How Wallaby Got a 326% Increase in Signups
Growth Hacking with Email
Email marketing may not be as sexy as a clever tweet, a funny YouTube video or a Facebook post but it works — it’s cheap, more effective than social media, and the majority of people use it daily. Email is not only an important tool for customer engagement and retention but also for converting prospects to customers.
It would be nice to assume that users keep up to date with all the latest happenings and products of companies but the reality is they don’t. At Wallaby, when we were analyzing our user data, we were surprised to learn that many users had used the Wallaby mobile app but had not signed up for The Wallaby Card - an all in one credit card which maximizes your rewards. This provided us with an opportunity to market to them and learn what we could do better going forward.
What We Did
- We identified a segment of customers who had used the mobile app but had not signed up for the card.
- We A/B tested different subject lines and a stand alone images versus an animated one.
- We scheduled the email to send out on a Tuesday morning around 9am pacific time — before lots of people start work on the west coast and right before lunch on the east coast.
- The link to signup included the user’s email address so that it would pre-populate on the form — reducing friction so the user didn’t have to type it in.
- We added sharing widgets and an incentive to share after they signed up.
The Result
Compared to the average signups in the past 10 months, we saw a 326% increase for the month we sent the email. The email itself had a 36% open rate, with about 18% of those clicking on the link. The email did not perform as well as it did from the A/B test results, where one email had a 40% open rate and the other had a 32% click through rate.
Despite the lower than expected click through, we were happy with the results and applied the same strategy in reverse — emailing users who signed up for the card but not the app — which also produced similar, positive results.
How We Could Have Done Better
- We could have segmented the list better — our open and click through rate would have been higher if we didn’t include some users — for example, those who signed up for our app but didn’t use it.
- More A/B testing — if we had more time, we could have tested additional factors and gotten a higher sample.
- Personalization — since they used the app, we know what kind of cards they have in their wallet. We could have made the email more tailored to them and why they needed the Wallaby card in their life.
- Smarter — users had to click a link which would open the website and then they would then have to click a sign up button. If we had some free engineering resources, we could have reduced the friction even more and let the user sign up directly with just one click as part of the email.
- More incentive to share — the incentive was to move up the wait list but we probably would have gotten more people to share their referral link if we offered something more substantial.
Email can be a powerful tool if used properly. On the other hand, email that is sent too frequently, is always self promoting, spammy, or boring will end up in the trash or unsubscribed.
At Wallaby, we send newsletters once a month that not only has updates about the company but of the credit card industry. Readers can subscribe to our blog and be emailed every time a new blog is posted — usually only one to three times a week. We send transactional emails when users want it most— such as reminders that their bill is due. When a user signs up for our mobile app, we have a drip campaign — emails sent at predetermined intervals — where we give tips and tricks, collect feedback, and now based on our results, upsell the Wallaby Card to those that haven’t signed up yet.
By identifying an untapped channel, testing different variations, and reducing friction to sign up and share, Wallaby was able to more than triple our average signups. How have you used email marketing to increase signups or conversions?
