Michael’s Craft Stores
CRM Journey redesign
Timing
Spring - Fall 2019
Client
Michael’s
Tools
Sketch, Illustrator, After Effects
Team
Jason McCann, ECD; Kate Bowen, Copywriter; Natalie Marcogliese, Account Executive; Jessica Chee, PM
My Role
Art Direction, Motion Design, Visual QA
Context
Michael’s approached GALE to help mitigate the downward trend with their most loyal customers, and to help retain one-time new customers. Our approach was a more personalized email strategy, which centred around triggered emails timed to a user’s site and purchase activity. Visually, we made emails more eye-catching and used more motion within them, which helped increase open rates and promoted higher click rates.
Outcome
We took a test-and-learn approach to improving Michael’s email journeys, and worked on coordinating messaging and look-and-feel across journeys. The outcome of this project was the creation of a number of triggered emails and optimizations of existing email journeys, and the corresponding results are outlined below.
Optimization of existing CRM journeys
GALE worked to optimize the visual design existing email streams in order to align with industry best practises. This consisted of standardizing button sizing and hierarchy, adjusting email content to follow an order of importance, adapting the layout to be more mobile-friendly, and simplifying the graphic style to increase legibility.
In order to learn as much as we could about what content, copy, and visuals resonated with Michael’s customers, we a/b tested those elements, through using hold-out groups in the email deployment process. A number of tests were also conducted with different offers being deployed to different customer clusters.
Personalized Circular email
This email serves as an alert to customers of offers on product categories they are highly likely to purchase based on a data-driven propensity model, and is sent weekly to a wide database of Michael’s customers.
Abandon Project email
Michael’s has a robust site full of project recommendations, but it’s not widely promoted as a source of inspiration. This triggered email reminds users of the project they viewed on the site, while also offering them a discount on the necessary supplies. The rest of the email content serves to suggest alternative projects, in the event that the user is no longer interested in the one they clicked on.
Open Rate: 30.6%, Click-through Rate (CTR): 31.2%
Abandon Category email
This triggered email is sent after the user browses Michaels.com at the product category level, but doesn’t click through to individual products or load their cart. The goal is to resurface the categories they showed interest in previously and ultimately drive a purchase in one of those categories.
Open Rate: 26.5%, CTR: 29% Coupon Redemption: 4.9k customers, generating $163,500 in sales over three months.
