How This Brand Uses An Educational YouTube Channel to Drive Customer Retention - 8/6/24

Welcome to The Retention Newsie by The Email Marketers.

Every week we bring you the best case studies, strategies, and tips around keeping more customers, turning them into raving fans, and increasing revenue.

Up this week:

• 🧔🏻 Beardbrand's Education Drive Retention

• 📧 Top KPIs for Email Success

• 📊 Tiered Loyalty Programs, Creating Lasting Customer Retention, & More!

Reading time: 4 minutes

How Beardbrand Turned Beards into a Lifestyle

After growing tired of being mocked at his corporate job for his facial hair, Bandholz decided it was time to change society's perspective on beards- he wanted to start a revolution.

In 2012, Bandholz founded Beardbrand with a $30 investment and a vision to create confidence.

"I wanted to unite these groups of guys and show the world that you can be stylish, professional, be a normal dude, and have a beard," Bandholz explains.

This was much more than selling beard oil; it was about creating a community and lifestyle around facial hair.

Beardbrand's approach to retention marketing is as meticulously groomed as their customers' beards.

They've mastered turning one-time buyers into lifelong brand advocates through education, community-building, and personalized experiences.

Beardbrand's retention strategy is centered around their commitment to education. Their YouTube channel, boasting over 1.7 million subscribers, is a treasure trove of grooming tips, style advice, and lifestyle content.

This approach positions Beardbrand as a trusted advisor rather than just a retailer.

Their email marketing strategy is equally impressive. New subscribers are treated to a 10-day email course that educates while subtly introducing products at relevant moments.

As Bandholz puts it, "We're here to teach you, we're not here to sell you." This philosophy builds trust and keeps customers engaged long after their initial purchase.

Beardbrand also excels at personalization. Their post-purchase emails are a perfect example of tailored communication. Depending on what a customer buys, they will receive a product-specific email providing a tutorial on proper application techniques.

Perhaps most innovative is their approach to upselling through free offers. They occasionally offer free digital posters to email subscribers.

But here's the clever part – to "purchase" the free poster, customers must go through the checkout process.

This allows Beardbrand to capture shipping information, offer paid product recommendations alongside the free item, and potentially convert a freebie-seeker into a paying customer.

The results speak for themselves. Beardbrand has grown from a $30 investment to generating over $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Their abandoned cart recovery emails alone make between $1,000 to $3,000 per email sent.

• Education First, Sales Second: Create valuable, educational content that positions your brand as an authority in your niche.

• Personalize Post-Purchase Communication: Customize your follow-up emails based on what customers buy, and send tutorials or complementary product suggestions to add value to their purchasing experience.

• Use Free Offers Strategically: Use free digital products to capture customer information and introduce paid offerings. The key is to make the process feel valuable rather than manipulative.

• Optimize Every Touchpoint: From abandoned cart emails to order confirmations, view every interaction as an opportunity to provide value, educate, and potentially make a sale.

5 Essential Email Marketing KPIs to Track

To truly understand the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, you need to dig deeper than open rates alone.

Let's explore five key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer a more comprehensive view of your email marketing success:

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This metric measures engagement by tracking link clicks within emails.

Action Step: Craft compelling subject lines, use action-oriented CTA language, and segment your list to send relevant content to each group to improve your CTR

Conversion Rate

Email campaigns all have the same goals - to drive purchases, sign-ups, or downloads. Your email-to-landing page transition needs to be seamless.

Action Step: Boost your conversion rate by using CTA placements, images, and offers.

Unsubscribe Rate

While some unsubscribes are normal, a high rate might signal issues with your content or targeting.

Action Step: Create value-filled and personalized emails, and offer subscribers the option to adjust preferences instead of unsubscribing completely.

Bounce Rate

Keep an eye on both hard (permanent) and soft (temporary) bounces.

Action Step: Regularly clean your email list, use double opt-in to verify addresses, and remove inactive subscribers if re-engagement efforts fail.

Email Forwarding Rate

To maintain high forwarding rates, you must ensure the content you are creating is worth forwarding.

Action Step: Create how-to guides or industry insights, include social sharing buttons in your emails, and offer incentives for referrals.

If you meticulously focus on improving all of these KPIs, your customers will keep coming back for more and your email campaigns will thrive.

• An SMS marketing survey reveals that 72% of people have made a purchase after receiving a text from a brand.

• Find out how tiered loyalty programs are transforming customer experiences.

• This comprehensive guide on email marketing covers everything from segmentation to A/B testing.

• How to create a lasting customer retention strategy by prioritizing CX, AI, and customer success.

• Learn to write exceptional website copy that engages visitors and keeps them coming back.

We help 8-& 9-figure e-commerce brands increase revenue and build strong customer relationships through retention marketing: Email, SMS, direct mail, subscriptions, memberships, loyalty programs, and more.