Camping World improves email performance and increases average order value with creative testing

Outdoor recreation retailer and Experian CheetahMail test several design variations of their email marketing template to deepen subscriber insight and engagement

Overview

At Camping World, we consistently strive to send relevant communications that speak to our customers’ individual interests. Experian CheetahMail helped us utilize what we knew about our target audience in addition to leveraging deep analytical insight of our campaign data to ensure our email creative is as engaging and effective as possible.

- Neal Scott
Sr. Director of Ecommerce
CampingWorld.com

Camping World, the largest global supplier of RV parts, supplies and accessories, worked with Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team to redesign and test several variants of its monthly email marketing template, gauge customer response and ultimately optimize email performance. By analyzing Camping World’s historical campaign metrics and utilizing creative best practices, the experts at Experian CheetahMail were able to identify the most effective email design configurations – increasing unique clicks, average order value and customer engagement as a direct result.

Challenges

• Optimize content presentation to a specific target audience
• Maintain brand integrity throughout redesigns
• Increase online purchases and click through behavior
• Apply email design and usability best practices

Solution

As a first step towards email design improvement, Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team analyzed Camping World’s historical campaign data to find out where subscribers were clicking and what visual elements they were most responsive to — gaining deeper knowledge of how they were interacting with Camping World’s emails overall. Armed with this valuable information, Experian CheetahMail then generated several wireframes to clearly map out the navigation, content organization, and product area layout options that the new designs would encompass.

One of the key areas of Camping World’s email template targeted for improvement was the main product section. Traditionally, this section loosely grouped items in a grid-like structure without considering product type or cost. Throughout the redesign process, Experian CheetahMail gave special attention to better organizing products in a way that made sense to the user. For example, accessories were given their own section while the stand-alone products were grouped by price — with the higher ticket items at the top.

In addition, different versions of the feature section were created to determine the most favorable content layout and ultimately garner more interaction from subscribers. The versions ranged from coupling a single product with two or three sentences of descriptive copy to showcasing multiple items accompanied by only the product name and price.

Executing on these ideas, Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team then developed three distinct templates to test against the control – Camping World’s regular monthly email. An A/B/C/D split test was conducted across two separate campaigns to ensure test accuracy and thorough results.

Results

After combining email creative best practices with campaign data and testing, the redesigned versions of Camping World’s monthly email were able to garner more clicks and a higher average order value than the control. Importantly, by carefully examining the impact of multiple content and image variations, Experian CheetahMail was able to provide Camping World with specific insight on how their subscribers interact with the email template and what design elements are most engaging.

Looking ahead

Beyond performing these tests, Experian CheetahMail’s Creative Services team provided Camping World with the redesigned artwork components so that alternate versions of their new high performing template could easily be developed in-house. This will ensure that the creative elements in Camping World’s future email campaigns are fully customized, engaging and profitable.