Email is the lifeblood of daily-deal sites. Groupon became one of the fastest-growing tech companies in history due, at least in part, to its highly targeted emails. And LivingSocial founder Tim O’Shaughnessy credited the company’s success with leveraging consumers’ emails.
Today, the flash sale lives on at DailySale, whose burgeoning ecommerce site boasts steep discounts (50–90% off retail) on a wide range of popular products. Email is core to its business, reaching subscribers across devices to alert them to not-to-be-missed deals. It’s a key revenue driver and a future-proof channel that consumers love. But the team at DailySale felt they could do even more.
They wanted to squeeze email for every last drop of ROI potential, but it posed an all-too-common challenge: How could they create new revenue opportunities without disturbing an otherwise positive user experience?
For Greater ROI, Just Ad Widgets
Widget is a lot more than just fun to say. It’s also a portmanteau (combination of two terms) of “window” and “gadget.” This makes it the perfect description for a content recommendation engine that publishers can insert into their newsletter to activate blocks, or “windows,” for native ads.
As newsletters evolve into the new homepage, brands can take advantage of native advertising there just as they would a website. Only unlike a website, newsletters are highly targeted and more engaging because they reach a captive audience of opted-in subscribers.
Native ads placed in email can use subscriber data to deeply personalize the content to each viewer, giving brands a wider array of content that’s more likely to capture readers’ interest. And it does this without masquerading as editorial content, which consumers hate.
DailySale put LiveIntent’s Content Recommendation Widget to the test. Setup was simple: They inserted a tag into their existing newsletter templates. No redesigns were needed and ads were limited to tier-one publishers to ensure the quality of the experience.
The results were as surprising for what did happen as for what didn’t happen.
The Results
After enabling LiveIntent’s Content Recommendation Widget, DailySale grew its email revenue by 26% and saw an average CTR of 70%.
And the best part? Their email performance and sales remained unchanged by the addition. It was all upside.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve our email program,” says Jay Hofstatter, president of DailySale. “Adding LiveIntent’s Content Recommendation Unit allowed us to do that without removing anything from our previous template. The incremental revenue we’ve seen since implementation has been fantastic.”
In the battle for consumer attention, brands like DailySale have nailed their audience. But in the battle for email ROI, they’re only just beginning to explore a new world of possibility.
Want to make your emails more profitable? Learn about LiveIntent.
