Revitalizing a brand is always a challenge, especially when it comes to winning back customers. But focusing on reengagement, rather than sales, can help marketers breathe new life into customer relationships. New Zealand’s first group buying website Dailydo experienced its own reincarnation and turned to email to regain customer interaction.
Dailydo acquired three of its competitors since October 2012—Groupy, Spreets, and Yazoom—and now operates all four brands in parallel. However, Spreets had not sold a single daily deal since June 2012.
So at the end of October 2013, Dailydo relaunched Spreets, and turned to email service provider CakeMail to reengage Spreets’ inactive subscribers.
Instead of blasting out deals to Spreets’ database, Dailydo attempted to recapture Spreets’ subscribers through a prelaunch email campaign. Rather than sending out a commercial message, Dailydo explained Spreets’ comeback and described some of the brand’s changes. The company also provided an unsubscribe link at the top of the email so that customers who had moved on to other daily deal sites could remove themselves from Spreets’ list.
On October 28 Spreets sent out its first deal offering consumers a frozen yogurt with up to three toppings from Wendys Supa Sundaes for $2 (a $4.50 value). The company sold 5,287 deals. Dave Healy, managing director of Dailydo, says that although the deal didn’t generate significant profit, it did generate engagement, such as getting people to log in or create a new Spreets account.
“The margin wasn’t a lot,” he admits. “But that was a promotional thing for us.”
Emailing consumers who actually want to engage with the brand has helped Spreets see consistent open rates of more than 20%, Healy says. But it isn’t all smooth sailing. For instance, the site’s dormancy caused many customers to forget their account information. Some customers forgot their passwords, while others were under the impression that they had created an account in the past, even though they hadn’t. As a result, customers would become frustrated and abandon their purchases. To solve this dilemma, Spreets employees had their friends test the account log-in and account creation process. The brand also solicited feedback from customers. As a result, Spreets reduced the number of clicks needed to create a log in, and learned to detect whether a customer was a member, an email subscriber, or neither so that it could tailor its messaging accordingly.
“It’s really listening to your customers and almost not assuming that just because [something] worked once previously that it’s going to work again,” Healy says. “You really have to put your ego aside and listen to what they say.”
