PRO Compression Turns Email Into Its Main Growth Channel Despite iOS Updates

PRO Compression, a fast-growing D2C brand of premium compression socks, is on a mission to help everyone perform at their peak and feel their best, whether it’s an elite athlete, a nurse, or just for everyday comfort. As a lean team, PRO Compression partners with Alchemy Worx, a leading digital marketing agency, to strategize, deploy, and optimize marketing. After initially growing through digital advertising, the team wanted to lean into email to drive growth and needed the right platform to help them scale.

Combining a Robust, Intelligent Solution with Smart, Intentional Strategy

As PRO Compression set its sights on the next level of growth by making email the centerpiece of its marketing strategy, the team needed a platform that would allow them to ramp up their email efforts quickly and intelligently; grow their database; and get more sophisticated with their targeting, offers, and timing. The team knew they needed a built-in smart hub and a deep integration with Shopify to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and how they engage with their brands. They also wanted AI and predictive capabilities to drive smarter automations and targeting.

To deliver on PRO Compression’s ambitions, Alchemy Worx recommended Blueshift based on previous experience with the robust platform. Alchemy Worx knew Blueshift would not only meet today’s needs, but would also support PRO Compression as it grows and became more sophisticated with its marketing strategies.

With Alchemy Worx’s strategic guidance and the insight and execution capabilities within the Blueshift platform, the PRO Compression team transformed email into their strongest revenue-driving channel. They’ve become more targeted and sophisticated with their email campaigns, combining increased frequency with relevance to drive continued engagement.

Beyond email, the rich, actionable customer insights within Blueshift have enabled PRO Compression to improve targeting and segmentation across channels, including digital advertising and direct mail.

To scale PRO Compression’s marketing efforts, Alchemy Worx and PRO Compression relied on the following capabilities to scale impact:

• Advanced Segmentation allows the team to easily segment in a hyper-focused fashion using valuable data such as site activity, purchase history, and click data to determine customer intent.
• Journey Builder enables them to create campaigns quickly and easily introduce more sophisticated customer journeys with set rules to avoid over-messaging and conflicting messages.
• Testing & Insights allows the team to run more tests quickly and learn what resonates and converts.
• Audience Syndication enables the team to leverage their data and segmentation across digital advertising and be more focused in their targeting.

Uncovering Growth With a Strategic Approach to iOS Updates

In an ever-evolving industry, having the right partnerships is not only key to driving sustained growth but also to staying ahead of industry changes. The news of the iOS 15 update, which included various privacy features such as Mail Privacy Protection, disrupted marketers across all industries with its noticeable impact on email marketing. Alchemy Worx took early initiative to find the right approach for PRO Compression. With the data and insights needed in Blueshift, Alchemy Worx redefined how it assesses intent and shifted the strategy for PRO Compression to get ahead of the iOS 15 update.

Shift the Focus to Stronger Success Metrics

With the effects of iOS 15 on the validity of open rates, the team needed to adapt what metrics they relied on for defining success and engagement. The team shifted their focus to bottom-funnel metrics, such as conversion, click through rates, web interactions, and so on, that were stronger indicators of campaign effectiveness and, ultimately, sales. This approach gave them the opportunity to rethink how they would approach their campaigns and segments and define their strategy moving forward.

Redefine Intent Through Testing

Taking it a step further, the team also needed to identify the right metric to gauge intent. The team did extensive testing and data analysis to understand how different behaviors impacted engagement and conversion. Through testing, the team discovered that site visits were a better indicator of both intent and engagement. With that in mind, the team re-engineered their segments to use site visit data as a proxy for opens, a much stronger indicator of actual customer intent.

Customer Intent at the Core of the Marketing Strategy

With metrics and customer intent redefined, the team re-engineered their email strategy to put the focus on customer intent. Their new multi-pronged approach, based on audience type, uses a combination of historical site activity data, click data, and conversion data to ensure they are capturing the entire digital funnel. With the new segments and strategy in place, they are now validating the success of their tests with stronger bottom-funnel metrics.

With the right tool and new strategy, the team has been able to stay ahead of the changes and use it as an opportunity to drive growth. As they continue to see great results from their new strategy, the team plans to continue introducing new campaigns and scale their marketing with more automation and personalization, and plan to begin using predictive intelligence and other features more extensively.