Summary: Diesel is one of the world’s leading fashion brands, offering a wide variety of apparel for the stylish man and woman. Digital Fire helped setup an interactive viral email marketing campaign for the brand, accelerating Diesel’s sales by achieving a fantastic Open Rate of 47.39% and Interactive Response rate of 11.99%.

Introduction

Diesel apparel is for the fashion-conscious, success-driven individual. It has long since been seen as a standard for most occasions, featuring a range of clothing to cater to all tastes. The brand has always been ahead of its time, seeking opportunities to capture new and existing audiences with content and incentives that are hard to ignore.

Objective

Diesel recently executed a winter sale, offering its customers up to 50% off on selected apparel. It needed to reach out to a wider audience who were ready to take advantage of the special offer. As a result, Diesel approached Digital Fire with the aim of:

• Creating awareness for the Diesel Winter Sale
• Driving traffic to the Diesel stores
• Growing and profiling their existing CRM database
• Helping the audience find the closest store to their location
• Increasing sales

 Solution

Digital Fire was quick to propose an interactive viral promotional email campaign, which included a custom built database based on the brand’s objectives and target audience. The campaign allowed Diesel to promote its winter sale while incentivising the audience to sign up for future marketing material by offering one lucky winner a R10 000 shopping experience. Digital Fire captured the entries, which were handed over to Diesel at the end of the campaign.

Design

The design phase was seamless and utilised Digital Fire’s signature design cues consisting of animated artwork, short copy and flat images, which were in line with the fashion brand’s style. The top half of the mailer was designed to encourage the audience to find their closest store. Key phrases were highlighted to increase relevance. These included words such as sale, which was capitalised to ensure it stood out.

The second half was effectively utilised for the competition, which also emphasised the audience’s chance of winning a R10 000 shopping experience. Simplicity, conciseness and attraction were elements that were implemented to ensure that the audience would understand the message and click on both the competition and store locator CTAs.

Digital Fire designed three components in total for the mailer, which included a:

• Promotional mailer for the initial audience broadcast, which would be repurposed to become the viral mailer sent to referrals
• Landing page where the audience could enter the competition
• Thank you page for the audience to recommend friends and family

 Target audience

While the design was underway, Digital Fire started the process of canvassing a suitable audience that would engage with the message. Using the client’s brief and Digital Fire’s insights, a Diesel database was created consisting of:

• An audience aged between 24 and 50 years old
• An LSM ranging from 9 to 10
• Both males and females (predominantly males)
• An audience interested in fashion, luxury goods and lifestyle
• People based in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town (retail locations)
• Ethnicity: All, with a focus on African

Development and testing

Once the design had been approved by client, the artwork was converted into HTML and loaded into Digital Fire’s email service provider. It was tested multiple times to ensure that it displayed correctly and adjusted accordingly until it was ready for broadcast.

Broadcast

After the HTML had been tested to Digital Fire’s and Diesel’s satisfaction, it was scheduled for broadcast on the 27^th of July 2016. The competition ran until the 12^th of August 2016. During this time, the broadcast managed to generate a:

• 47.39% Open Rate
• 16.63% Click-through Rate
• 11.99% Interactive Response Rate
• 7.84% Viral Response Rate

The power of email marketing continues to show itself with campaigns such as the one executed by Digital Fire on behalf of Diesel. Key insights and strategies were implemented to ensure that the message stayed on track, targeting the right audience, while showing the value of engaging with the brand. There is no better time to start an email marketing campaign than now, especially if you consider the upcoming festive season, which most have already begun planning for.