Gaiam is a leading lifestyle brand with a mission to make yoga, fitness, and wellness accessible to all. The company has 38K retail doors, 18K stores within stores, 5K category management locations, and e-Commerce. Gaiam wanted proof that an Audience Management strategy that went beyond the current Active segment to reach deep into their list could re-engageInactive customers while continuing to engage Active customers.

CHALLENGE:

Inactive Buyers and Non-Buyers typically far outnumber Active Buyers and make up the bulk of the list. Yet marketers continue to send a relative trickle of mail to the largest portion of their audience, potentially ignoring a huge opportunity. Gaiam recognized this dilemma and asked us to address the elephant in the room.

Gaiam is a leading lifestyle brand with a mission to make yoga, fitness, and wellness accessible to all. The company has 38K retail doors, 18K stores within stores, 5K category management locations, and e-Commerce. Gaiam wanted proof that an Audience Management strategy that went beyond the current Active segment to reach deep into their list could re-engage Inactive customers while continuing to engage Active customers.

TEST:

Alchemy Worx created a 3-month test comparing Gaiam’s regular email strategy with an Audience Management strategy. Gaiam’s audience was split 50/50 into a Control group and a Test group.

The Control group received messages under the existing email strategy, while the Test group was administered an Audience Management strategy with a focus on re-engaging Inactive customers and keeping Active customers engaged.

A key aspect of the Audience Management strategy was boosting the volume of mail to unengaged segments and then analyzing the feedback to identify Inactive Buyers and Non-Buyers who were most likely to become active.

RESULTS:

The Audience Management approach enabled Gaiam’s Test group to deliver a 10% increase in the size of the Engaged (Open 30 Days) segment, 13% among Buyers, and 9% among Non-Buyers.

When compared with the Control group, Unengaged Buyers in the Test group were 38% more likely to re-engage while Engaged Buyers were 12% more likely to remain engaged.

Similarly, unengaged Non-Buyers were 30% more likely to re-engage and 4% more likely to remain engaged. Strikingly, previously Unengaged Non-Buyers were 55% more likely to make a purchase.

Overall, the Test group realized a 9% lift in Clicks, 7% lift in Opens, and a 4% decrease in unsubscribe rate.

TAKEAWAY:

The results revealed how the traditional email approach was overlooking a lot of opportunities while demonstrating how using Audience Management to consider the whole list and not just the small Active segment could boost engagement across the board for Gaiam.