Online sunglasses retailer, Zonnebrillen.com, sets its sights on growing its email marketing audience

Launched in 2011, Zonnebrillen.com has cemented its reputation for selling the most beautiful and sophisticated sunglasses on the market, from stylish classics to the latest trends and everything in between.

Challenge

In Zonnebrillen.com’s early days as a growing ecommerce company, the potential of email marketing software was going unexplored. Using an email platform that was built in-house, the marketing team manually sent out campaigns when they wanted to get the word out about a promotion or sale, but they didn’t have the capability to explore the promising areas of marketing automation.

One of the hurdles preventing Zonnebrillen.com from using email as a key tool in its marketing arsenal was that the existing platform wasn’t connected to its online Magento store. The problem? It meant that campaigns had to be built solely on manual imports and exports — a highly time-consuming task. On top of that, they didn’t have any ecommerce data available to build segments and deliver the right messages to customers at the right time. As Zonnebrillen.com’s business, along with its marketing goals, began to soar, they knew they needed a more powerful marketing automation platform.

They found just the solution in 2019. Dotdigital was recommended to the company by Marketing Manager Dylan van der Heij, who had used their services before—he knew Dotdigital’s intuitive interface would make it easy for the Zonnebrillen.com team to pick up immediately. As a smaller marketing team, Zonnebrillen.com needed a user-friendly platform that they could hit the ground running with right away. With its simple drag-and-drop email builder, Dotdigital was the perfect fit.

Another significant perk was Dotdigital’s seamless integration with Magento, which automated the import and export process. “It’s so important to be able to connect with actual data and get better profiles of our customers,” says Rosa Witkam, who joined the Zonnebrillen.com team in 2020 to lead CRM and email marketing.

Along with its advanced capabilities, Rosa was immediately grateful for the exceptional level of customer support from Dotdigital.

“I really appreciated how someone from Dotdigital trained me on everything I needed to know over the course of a few days right after I joined,” she says. “Since then, I’ve learned that if I ever need support or to get an answer to a question, I’ll receive it super fast.”

Solution

As Zonnebrillen.com’s primary goal was more effective lead generation, the team set out to grow their database with Dotdigital. They also wanted to collect more relevant and meaningful customer data, which would enable them to personalize their campaigns, drive engagement, and boost their marketing ROI.

To do that, Zonnebrillen.com worked with Dotdigital’s partner WisePops to generate new leads through an engaging wheel of fortune spinner pop-up and a “win your new sunglasses” campaign that they ran across several channels, including email. The team also collected data, including brand interests and sunglass shape preferences, through the campaigns to further enrich their customer profiles.

Zonnebrillen.com tapped into the power of automation, embracing abandoned cart and abandoned browse tools to re-engage visitors who left their website without buying anything. Through Dotdigital’s audience insights and RFM personas, Zonnebrillen.com was able to send personalized messages to subscribers that were tailored to their interests and behaviors. For example, they could tell whether a subscriber preferred luxury brands over sports sunglasses based on where they clicked in emails, and then used that information to deliver relevant information.

“A great thing about Dotdigital is that you don’t have to create a lot of the segments — they are already built in the platform,” says Rosa. “That’s been huge when it comes to boosting our team’s productivity and freeing up time to focus on other priorities.”

Results

Zonnebrillen.com’s partnership with Dotdigital has already paid off in spades. The team has moved from having to do everything manually to automating virtually all tasks. Moreover, thanks to the platform’s ease-of-use, everyone within their email and content team has the ability to build and send emails.

“Dotdigital has been so valuable for the whole team,” Rosa says. “If we only have one day to create a program or campaign, it’s easy to do. We can get things done that come up at the last minute.”
Zonnebrillen.com’s Dutch database saw significant growth from January 2020 to September 2021. Additionally, by using data to personalize their communications, Zonnebrillen.com had an impressive 71% increase in email open rates and 81% rise in click-through rates compared to the previous year. Conversion rates and revenue from their campaigns also increased dramatically.

Looking ahead

As Zonnebrillen.com continues to grow, the team is eager to continue to build their database and gain more email addresses and qualified leads. They’re also working to uncover richer insights about the behaviors and needs of their customers using tools like Dotdigital’s Pages and Forms.

Further, the team is looking to create more advanced automations to keep customers connected to the brand, such as by sending post-care tips and tricks after they purchase a new pair of sunglasses. And to keep their email list clean, they’re sending automated re-engagement campaigns to reach out to customers and verify their interest in receiving future communications.

“There are so many things that we either still have to do or are currently working on, and it’s all possible with Dotdigital,” Rosa adds. “Knowing that we have a platform that is scalable and future-proof as we continue to grow has been a game-changer for our team.”