Case Study: Retention Email Marketing

Finding new consumers costs 7x more, on average, than keeping existing ones. Therefore, while creating pharma e-commerce growth strategies for 5 European and Brazilian markets, I decided to pay special attention to retention and communication with repeat customers.

The selected channel was retention email marketing to get patients more engaged, whether they are totally inactive or just not taking full advantage of our telemedical service. The aim of the email marketing campaigns was to expand the customer reach through newsletters and SMS and drive ROI in a cost-effective manner.

Our motto for this channel has been “Our retention emails are sent only to the patients that need them, when they need them.”

THE OBJECTIVES
  • Making connections with leads who tried to make an order but did not finish it
  • Encouraging inactive customers to purchase again
  • Motivating active customers to stay active and loyal
THE STRATEGIES: Personalisation & Segmentation
  • Identifying consumer triggers (wants, needs and preferences)
  • Creating targeted newsletter and SMS campaigns that deliver personalised message tailored for the patient (discount newsletters, service updates, treatment promotion, doctor communication, etc.)
  • Implementing simple and plain text designs which makes the newsletter easy to read and makes it easy for customers to navigate to the user account area
  • Testing a schedule that encourages customers without annoying them
  • Sending birthday triggered emails as part of our behavioral email marketing campaign to make patients feel like royalty
THE RESULTS
  • The retention marketing campaigns enabled us to better understand patient motivation, evaluate channel effectiveness and increase repeat sales by 15% across German, Swiss, Finnish, Swedish, Portuguese and Brazilian markets on a monthly base
  • The newsletter marketing campaigns have increased the turnover by 7% within the first 10 months
  • Increased repeat average order value (AOV) by 11% (country breakdown: Germany & Switzerland: +5%, Sweden: +5%, Portugal & Brazil: 11%, Finland: 26%)