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Imagine that you make limited-edition scarves with designs that tell a story about everyday moments in life.
It’s a niche product that requires building brand trust. So product reviews are critical.
Now imagine this: review requests are impossible to engineer with your email marketing provider.
Such was Sonya Michele’s predicament in early 2021, among a string of other email challenges. It was the tipping point for pulling dog&boy — her Melbourne-based business — from Mailchimp.
She jumped to Seguno, which had 1) a direct connection to the Shopify Product Reviews app and 2) a product review automation template.
“I remember saying to the girls in the office, ‘Why didn't we do this before now?’” Michele says, reflecting on the reviews that immediately started coming in. “It was fantastic.”
More importantly, Seguno enabled her to carve a customer journey with email touchpoints not feasible in Mailchimp. Now, seven email automations — review request included — work together to deepen customer and subscriber relationships.
They account for about 38% of the brand’s email marketing sales.
Forging connections through email marketing
Michele opened her studio in 2015 after a career of 20+ years in events and marketing for the financial sector. Driving the leap? An obsession with scarves.
Familial roots are the heart of dog&boy. Its namesake derives from Michele’s son (Nicholas) and pet dog, a big chocolate labrador named Barry. Her mother’s “love of the simple beauty in everything she saw” is the brand’s beacon. Sketches by her mother inspire many designs.
Wholesale operations drive about 70% of the business, channeled from 150 independent retailers and lifestyle stores throughout Australia, the U.S., Canada and New Zealand.
Being such a tactile product, Michele says the brand’s demographic enjoys shopping in person so they can touch and feel the scarves. The typical dog&boy customer is a Baby Boomer or older Gen-Xer who loves the experience of shopping with independent retailers and is selective with purchases.
“Customers are becoming far more conscious of what they purchase. They want something that is a little bit more meaningful and has an emotional connection,” Michele explains.
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Connecting with her demographic requires communicating in the right way through the right medium. Storytelling resonates, not a barrage of sales promos. And since “technology is not generally their thing,” email marketing is the best fit.
Yes, dog&boy is on social media. The heaviest return on investment (ROI) is via Facebook, where its target audience is found. The brand also leverages Google Ads, but email is the go-to for cultivating bonds.
“I think because there is so much hype regarding advertising on social media, people do not understand how much better return they can get on email versus a social ad,” Michele says. “It’s a chunk of time to set up. But that is offset by a much greater return than what you'll ever get with social ads.”
dog&boy’s experience with Seguno? An approximately 35x ROI.
Mailchimp challenges
At the time of dog&boy’s online launch in 2015/2016, email marketing providers were scant. Mailchimp was the most accessible and, therefore, the default choice.
Shopify and Mailchimp later broke ties, forcing reliance on an additional third-party app to maintain the connection. The breakup severely limited the ability to personalize emails (like “Hi, Sonya!”) and made for rudimentary automations. Abandoned cart emails were generic; review request emails were just a dream.
“To make a [customer] journey, it was complex, and it was hard. It was taking hours and hours and hours to set something up.”
She endured Mailchimp’s lackluster and “frustrating” functionality for a few years, relegating it to capturing addresses and sending the occasional email newsletter.
The struggle was identifying a better solution. She didn’t need all the frills of other providers like Klaviyo that she’d never use. And it needed to be cost effective.
Multiple ecommerce apps add up, especially when converting USD to AUD. Mailchimp was becoming expensive. She was paying for all contacts, versus just active subscribers (50% to 60% of the list).
That’s when she heeded a friend’s recommendation and investigated Seguno. It wasn’t just a more affordable solution. She wouldn’t have to rid her list of customers not currently subscribed and sacrifice valuable data points that may be useful later.
Seguno: “A godsend”
When Michele encountered Seguno, it was a “kid in a candy store” experience. The collection of pre-built email automation templates with suggested verbiage won her over.
“As a small business, you do a thousand things,” she says. “I understood marketing, but I was blissfully ignorant in understanding how marketing worked for small business and direct-to-consumer products because it is so very different [from corporate marketing]. The way you talk to them is very different.”
The word “easy” frequently spills from Michele’s lips when discussing Seguno, whether related to automations or the creation process. She calls the email marketing tool a godsend for her five-person company and considers it the next-best app behind Shopify.
Owning a small business is much more challenging than Michele ever imagined. Seguno has lessened some of the burden.
Here are some key ways Seguno is supporting the business:
- A six-message welcome series introduces new subscribers to dog&boy over a 60-day span. The first message gives the promised 15% discount offer. The remaining messages tell the brand’s story. That includes its partnership with i=Change, whereby a customer selects which charity will receive a portion of their sale.
- A three-part abandoned checkout series generates a 9% conversion rate. In other words, nearly 10% of subscribers who leave items in the shopping cart return to make a purchase. Messaging reminds the subscriber about the i=Change donation at checkout. “Again, it’s building trust with our customers so they know who we are and what we’re about. We don’t push the hard sell in our emails. We have a social conscience.”
- The active subscriber list doubled over two years after activating the Seguno Facebook Leads connection. Seguno removes the hassle of manually creating newsletter subscribers attained from Facebook ad submissions through an automatic sync. dog&boy didn’t run Facebook lead ads beforehand because of the complications of navigating Facebook. “After eight years, I still don't know how to use that system. It is just a nightmare, but the Facebook Leads connection makes it so easy,” Michele admits.
- She gets answers to specific questions thanks to responsive customer service. Michele is thankful that Seguno doesn’t provide generic answers to her support inquiries, a trait that she finds uncommon in the ecommerce ecosphere. “I can't rate it highly enough, and we’ve used a lot of apps in our time.”
Otherwise, dog&boy intentionally sends email newsletters periodically, typically around holiday promotions, blogs and new launches. The cadence matches the disposition of the brand’s audience, which Michele says doesn’t want to be bombarded with “buy, buy, buy” messaging.
Making space for business growth
Michele says Seguno is so easy to use because it’s not cluttered with the marketing jargon and terminology that dominate other email marketing platforms. Instead, Seguno speaks in a language that she understands. Guided prompts and straightforward processes are also handy.
Coupled together, Seguno saves her time. It means she can turn more focus toward expanding the business in different ways.
She can devote energy to growing the direct-to-consumer subscriber list.
And establish new partnerships for giving back and raising awareness, like the upcoming one with Australian fashion recycler UPPAREL.
Or find suitable wholesale solutions for effectively marketing to their retailers.
Seguno’s time savings, ease of use, and behind-the-scenes automations have changed her business.
“I’ve recommended Seguno to so many people,” she says. “I've said, ‘It will change your life. You need to get on it.’”