Growing A First Party Email List For Outsiders Store
How we used our digital advertising expertise to increase and retain a quality first-party email database for Outsiders Store
Outsiders Store is the antidote to cut-and-paste outdoor stores. Not long into disrupting the outdoor industry, they approached nativve for some advertising help. Outsiders was growing fast, but their email list wasn’t growing in line with their revenue.
They wanted to grow their online presence and build a community, knowing that both of these objectives would ultimately lead to a consistent growth in sales.
nativve has been working with Outsiders since their launch. That made us uniquely positioned to deliver on what makes them…them. Like their specific visual and written tone and their outdoor-authenticity.
Why Email Lead Ads?
Email lead ads are a slower, steadier approach for Outsiders Store’ advertising strategy. Building your email list takes time but by increasing their subscribers, Outsiders could leverage more return from the work they were putting into their creative and long form projects.
When it comes to online advertising and email lists, we also advised them that building a quality first-party audience of opted-in and engaged email subscribers would further future proof their prospects. Setting out a plan now, well ahead of the looming demise of relying on 3rd party data and 3rd party audiences for advertising, would ensure they’d continue to advertise successfully online when these changes took effect.
With an email list, you can really get to know your customers. Outsiders Store can nurture the customer relationship by offering them early access, entry into competitions, limited edition drops and discounts. It also makes the customer’s lifetime value measurable – the gold standard metric needed to sustainably scale a business.
Building new audiences from scratch can be expensive and time-consuming. Email signup ads are one of the most cost-effective solutions to omnichannel remarketing. Using your email audience, we can reach a subscriber through multiple touch points, like Meta, Google, Youtube and X. We can use this to inform targeting for prospecting audiences to make finding potential new customers more cost-effective than other social media platforms. For example, building an audience on Facebook can, after just a few small algorithm changes, result in posts being seen by less than 10% of the very same audience you just paid to build.
As the landscape of social media platforms is ever-changing, email continues to be a safe and agile investment.
Strategy to Grow a First-Party Email List
We chose to advertise on Instagram, Facebook and Google. Instagram was the first choice, and for good reason. It’s where Outsiders Store’s strongest social media presence is, where they have nearly 100k followers.
Our multi-tiered approach went after high-value people:
- Engaged followers who aren’t subscribed
- Active shoppers who aren’t subscribed
- Lookalikes of Outsiders Store’s highest-value shoppers
We kept the ads simple and slick. We utilised the platforms’ clever instant experiences, which means it only takes three clicks to be subscribed to the mailing list. Once you’ve pressed “next” the form is pre-filled with your information. It’s seamless, with very little room for drop-off.
As soon as you’re subscribed, you’re straight into the 3-part welcome flow which covers brand values, interesting projects and their latest products. That’s what sells customers on Outsiders’ brand story. That first welcome email has got a pretty impressive 68.8% open rate and 8% click-through rate too.
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Results? Always-on Email Growth
Even though we’ve been spending ad budget on acquiring new customers and ran a number of competitions, the targeting and strategies we’ve implemented have helped to maintain the click-through rate and conversion rate. We’ve kept both nice and high as Outsiders’ mailing list increased in size. That’s how we know our highly specific ads are targeting the right people.
We’ve helped increase the size of their mailing list by 31%, with 64% retention over three years. The average order value is now 60% higher than conventional ads with an average open rate of 55%.
After testing which creative worked best for the client, this is a campaign that can be a self-sustaining hard worker with minimal upkeep or ad fatigue. The ad spend can be guaranteed to reach the right people because as soon as someone signs up to the mailing list, they won’t see the ad again. These email lead ads are a foundational part of our always-on strategy for Outsiders.
Looking to grow your email list? Get in touch to find out how we can help.
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