Networking is not a one-size-fits-all task, especially across diverse industries and work experience. Monday Girl offers a unique approach to empower women in their career journeys.
The North American digital networking platform was co-founded by Istiana Bestari and Rachel Wong, to bridge the gap in networking and mentorship for women.
“We both come from different industries, but we felt equally isolated at networking events,” says Istiana.
Over the past 7 years, Istiana and Rachel have been building Monday Girl to validate this gap. Monday Girl is a network formed out of a shared frustration between Rachel and Istiana, who have faced setbacks and roadblocks in their careers.
“The networking events often felt skewed toward men, revolving around activities like after-work beers or golfing. We realized that young, diverse professional women are systematically at a disadvantage for gaining access to the right mentorship, job opportunities, and networking circles.”
Today, Monday Girl boasts a thriving community of over 300,000 women across the US and Canada, spanning all seniority levels and industries, taking advantage of mentorship opportunities with leaders from their favorite companies like Sephora, Google, Shopify, and others.
“Our goal really was to transform the networking experience into something that women were excited about to help them achieve their goals and that we ourselves wanted to be a part of and go to,” says Istiana.
With a consistent 60% open rate in their public Monday newsletter, Monday Girl has a very engaged, active audience. “Our members receive tailored career advice that really resonates with them from people who look like them and who they relate to,” says Istiana.
The key? Mailchimp’s automations and personalized customer journeys that are closely based on their members’ needs and goals.
Building a community one weekly email at a time
Monday Girl started as an event series in 2017 but temporarily wound down during COVID. To continue to support their membership, Istiana and Rachel shifted their focus to converting their newsletter audience into their new private membership. “We wanted to reimagine what a newsletter could look like for women — something that you look forward to first thing on a Monday morning. It's inspiring to look at and excites you about your work week.”
The private membership was created in tandem with the refocus on the newsletter as a next-level perk for subscribers. Members can apply when the cohort opens to access a network of like-minded professionals who can provide guidance, support, and valuable connections. After acceptance, members also have access to resources, programming, and mentorship opportunities to help them grow and develop as a leader in their field for a monthly fee.
Monday Girls' open and click-through rates have been consistent for years. “We attribute this to celebrating our community. We have sections in all of our newsletters celebrating member wins and spotlighting members. They look forward to seeing themselves shouted out in the newsletter,” says Istiana.
They drive a lot of engagement through calls to action in their emails, encouraging subscribers to reply with feedback on topics they’d like to see and to start conversations. When it comes to the content, says Rachel, it's always a 2-way conversation.
“People can always feel when you take that extra step to engage with them. We never want to be cold. We always want to be inviting and warm, and I think that feeling and that brand of Monday Girl comes through even with something like direct email,” says Rachel.
"The reason we use Mailchimp is the ability to automate everything. We’re a very small team and we’ve been scrappy throughout the years. This has helped us be hands-off in various ways with our audience, while still keeping those valuable touchpoints and getting people excited about their careers."
Networking powered by Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder
Mailchimp powers all communications for Monday Girl, from their weekly newsletter, renewals, and new subscriber flows to meetup events for the 5,000 paid members in their community.
“The reason we use Mailchimp is the ability to automate everything. We’re a very small team and we’ve been scrappy throughout the years. This has helped us be hands-off in various ways with our audience, while still keeping those valuable touchpoints and getting people excited about their careers,” says Istiana.
Using Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder, the Monday Girl team meets subscribers where they are with thoughtful, personalized touchpoints that encourage more engagement.
When they onboard new members, for example, they want them to order their welcome package and join their Slack channel as soon as possible. If they haven't taken those steps, the customer journey will follow up.
They have 4 types of members: people who are job hunting, people who are working on pivoting industries, people who are business owners, and people who want to level up as leaders. Depending on the member's goal, they go through a separate flow. Monday Girl segments their community based on their members' goals and interests, age, work experience, and location.
Along with their weekly Monday newsletter, they have Customer Journeys and automations for member renewals, account management, anniversary gifts, and even if a member gets laid off. Their public newsletter has a 60% open rate, which is even higher for members. It's around 85% on almost all of their emails and automations for that segment.
The Monday Girl team focuses on making their communications as personalized as possible. When renewals are approaching, they send members an email with a quick quiz to identify career goals and challenges. Depending on their quiz answers, another email gets triggered with a personalized goal-setting action plan with curated resources and mentors on their platform.
They use a customer journey to send emails that mark significant milestones throughout the year. “They're always hearing from us; it's not just like a one-and-done thing," says Istiana.
Once the renewal flow begins about 3 weeks before a member's renewal date, the team sends several emails reminding them of what the membership offers, what resources are available to them, upcoming mentorship opportunities and events, their anniversary gift, and how to expense their membership with their company, something about 50% of their members do.
“One of the tips we've learned is to make the most recent month really successful for a member and remind them that there’s a lot of value here. We’re not just trying to sell them on renewing. It's getting them excited about all the tools available,” says Istiana.
One of their other favorite ways to demonstrate value to their members right before renewal is through the Spotify-inspired "Monday Girl Wrapped." This end-of-year email summarizes the number of meetups, mentorship sessions, member wins, and more — all in one place — to celebrate the private members and show the actual value of the membership without upselling.
Another customer journey automation that has proven incredibly successful is their laid-off email series. This series kicks off once a member lets the Monday Girl team know they’ve been laid off. It provides connections to mentors, recruiting coaches, and various job-hunting resources. This automation enables the team to be there for members when they need support the most.
Growing engagement with Mailchimp automations
As Monday Girl’s audience grows both for its weekly email and private membership, the team is setting their sights to the future. Next priority? Launching membership in more US cities. After using a hodgepodge of platforms to grow Monday Girl, they're moving to a custom platform that better serves their needs alongside Mailchimp.
“We’re in the middle of switching platforms and we’re using Mailchimp to migrate all of our members to the new platform. We have an email flow introducing our subscribers to the new platform, how to set up their account, and how it all works. It plays a big part in helping us build a stronger platform,” says Istiana.
The new platform will allow for automatic tagging of subscribers, which will work in tandem with Mailchimp’s features such as merge tags, segmentation, and their active automations. As they grow and continue to use Mailchimp’s Customer Journey and automations to make deeper connections with their members by sending more personalized messages, they will continue to focus on one thing: “It really comes down to just putting high quality content that your community looks forward to and cares about.”
Looking to boost engagement, automatically? Meet your audience where they are with Customer Journey Builder.
The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent those of Intuit Mailchimp or any of its cornerstone brands or employees.
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