Case Study

From compression socks to luxury men’s wear, how Hustler Marketing has helped apparel stores grow their email revenue by over 257% within just 3 months with email and SMS marketing

391%

Average increase in
email revenue (YoY)

12X

Average ROI from
email

48%

Revenue from flows/ automated emails

Introduction

The apparel industry is one of the largest contributors to ecommerce today. Largely catering to a fashion conscious, young and cash-positive millennial lifestyle, apparel stores rule the ecommerce world.

While most ecommerce apparel clients use conventional marketing methods like social media advertising and influencer marketing to lure new customers, it’s the retention the stores are after. Given the high acquisition cost of users via expensive paid advertising channels, it’s only sensible to invest as much effort in getting more value out of those already acquired customers. And there, those third-party channels often fall short — they don’t offer the control and data that owned channels give brands to create long-lasting connections with customers and higher customer lifetime value (CLV).

This is when Owned Messaging channels like predominantly Email Marketing and even SMS marketing help apparel clients get the most of their marketing-acquired customers.

Apparel Case Study: The featured stores

In this report, we will highlight how we at Hustler Marketing helped 6 of our ecommerce store clients in the apparel industry harness the most of email marketing and even SMS marketing to grow their business several times over in a short period of time.
Please use this reference sheet to check the stats against the store number

Store 1

Luxury Men’s Wear

Store 2

Graphic tshirts and jerseys

Store 3

Grip Socks

Store 4

Fitted shirts

Store 5

A socks and tights brand

Store 6

Luxury Women’s Apparel

The stores were evaluated based on the following 6 criteria

Yearly growth of store and email revenue

ROI from email marketing

Email revenue before and after Hustler Marketing

Flow and campaign revenue

SMS revenue

Repeat purchase rate

1. Yearly growth of stores: Average Store growth of 76% & Email Revenue Growth of 391% in a Year

Here’s looking at how the stores grew both their email revenue and store revenue in a year from 2020 to end of 2021.
Store Annual Store
Revenue growth

(Jan 2021 to Jan 2022)
Store Email
Revenue growth

(from Jan 2021 to Jan 2022)
Store 1
95%
850%
Store 2
161%
NA
Store 3
440%
508%
Store 4
246%
49%
Store 5
35%
40%
Store 6
77%
500%

2. ROI from email marketing for the stores and quarterly growth in ROI: Average ROI of 12x

Email is an incredibly powerful channel for a positive ROI. Here’s a look at how much the stores actually earned by way of ROI in 2021.

Average ROI = 12x

The ROI is calculated as
Store ROI from email marketing
(Jan 2021 to Jan 2022)
Store 1
18x
Store 2
8.2x
Store 3
7.5x
Store 4
11x
Store 5
10x
Store 6
25x

3. Before and after Hustler Marketing: Growth of 257% within 3 months

The different apparel stores started working with us at different points of the year. They grew by an average of 257% within 3 months of Hustler Marketing taking over their email marketing. Here’s a look at the stores’ individual pre-Hustler Marketing email revenue (if any) and one month and 3 months post us joining.

Store Month 2 before HM Month HM joined Monthly Email Revenue 3 months after HM flow set up % Increase in 3 months since HM took over
Store 1
0
$12,587.00
$23,261
84%
Store 2
0
$901
$19,978
2117%
Store 3
$12537
$14984
$36,210
188%
Store 4
$57,810.00
$65,060.00
$84,922
30%
Store 5
$18,671
$32,452
$109,478
486%
Store 6
0
$7,270
$43,836
500%
(Data from 1/1/2021 to 31/12/2021)

4. Flow and campaign revenue: 48-51% split

Email marketing revenue comes mainly from 2 forms, Flows & Campaigns – > After setting up flows, we have been sending regular campaigns for all the featured stores
The ROI is calculated as
Store Flow Revenue
(% of total email revenue)
Campaign Revenue
(% of total email revenue)
Store 1
$298,270
$134,060
Store 2
$136,780
$55,470
Store 3
$73,620
$117,490
Store 4
$199,560
$652,260
Store 5
$232,600
$344,990
Store 6
$384,500
$129,140
(Data from 1/1/2021 to 31/12/2021)

5. SMS Revenue: AVg of 5.6% of store revenue

SMS marketing has quite come into its own in the recent past and given the power of owned messaging channels and the need to rely on more first-party and zero-party data, SMS marketing combined with email marketing is a powerful retention and growth marketing tool. Apparel clients are no different and if anything our apparel clients have seen great success with SMS marketing. It helps that we have been right on top of SMS since its growth days and have adopted and partnered with great SMS marketing automation partners like Klaviyo and SMSbump to get the most out of it. Combined with that, our knowledge of the brand and the journey and campaign experience, both automations and SMS campaigns have yielded great results.

Store 2021 Total Revenue From SMS % of total store revenue Flows Campaigns
Store 1
$143,305
8.13%
$113,371
$7,888
Store 2
$139,227
11.35%
$100,139
$10,330
Store 3
$21,199
1.80%
$12,351
$1451
Store 4
$107,490
5.13%
$56,257
$51,773
Store 5
Not on SMS
Store 6
$39,864
2.34%
$29,316
$10,548
(Data from 1/1/2021 to 31/12/2021)

How does Hustler Marketing get the best revenue, ROI and customer appreciation for the Apparel Stores with email marketing?

1. Advanced Email Flow set up

Flows which is the technical name for automated emails that are scheduled to be triggered to a certain customer or a customer set based on certain actions by the customers – are at the heart of email marketing. For apparel brands, while essential flows like “Welcome Flow” and “Checkout Abandon” are not only a must, they are the only emails that work on turning even non-customers like casual browsers into customers with timely emails. The apparel industry is unique in that the average customer spends a lot of time “window shopping” as it were, but multiple brands clamour for the customer’s attention and shopping wallets and cart and checkout abandons are aplenty. This is where our multitude of “Abandon Flows” helped these brands recover almost 20% of their almost lost carts. Here’s some stats on how the Abandon flows helped with these stores.

Advanced Email Flow set up

Once the essential flows are set up, we take it to the next level, quite literally by setting up advanced flows. These flows allow for multiple variables in customer data like customer profile, demography, geography, order status and more. This means more personalised, customised and sophisticated emails and a constant touchpoint to engage the customer.

2. Great Campaigns drive repeat purchases for apparel clients: We helped Double The Rate of Repeat Purchasers for most stores

Campaigns (as opposed to flows) are regular emails that a brand sends to its email list from time to time based on certain events, promotions and/or segments of its customers. For Apparel clients, regular campaigns are one of the most important drivers of engagement as the emails bring information about new products, back in stock products, sales, offers, useful content like product demos, how-tos, use cases and more. Regular campaigns drive repeat purchases and extract more revenue from your existing customers.
In 2021, we helped our 6 apparel stores get an average of 125% more repeat purchases within 3 months of taking the client on.

The Hustler Marketing campaign powerhouse

The Hustler Marketing account management team works hard on creating a tight content calendar for the whole month a couple of weeks in advance which is shared with the client. We synced with the clients on their priorities for the month, promotions planned if any and any themes for the month and bake that into the campaigns. At Hustler Marketing, we understand that every brand is different, with a different story, aesthetic, products and positioning, and we follow them to the T or even help develop these along with the client. Every email right from the subjectline to the copy and the imagery is shared with the client well ahead of the time and changes if any are made promptly! We mean it when we say “we’re an extension of your brand.”
Apparel store email marketing examples

The design difference

The difference between good and great email marketing, all other things being equal is great design. The apparel world hinges on great design and email can be a great vehicle to bring those designs to life. We stretch our creative limits to the max by doing things with email that are unthinkable. Style guides in gifs? Check. Custom combo previewS? Check. Sometimes our clients repurpose the email marketing content we create on their social media, rather than the other way around!

Being agile enough to meet fast changing fashion & stock turnovers in time

If there’s one industry that keeps the marketing world on its toes, it’s apparel. Trends change on a weekly basis and marketers need to keep up. This is where the Hustler team shines. We undergo regular industry research, trend spotting, and frequent client communication to keep on top of all the industry trends and our campaigns reflect that. Similarly, fashion stores, especially the successful ones, frequently have out-of-stock issues. Sometimes campaigns planned for weeks cannot go out due to a certain product having gone out of stock last minute. No problem! Our team acts fast and quickly updates the campaign theme or featured products to accommodate the current inventory. Our technical expertise also helps set up the emails in a way that out-of-stock products are automatically disallowed from being inserted into emails. When it comes campaigns, we send regular back-in-stock emails as a practice to ensure that a well-performing product keeps circulating back in cycle!

Being an extension of your brand

We at Hustler Marketing go the extra mile to understand your customer avatar, your brand language, and simply put, your “vibe”. This means that our team turns your vision and dreams into reality and creates assets that convert for you. This starts right with the kickoff call when we take the time to understand your brand, and then when we develop a design, copy and style guide for your store or we develop one for you ( if you need our help.)

Teresa Zortman, Marketing Manager, Vim & Vigr

Thanks to Hustler Marketing’s efforts, the visitors have improved significantly, the conversion rate has increased by 4%, and revenue has been boosted by 68%. The team highly impresses the client with their performance and work. Moreover, they are flexible, responsive, and on-point. Having a competent team from Hustler to handle copy, graphic design, flow generation, and everything beyond has been an absolute relief. They have the ability to communicate amazing emails to our customers while sounding like our company. We have worked with other vendors before, and they struggled to get this component down. Hustler nailed it from the beginning.

Final words

Apparel stores can derive a huge chunk of revenue and a net positive ROI from email marketing. All they need is the right flow strategy, a great deal of good design, some nifty segmentation, and of course emails that speak to the audience.

We can be the right email marketing partner to do that on your behalf. If you have an apparel store and want to see how we can weave your brand story into email marketing and create emails that are only more stylish than the fashion you sell, give us a call today.

Want us to work with your brand and scale it to the level you
didn’t think was possible with email marketing?

Book a free call today
to explore how we can help.