Restructuring a high-volume CRM program for engagement, not just reach
A 5.6M-recipient sender with a strong list and a structural conversion problem. The diagnostic re-anchored the program around audience quality, flow clarity and an under-leveraged loyalty segment.
/ Snapshot
Business context
The brand had a large engaged base, healthy open rates, and a deliverability score of 70. Solid, not top tier. Campaign click rate was stuck around 0.85% and unsubscribe rate sat in the bottom percentile. Beneath the metrics, the account was running too many overlapping flows and using lists where segments should have been doing the work.
Opportunity
The brand wasn't suffering from a content problem. It was suffering from an audience-quality and architecture problem disguised as a campaign problem.
Strategic thinking
- 01Big list, low engagement. Deliverability is being eroded by sending broadly instead of behaviourally.
- 02Flows are doing too much. Cart, checkout, browse and tracking duplication are splitting high-intent traffic instead of routing it.
- 03Loyalty (32k members, 64% open) is the highest-intent segment in the account, and it's being treated as an afterthought.
Recommended approach
Step 01
Audience quality before campaign volume
Move from list-based sending to behaviour-led segmentation. Engaged subscribers (30-60 days), recent browsers, past purchasers, each with their own conversation. Suppress disengaged before it costs deliverability.
Step 02
Consolidate the flow layer
Collapse overlapping abandonment flows into a single, conversion-focused architecture. One flow per moment. Quantity replaced with clarity. The gap between 0.59% flow conversion and a 2.5% benchmark is structural, not creative.
Step 03
Re-elevate loyalty
Treat loyalty as a revenue tier, not a comms tier. Active campaigns to VIPs, dynamic blocks for double-points, and a winback path for lapsed loyalty members. High-intent audience equals high priority.
Step 04
Creative that earns the click
Subject-line testing across brand-aligned vs inbox-disruptor styles. Sensation-led body copy. Editorial-paced layouts with a single CTA per moment.
Customer & lifecycle insights
- Lists are being used like segments. Performance leaks between them.
- Spam and unsub rates are bottom-percentile despite a healthy open rate. That's an audience signal.
- Loyalty members open at 64%, but the program isn't built around them.
- Flow duplication likely exacerbated by tracking pixel overlap.
Key takeaways
- 01We're getting people in. We're just not set up to convert and retain them efficiently.
- 02CRM scale without architecture is a deliverability liability, not a growth lever.
- 03Loyalty is the cheapest revenue in the account, and the most ignored.
Want to talk through this in more detail?
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