What's the most successful email campaign you've sent?

Email Marketing

Topic summary

A mid-size apparel brand achieved exceptional results by segmenting their email list into three distinct groups: first-time buyers, repeat customers, and lapsed customers. Each segment received tailored messaging—new buyers got styling tips with cross-sells, repeat customers received loyalty-framed early access, and lapsed customers saw personalized recommendations based on past purchases.

Key Results:

  • Open rates exceeded 45%
  • Revenue per recipient nearly doubled compared to seasonal averages
  • Sustained long-term engagement improvements

Success Factors Identified:

  • Prioritizing contextual, useful content over aggressive discounting
  • Balancing brevity with personalization
  • Positioning promotions as natural extensions of the content rather than standalone offers

This approach consistently outperforms generic holiday campaigns and drives stronger customer retention over time.

Summarized with AI on October 25. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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What’s the most successful email campaign you’ve sent?

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From our side, looking across different merchants, the most consistently successful campaigns are the ones that combine timing, segmentation, and relevance.

For example, one mid-size apparel brand segmented their list into three groups: first-time buyers, repeat customers, and lapsed customers. Each group received a slightly different version of the same campaign. The new buyers got a short “how to style it” email with a subtle cross-sell at the end, repeat buyers saw a loyalty-framed message (“because you’ve been with us, here’s early access”), and lapsed customers received a tip connected to their last order with a light re-introduction of new arrivals.

The result: open rates above 45%, revenue per recipient almost double their seasonal average, and—most importantly—longer-term lift because the message felt relevant instead of generic.

What we’ve observed at scale is that success doesn’t come from blasting a bigger discount. It comes from:

  • Leading with something useful or contextual.

  • Keeping the message short enough to be read, but tailored enough to feel personal.

  • Making sure the promotion at the end is a natural extension of the content.

That formula tends to outperform holiday-only pushes and drives stronger retention over time