16 percent conversion rate — prior to the emails, the rate was around three percent.”

Implementing A Coupon Manager
Silver Jeans also utilizes The Bronto Marketing Platform’s Coupon Manager, which allows the retailer to tailor custom coupons to every individual user. Instead of sending one coupon code to a large group, which very quickly ends up on mass coupon sites, such as RetailMeNot or Coupons.com, Silver Jeans is able to personalize the coupon for each customer without devaluing a new customer’s registration process. “One of the great things about the coupon manager is that the code is pre-populated on our site,” explains Girardin. “Customers don’t have to copy and paste the code or go back to the email to retrieve it.”

Tech Roadmap: Triggered Emails, Free Returns, Exchanges, and Mobile
The Bronto Marketing Platform has helped Girardin and his team exceed their initial 20 percent growth plan, as emails now account for 30 percent of overall sales. “We will begin sending triggered emails soon. For example, when someone has viewed a product on our site, we will alert that person via email when there are only three remaining in stock,” says Girardin. “Also, we will send a sale alert email to the customer when that item goes on sale. We will also spend more time engaging our customers on other channels, such as Instagram, Pinterest, etc.”