First impressions are hard to shake. For ban.do, an LA-based lifestyle brand, it’s important that they make a good one.
Friendliness is in their very DNA, after all. Ban.do exudes the kind of effortlessly cool, stylish vibe you might associate with its Californian hometown. Since they launched 10 years ago, originally as a vintage hair accessory purveyor, they’ve grown an engaged community of shoppers they like to think of as friends.
But as ban.do has continued to grow, they’ve needed a way to connect with new shoppers that goes beyond getting eyes on their playful design and fun inventory. They wanted to say hello in a way that really resonates.
Tell new subscribers a little bit about yourself
Sending an automated welcome email series is an easy way to greet new subscribers or to say thank you for a first purchase. Because the series is customizable, it also offers a powerful way to introduce customers to what makes you you.
For years, ban.do sent just one automated welcome email to new subscribers. This was consistently their most opened email, and on top of giving the customers a discount code, it also offered a snapshot of the brand.
But Sarah Wilson, their e-commerce director, knew they could be doing more. They had talked for years about creating a series of emails for new customers. They didn’t want shoppers to merely discover them through a Google search, make a purchase, and never come back.
“We want them to be involved with the brand and not just buy things from us,” says Sarah.
They were after friendship.
Make more of an impact with a fraction of the work
Sarah and her team wanted to turn their single welcome email into a series, but they worried it would be a heavy lift.
By default, automated welcome emails send one day after someone subscribes, but with Mailchimp, you can change the delay or to add more emails and turn it into a welcome series.
“Really, they’re not any harder to create than a regular email campaign, and we send 2 or 3 of those a week, but somehow the permanence of it and the idea of sliding it into our schedule to create kept us from doing it for like a full year,” she says. But finally, they tackled the task and discovered it was a cinch.
All Sarah had to do was determine the goal of the second and third emails, get the copy written, and prepare the emails like any other campaign. Now that all 3 emails are ready to go, it’s simply a matter of updating coupon codes and any seasonal elements. Everything else is automated.
They had reason to believe even the minimal effort will pay off. On average, sending a series of welcome emails yields an average of 51% more revenue than a single welcome email.
