Case Study: Onboarding Email
In 2020, I helped a top U.S. investment bank increase digital engagement and decrease customer service phone calls by optimizing their self-directed investing onboarding email.
The Challenge: This U.S. investment bank came to us with a quandary: 50% of the customer service calls they received about their self-directed investing product were from new users who didn't know how to get started, and the questions they asked could easily have been answered by referring to the website. Our client decided to develop an onboarding email containing deep links to online resources to increase users' digital engagement and self-sufficiency, hopefully reducing customer service calls in the process, and they came to us to optimize the copy.
My Role: The client had resources available for multivariate testing on the subject line but not the email body, so as the Brand Content Strategist, I worked with Persado’s proprietary optimization technology to design a test to find the most effective language in the subject line and referenced results from past email tests to write the copy for an alternate version of the body. All of this was done in collaboration with the client's marketing and legal teams to ensure the new copy was on brand and legally compliant.
Before:
After:
My Approach: This email is all about instructing users on where to go and what to do, and I took that approach throughout the email, from including "read" and "see" directions in the subject line and headline to updating the subheadlines and links to a parallel structure of imperatives to improve comprehension.
The Outcome: The winning email variant generated a 107% click lift over the original, a major testament to the potential of digital engagement.