How to Relaunch Your Email Channel and Get 19% Conversion Rate from Bulk Emails and 125% from Triggered Emails: The PDL-Profit Case Study

The client

PDL Profit is an international financial CPA network that helps websites monetize traffic. To drive traffic, webmasters accept offers of cooperation (connect offers) from advertisers and start the flow of traffic through the affiliate link. Therefore, PDL Profit’s services are geared towards advertisers who publish their offers and webmasters who decide to collaborate with PDL Profit. These groups are the main target audience for the company's newsletters. 

Campaign objectives

When the client contacted us, they had no concrete email marketing strategy in place: they had sent only one or two bulk emails in the last six months. There was also no systematic communication with subscribers (i.e., webmasters) and no email newsletters.

So, our tasks were to:

1. Relaunch and test the email channel.
2. Set up and automate communication with new webmasters.
3. Establish systematic communication with existing webmasters.
4. Increase the channel effectiveness to average levels, which includes an open rate of at least 10%.

Promotion strategy through the email channel

Before relaunching the channel, we analyzed the niche and the brand, identified the main characteristics, and developed a promotion strategy. 

We planned to use the following types of emails when communicating with the webmasters:

• Manual bulk emails.
• Automated (triggered) emails.

Together with the client, we set the following priorities:

• Build a database of new subscribers.
• Automate marketing communications with new webmasters.
• Ensure regular communication to maintain loyalty.

What we did

1. We used an existing Selzy account, an email service provider (ESP), to create and send emails. We checked the email sender domain settings for compliance with Gmail requirements and searched and uploaded the existing email database.
2. We also integrated Postmaster, which is a Google tool that allows you to analyze emails from a specific sender, monitor spam, find delivery errors, and track overall domain reputation.

3. We analyzed the brand's competitors. Specifically, we identified the best strategies used by others and applied them for PDL Profit.
4. We developed a communication trigger map. Based on this map, we started implementing automated newsletters. 
5. We implemented subscription forms on the website. To grow the database, we created various forms and added a lead magnet: a 5% bonus on the first payment. 

This is the pop-up subscription form we used: 

In addition, we added a dynamic widget with the bonus in the corner of the page, and this brought up the pop-up form:

6. We set up contact import from subscription forms to ESP.
7. We also set up a double opt-in process, which requires users to reconfirm their subscription via email. This is necessary to ensure that only valid, real email addresses are added to the database. It also ensures that users who leave their email on the website confirm that they agree to receive newsletters, which prevents potential spam complaints. 
8. We then developed a master email template. This template contains repeated brand elements that make the newsletters recognizable to subscribers. 
9. We created a content plan and diversified it with sections to increase audience loyalty. 

For this project, there were three main segments of the webmaster audience, and each segment had its own communication specifics. 

Based on this segmentation, we created bulk email sections and trigger chains.

Bulk emails 

We used different types of bulk emails:

1. A digest of offers, which was essentially a selection of offers, including new products and top results.

2. Current promotions and other attractive offers.

3. Useful tips for webmasters.  

4. Thematic newsletters.

5. Newsletters about new services and service updates.

6. Surveys on preferred newsletter topics.

Triggers and automation

To enhance the effectiveness of the emails, we used the following trigger emails:

1. Subscription confirmation for double opt-in.

2. Triggers with a subscription bonus.

3. Triggered welcome chain for new subscribers.

4. Triggers with a second sign-up bonus if the first one was not used by the subscriber.

5. Triggers for successful registration and creation of a personal webmaster account.

6. A trigger for webmasters who have linked their initial offer with an invitation to share their feedback.

7. A trigger for webmasters who registered but did not connect their first offer within a month, with an invitation to give feedback on what they feel is lacking from PDL Profit.

Results of the promotion 

We achieved several milestones from our work on the project:

• Launched an email channel from scratch.
• Implemented a continuous growth strategy for the subscriber base. 
• Created a channel development strategy for the CPA network. 
• Developed categories for mass promotions.
• Implemented basic and high converting triggers for the niche. 

To evaluate the effectiveness of the email channel, we monitored certain target actions: 

• Registration
• Account activation
• Connection of offers 

The overall results just four months after the campaign launch: 

1. The average bulk email open rate increased to 12%, with a click-to-open rate of 6.64%.
2. The promotional emails had a conversion rate of 19% for the targeted actions.
3. The triggered emails were especially successful, with a conversion rate of 125%. This means that one webmaster performed more than one targeted action. Why were they so effective? 

• The subscription triggers included a lead magnet.
• New webmasters could perform several targeted actions at once, while webmasters already working with the network had only one targeted action available to them, which is to link to a new offer. 

Feedback on cooperation

Olga Syvolap, Project Manager, Netpeak Ukraine