Email strategy teardown: Red Dress Boutique
Email Design — A Key Ingredient To Successful Email Marketing
Why Red Dress Boutique?
The average office worker gets 121 emails a day, and that’s just on their work account. In a world where everything moves quickly and attention spans are short, it can be difficult to capture someone’s attention. As a marketer, you try to get your emails to stand out from the crowded inbox. The core ingredients to successfully do that — right audience, right content, right time, should also now include right design. A minimal and personable email design can create high converting emails. Klaviyo makes it very easy to create these emails and have successful email marketing via our powerful features and in-house help experts.
Red Dress Boutique is an online women’s fashion store with a strong fashion influencer following and a huge Instagram presence. I wanted to see if their email marketing strategy would be as vibrant as their products, and if there’s anything that they could be doing better. To find out, I signed up for emails with Red Dress Boutique, took a few actions, and watched to see how the experience unfolded.
The backstory of Red Dress Boutique
Red Dress Boutique, a trendy women’s clothing store, started as a small brick-and-mortar clothing store in Athens, GA. Husband-and-wife founders Diana and Josh Harbour quickly added an ecommerce store, and after an appearance on Shark Tank have found themselves at the helm of a $15M and growing company. On creating the concept, Diana says, “ I also wanted to create this place that would bring color and confidence and happiness to a woman’s day.” Their brand is heavily recognized and applauded by fashion influencers and bloggers everywhere.
Here's what happened with Red Dress Boutique
We signed up for their email newsletter and received a welcome series email.
We abandoned a cart and did not receive an abandoned cart email.
We purchased after the abandoned cart and received order confirmation and shipping emails.
We received many emails letting us know of new product launches, back in stocks, outfit ideas, and promotions.
Email deep dive
Let’s look at their one week email strategy.
1. Sign up for their welcome series emails
2. Abandon a cart and see if there’s an abandoned cart email
3. Make a purchase and see if there are post-purchase emails
4. Receive email content and determine if it is relevant and easy to digest
Red Dress Boutique Emails
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Daily email strategy
Red Dress Boutique
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New Products |
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Promotion |
New Products |
Shipping Confirmation |
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New Products |
Top-Rated Products |
Product Trend |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
Back In Stock |
Order Confirmation |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
Top-Rated Products |
Product Trend |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
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Welcome Series |
New Products |
Promotion Reminder |
Back in Stock |
Promotion Reminder |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
Top-Rated Products |
New Products |
Promotion |
New Products |
Shipping Confirmation |
New Products |
Shipping Confirmation |
New Products |
New Products |
Back in Stock |
Product Feature |
New Products |
New Products |
New Products |
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The good, the bad, the ugly: Red Dress Boutique
Engaging welcome series
On brand, timely, and contained an incentive to shop. This is all great news, because welcome emails make a good first impression with customers and drive major revenue. On average, that first welcome email makes $0.77 per message more than promotional and transactional emails combined.
Consistently on-brand
Each email (except for 1 shipping email) was playful, vibrant, and engaging. The epitome of what this brand represents. Your brand is what sets you apart and helps inspire and shape people’s choices, so make sure you use it in every message.
Abandoned cart email
There was none. This is a missed opportunity to make some serious cash. Given that 7 out of 10 shopping carts get abandoned, and the average revenue per recipient of an abandoned cart email campaign is $5.81, this is money being left behind.
Creative Design
There was a lot of content crammed into each email, which can create information overload and result in your user not clicking at all. One way to fix this is to create segments of customers and only send them content that is relevant for them. Highly segmented emails drive 3x more money per recipient and have lower unsubscribe-rates than non-segmented emails. A/B test the new design, review, pick the winner, and run with it.
Cadence
The cadence was intense. I received 2-3 emails each day even if I took no action. This could quickly escalate to customers unsubscribing or emails going to a spam folder – in fact, some of the messages Red Dress Boutique sent me wound up in my spam folder! We recommend using smart sending. It’s a good way to prevent your subscribers and/or customers from receiving too many emails if you have multiple active flows and campaigns.
In Conclusion…
As a heavy instagram user and fashion blog subscriber — it’s hard to miss this brand. From their vibrant dresses to their animal print accessories, Red Dress Boutique has my heart…and will soon have my wallet. They have a strong brand, a lot of great content, and can improve the customer experience further by creating an abandoned cart email, segmenting their customers, and cleaning up their emails by making them a little less cluttered.
