In this post, we’ll help you assess whether opt-out emails are still working for your audience, and what to do next if they are not.

Originally popularised by online florist Bloom & Wild in 2019, opt-out campaigns were widely praised as a thoughtful response to potentially sensitive occasions. They offered customers control and showed emotional awareness at a time when inbox marketing often felt one-size-fits-all.

Several years on, opt-out campaigns are now a near-standard fixture in inboxes. Holiday and occasion marketing continues to drive strong engagement, and many brands plan campaigns well in advance. For occasions like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, there’s a whole other timing element to contend with: opt-out email campaigns.

The challenge is that when every brand adopts the same approach, the gesture can lose its impact. What once felt personal can begin to feel repetitive, and even performative.

What is an opt-out email campaign?

An opt-out campaign is an email sent ahead of a potentially sensitive occasion that allows recipients to opt out of future marketing related to that day. Most commonly, these campaigns focus on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, though Valentine’s Day opt-outs are increasingly common.

From a best practice perspective, this aligns well with preference-based marketing. Encouraging customers to share their communication preferences enables more relevant and respectful messaging.

An opt-out email campaign is typically simple in design, uses an empathetic and kind message, and includes a clear CTA that allows readers to opt out of future sends related to the occasion.

However, while the intention is positive, the sheer volume of these emails means they can unintentionally draw attention to the very occasion a customer may be trying to avoid. In some cases, they act as repeated reminders rather than a single moment of choice.

Have opt-out emails become overkill?

We first asked our LinkedIn audience for their views on opt-out campaigns in 2022, with opinions evenly split. This year, we asked again, and 61% of people voted that these campaigns are overdone. So it seems like these campaigns are getting more prevalent, and people are getting frustrated.

Beyond sentiment, timing has become a significant issue. As marketing calendars expand, opt-out campaigns can arrive weeks or even months before the relevant date.

In theory, customers who find an occasion difficult can simply step away from promotional emails closer to the time. In practice, early opt-out campaigns make that harder. Instead of avoiding reminders, customers may receive daily prompts about a sensitive occasion long before they are prepared for it.

This year, the first Mother’s Day opt-out email I received arrived more than a month before the day itself. It was unexpected, and I feel unnecessary to be sent so early on, and it set the tone for weeks of similar messages to follow.

7 ways to deliver sensitive opt-out marketing

You want to deliver relevant, personalized campaigns while still being emotionally sensitive to your audience. At the same time, many customers are clearly fatigued by opt-out emails.

The solution is not to abandon empathy, but to apply it more thoughtfully. Below are seven best practices for creating effective and empathetic opt-out marketing.

Consider whether an opt-out campaign is necessary

Before sending an opt-out email campaign, consider how much communication you are actually planning around the occasion.

If you are only sending one promotional email, an opt-out campaign may be unnecessary and may simply add to inbox noise. Opt-out emails are most valuable when customers are likely to receive multiple reminders from your brand across a short period.

Use your preference centre year-round

One of the most effective alternatives to repeated opt-out campaigns is a well-designed preference centre.

By including options for sensitive occasions as part of your standard preference management, you allow customers to make these choices on their own terms. For many people, selecting preferences during signup or via an account area feels far less emotionally charged than receiving a standalone opt-out email later.

Preference centres mean you can store these preferences permanently and apply them automatically across campaigns, reducing the need for repeated opt-out messaging year after year.

Bloom & Wild and Hotel Chocolat provide strong examples of how preference centres can be used to manage sensitive communications and topics clearly and respectfully.

How your preference center can boost deliverability

Giving your audience the chance to opt out of campaigns around certain occasions can also improve your email deliverability. When subscribers repeatedly get email campaigns they don’t find relevant, they’re more likely to mark your email as spam.

By giving your audience a clear place to let you know exactly what they do and don’t want to hear about, you’re protecting yourself from unnecessary unsubscribes and even spam complaints.

Remember these preferences

Many opt-out email campaigns link only to a single opt-out button rather than a full preference centre.

In theory, this should still capture a customer’s choice. In practice, many people find themselves opting out of the same brands year after year, suggesting those preferences are not always stored or reused effectively.

This creates unnecessary effort for your customers and introduces friction that you can easily avoid. Linking opt-out campaigns to a preference centre allows customers to manage all sensitive occasions in one place, one time, and ensures brands retain and respect those choices long term.

Include the opt-out in a broader email campaign

If you do choose to send opt-out emails, consider making them a secondary element within another email rather than the sole purpose of the message.

Emails entirely focused on opting out can feel heavier than necessary, particularly when their design closely mirrors the promotional campaigns that follow. A small block or banner can provide the same control without making the email itself emotionally charged.

Use banners thoughtfully

This approach works particularly well when integrated into broader campaigns. This example from Harvey Nichols shows how a discreet Mother’s Day opt-out banner can sit within a regular email.

The opt-out option is clearly available, but it is not the central message. This strikes a balance between visibility and restraint.

Use segmentation to deliver relevant email campaigns

For those who do opt out, use segmentation to send an alternative campaign on the day itself, with no mention of the occasion at all. Segmentation means you can make sure that any opted-out customers get a positive and relevant email campaign on the day in question and aren’t excluded.

Create inclusive campaigns for sensitive occasions

Sensitivity should not stop once an opt-out option is offered. When creating campaigns for these occasions, inclusive language can make a meaningful difference. References to mother figures, step-parents, grandparents, chosen family, or those who fill a parental role help soften the impact without detracting from the message for those without sensitivities around the day.

It is also important to remember that email is only one touchpoint. Customers cannot opt out of social media, television advertising, or in-store messaging, and not everyone who finds an occasion difficult will have opted out.

This creates an opportunity for email marketing to act as a safe space within a broader commercial environment.

A strong example comes from cookware brand Our Place, which handled Father’s Day with honesty and empathy. The campaign acknowledged the complexity of the day and included inclusive copy aimed at those who may not celebrate in traditional ways. I wouldn’t expect a huge Father’s Day focus from a cookware brand, but the leaning into the occasion and the many ways it can look for different people added a real layer of intention and stops the campaign from feeling like using a familial holiday for commercial gain.

The next stage of empathetic marketing

Seasonal and Hallmark holidays remain important commercial moments, but they are also opportunities for your brand to demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence.

With a bit of forward planning and a considerate preference center, you can deliver sensitive campaigns (or not) without asking your customers each year. Delivering a positive experience and making your customers feel cared for has never been more important. Luckily, we do have the tools to do just that.

By moving beyond performative opt-outs and investing in smarter preference-led marketing, brands can create experiences that feel genuinely respectful and customer-first. With the right tools in place, it is entirely possible to balance commercial goals with care and consideration.

In this final blog in our not-so-basic basics series, where we look at essential marketing channels with a fresh lens for 2026, we’re turning our focus to WhatsApp marketing.

Przemek Szustak, Senior Product Manager, is sharing his experiences, advice, and knowledge on WhatsApp. Sharing why the channel performs so strongly, how brands can use it effectively, and how to do so without crossing the line into spam.

What is WhatsApp marketing?

First up, what is WhatsApp marketing? Many of us use WhatsApp with friends and family, and the app has over 3 billion users worldwide. WhatsApp is sometimes classed as a social media platform, but it is more of a messaging app than a typical social media platform.

WhatsApp marketing is the use of WhatsApp to communicate with customers via opt-in messages that feel conversational, timely, and personal. Brands typically use it to deliver rich media messages through WhatsApp Business, including:

• Promotions
• Updates
• Documents
• Customer support interactions

Because WhatsApp is primarily used to talk to friends and family, it’s a more intimate channel than email or SMS, which makes relevance, consent, and message quality especially important. When done right, WhatsApp marketing can feel incredibly helpful and natural, making a great customer experience.

The benefits of rich media mobile marketing

Rich media mobile marketing goes beyond plain text. WhatsApp supports images, PDFs, emojis, and special characters, allowing brands to create expressive messages that still render perfectly across Android, iPhone, and desktop devices.

Two trends are driving its growth:

1. A shift back to organic channels

• Paid digital advertising costs continue to fluctuate, and algorithms are constantly changing. This uncertainty is pushing brands to invest more heavily in owned channels like email, social, and messaging apps.

2. Mobile-first attention

• With people spending around five hours a day on their phones, rich media messaging offers a direct way to meet customers where their attention already lives.

Why WhatsApp marketing works

WhatsApp combines reach, familiarity, and functionality in a way few channels can match. 71% of adults are more likely to purchase from a company they can contact via messaging.

What are the average engagement rates for WhatsApp?

• Open rate: 66.6%
• Click-through rate: 51.1%
• Delivery rate: 94.7%

These benchmarks reinforce WhatsApp’s role as a high-attention, high-impact channel when messages are relevant and well-timed.

WhatsApp vs SMS vs email: choosing the right channel

There’s no single “best” channel; the strongest strategies use email, SMS, and WhatsApp together, each playing a distinct role.

• Email is ideal for storytelling, longer-form content, and ongoing relationship building
• SMS excels at urgency, alerts, and time-sensitive actions
• WhatsApp bridges the gap with rich, conversational messages that feel personal and interactive

The key is understanding when to use each channel and how they complement one another, rather than treating them as standalone tactics.

The Dotdigital channel playbook breaks this down in detail, sharing the pros and cons of each channel so you can decide which channel to use, when to use it, and how to make them all work together seamlessly.

How to use WhatsApp for marketing (without being spammy)

Because WhatsApp is such a personal space, brands need to be extra mindful of the messages they’re sending.

1. Avoid excessive messaging. Even when you have exciting updates to share, resist the urge to over-message. Customers value brands that respect their time.
2. Send relevant, valuable content. Every message should have a clear purpose for the recipient. Irrelevant or repetitive messages are one of the fastest ways to be marked as spam.
3. Respect opt-outs immediately. Any request to stop receiving messages should be honored straight away. This protects trust and your sender reputation.

WhatsApp compliance, consent, and Meta’s rules

You can message anyone on WhatsApp as long as you stick to Meta’s rules and guidelines. Because WhatsApp is powered by Meta, there are strict rules designed to keep the channel high-quality.

Mandatory templates

All business-initiated WhatsApp messages (except direct replies) must use pre-approved templates. These act as structured frameworks that Meta reviews to prevent spammy behavior.

Template categories

Templates fall into two main categories:

• Marketing: Flexible templates used for promotions, announcements, and awareness campaigns.
• Utility: Transactional messages triggered by customer actions, such as order confirmations. These must include specific details, like an order number. Utility messages sent within an active customer service window are typically free.

Get more information on this in our WhatsApp playbook, or speak with Dotdigital to discuss how WhatsApp can work for your brand.

Best practices for building a strong WhatsApp sender reputation

WhatsApp is built on quality over quantity. When brands first start using the channel, Meta may limit daily send volumes until responsible behavior is established.

How to build a strong WhatsApp sender reputation:

To ramp up safely and effectively:

• Create a complete, professional WhatsApp Business profile
• Obtain explicit opt-in before sending messages
• Personalize templates wherever possible
• Monitor engagement and delivery closely
• Limit marketing message frequency

The faster you prove you’re a responsible sender, the more flexibility you gain.

WhatsApp marketing use cases to inspire your strategy

WhatsApp works best in moments that matter. Common high-performing use cases include:

How to use WhatsApp for marketing

• Birthday messages: Stand out on a customer’s special day and build an emotional connection on a channel where birthday messages are already flowing in from friends and family.
• Promotions and exclusive offers: Share time-sensitive deals with imagery and direct links to drive click-throughs
• Transactional updates: Send important updates like order confirmation and delivery tracking
• Customer support and follow-ups: Use the 24-hour conversation window to resolve questions quickly and personally

Different industries apply these use cases in different ways, but the common thread is relevance, timing, and respect for the customer’s attention.

You can explore all seven WhatsApp use cases in our full WhatsApp playbook.

WhatsApp marketing in 2026

We are starting to see WhatsApp take root as a marketing channel, and the potential of what it can offer is still untapped for many brands. Most people use it to chat with friends and family, so marketers should keep its personal nature in mind and focus on sending relevant, timely, and personalized messages.

WhatsApp stands out from other channels, driving strong performance with high open and click-through rates and delivering exceptional ROI. WhatsApp is used in over 180 countries, and over 200 million businesses are already using WhatsApp Business.

Check out the other blogs in this series to stay up to date on the marketing channels that matter most in 2026. You’ll find expert guidance on email engagement, email deliverability, and SMS marketing.

All benchmarks in this blog are from Dotdigital’s 2026 Global benchmark report. Check out the full report for more marketing channel benchmarks, expert advice, and numbers unique to your industry and region.

Harlow Timber Group isn’t your average timber & associated products supplier. Based in the Midlands, with a wide network nationally covering all your timber needs. From various Timber Centre stores, to a multi million pound growing E-commerce business along with dedicated Timber Systems, Stables & Shelters and Manufacturing departments.
Their marketing team? Just two people. That means every campaign has to count, and every channel has to prove its worth.

Rebecca Bailey at 8 Group first connected with Harlow Timber and suggested trialling a direct mail campaign. But rather than traditional print marketing, they built the entire strategy on Dotdigital’s platform – using its segmentation, automation, and data capabilities to power personalized direct mail through integration partners ZAP~POST and 8 Group. What began as a small test soon shaped into a full cross-channel re-engagement strategy.

A cold audience and a sceptical business

For Harlow Timber, the brief was simple enough: wake up dormant e-commerce contacts and get people shopping again, online and in-branch.

The reality was trickier. Their ERP made data segmentation a nightmare. Trade and retail customers needed different messages, but often sat in the same data pool. The team had to work around complex audience models while tracking results at branch level with little more than a pen and paper.

Convincing the wider business to spend money on print wasn’t easy. There was a strong belief that it no longer paid back, and with limited time and staff, the marketing team needed to keep things simple, repeatable, and worth the effort.

The combination of tactical segmentation and improved branding made this campaign a success. We’ve finally proven that print can work – when done right.

Holly Unwin, Group Marketing Manager, Harlow Timber

Proving data-driven print can deliver

The numbers spoke for themselves. The campaign brought 600 inactive customers back into the fold from a pool of 8,000 – a 7.5% reactivation rate that exceeded all expectations.

The e-commerce re-engagement segment delivered average order values north of £500 – well above their typical AOV of £200–£300, proving that dormant customers weren’t just coming back, they were spending more.

Branch campaigns captured six tracked orders across branches, each between £500–£1,000, delivering a 3:1 ROI on the print investment.

Meanwhile, the warm-lead nurturing continued to deliver: a Black Friday email (triggered by the direct mail engagement data flowing through Dotdigital) earned an eye-popping 88% open rate among 12,000 contacts.

Beyond the raw stats, the campaign changed perceptions internally. Print was no longer a risky spend – it was a measurable, targeted part of their marketing mix, powered by the same data and automation capabilities as their email program.

Harlow Timber’s marketing team is exploring “thank you” campaigns sent by mail to customers post-purchase.

For marketers, the takeaway is clear: when you use Dotdigital to power both digital and physical channels with the same data, you can track every touchpoint – no guesswork required.

For example, in ecommerce, you can’t see reactions to products on the shelf. And in B2B or not-for-profit, you miss the cues you’d get in meetings. A website visit takes far less commitment than a physical interaction, so understanding interest and intent is key to turning casual visitors into engaged customers.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to measure customer interest, spot high-intent behavior, and engage your audience effectively, so you can use smarter targeting in your campaigns smarter and boost conversions.

Contact scoring

Contact scoring let’s you score and rank your contacts with two key metrics (scored between 0-100):

• Engagement: scored on contacts’ interaction and behaviors (such as campaign opens, link clicks, and visits to your website)

• Suitability: scored on a contacts’ profile (such as their job title, industry sector, and location)

These metrics combine to produce a third metric – an overall contact score. As a result, you and your brand can manage and prioritize your most promising prospects. 

The level of contact scoring allows you to understand  who each customer is, and how interested they are in your brand and products. It’s possible to tell:

• How many emails and social posts they’ve engaged with
• How long they’ve spent on your site
• What they’ve bought from you
• How much they’ve spent
• If they engage with your content on multiple channels

You can then use this information to work out how you should connect with your audience next.

Using contact scoring

Once you know who your high and low-interest contacts are, you can use these insights to connect with them more effectively:

1. Map messages to each segment:

High-scoring contacts might receive loyalty offers or exclusive updates, while lower-scoring contacts could enter a re-engagement program or nurture workflow.

2. Automate workflows based on scores:

Use your platform to trigger automations when contacts reach certain scores. For example, send a welcome email series when someone’s engagement score hits a threshold, or alert your team to follow up with high-potential leads.

3. Monitor, adjust, and refine:

Review how each segment responds. If high-score contacts aren’t converting, revisit your scoring criteria or messaging. Scores should evolve with your data and customer behavior.

Modern signals to include

In addition to using traditional metrics like email opens and clicks, you should also consider first-party signals from across your channels, such as:

• Website interactions (time on key pages, product views, downloads)
• Mobile app engagement
• SMS or push notification responses
• Webinar attendance or form submissions

Tracking these signals ensures your scoring reflects real intent, even as privacy rules reduce the reliability of third-party tracking.

eRFM

If you’re in the ecommerce space, eRFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) is another great tool available to you. eRFM is an ecommerce behavioral model designed to help you better understand the potential of your contacts. It’s a combination of the RFM model that looks at a contact’s purchasing behavior, and our engagement model that looks at the engagement of a contact. For example, their:

• Email opens and clicks
• Web sessions
• Abandoned carts

Dotdigital combines these models, to help you better understand and detect purchase intent across various customer types – from inactive contacts to champions.

You can use eRFM groups within your audience segment building stages to make highly accurate segments based on the customer’s likelihood to purchase. You can then continue the use through your marketing automation programs to target customers with the right message, at the right time.

What content should you consider for your customer engagement strategy?

To score your customers’ engagements effectively, as well as your website and product pages, you need content to track against. This is especially useful for new customers that haven’t made a purchase yet, or if your product or service is something people tend to think about for a while before committing. 

Here’s five types of content to consider for your strategy and why:

Blog posts:

Blog articles are liked by most audiences because they’re topical, digestible, and consistent. Many brands will post blogs at least a couple of times a week, typically to distribute via multiple channels to drive engagement. 

This type of content is a great way to measure someone’s level of interest in your company. For example, if they’re frequently reading your posts and clicking through to your site, then you’ll want to consider allocating a good proportion of points to these actions.

Emails:

Marketing emails are a great way to measure your customers’ interest in your brand. You can see when they’ve clicked through and converted, or haven’t, as the case may be. Each time they do or don’t engage with your emails, the more points you’ll reward or deduct.

Webpages:

You want customers to get to your site but you want them to spend time there, navigating through it, and not just bouncing after viewing one page. The more pages a customer views on your site (and the longer they spend on it), the more points you should give them.

Landing pages with forms:

Customers who’ve landed on your page and completed a form are making contact. They’ve taken the time to complete the fields, which means they’re interested in your brand. You should therefore consider giving this type of engagement a sizable weighting in your overall score, and follow up while they’re still warm.

Social media:

Prospects and customers who follow you on social media are likely to be engaged with your brand. By recording this information, you can use it to target customers on a platform they already use, with content they’ve shown interest in.

How to implement customer interest scoring (step-by-step)

If you’re new to measuring customer engagement, here’s a simple way to get started:

1. Decide what“interest”actually looks like for your business:

Start by listing the actions that signal intent. That might be email clicks, product views, form submissions, checkout activity, or time spent on key pages. Pick the signals that matter most to your goals.

2. Group actions by level of intent:

Categorize each signal as low, medium, or high interest. For example, opening an email might be low, while viewing a pricing page or adding an item to cart is high.

3. Assign weights to each action:

Turn those groups into a scoring model. Give high-intent actions more points and low-intent actions fewer. This doesn’t need to be complex — even a simple model will give you a clearer picture of engaged vs passive contacts.

4. Connect your data sources:

Make sure engagement signals from your CRM, ecommerce platform, website, and email tools feed into one place. The more complete your picture, the more accurate your scoring.

5. Create segments based on score ranges:

Build dynamic segments like “high-intent customers,” “warm leads,” or “at-risk contacts.” These help you tailor your messaging based on where someone is in their journey.

6. Test and refine your model:

Monitor how people move between segments. If your “high-intent” group isn’t converting as expected, revisit your weights and criteria. These models are meant to evolve with your data.

What to watch-out for when measuring customer engagement and interest

Even the strongest scoring model has blind spots. Here’s some of these points to keep in mind:

Not all engagement signals mean intent: 

A click doesn’t always equal interest. Sometimes people are curious, distracted, or mis-clicking.

Scores decay over time:

Someone who was hot last quarter may be cold today. Make sure your model includes time-based decay so scores stay relevant.

Don’t over-score single-channel behaviour:

If a customer only engages on email or only browses your site, you might be missing the bigger picture. Multi-channel data gives you a more balanced view.

Watch for data gaps:

Missing ecommerce or CRM data can lead to inaccurate scoring. Make sure the foundational data is clean, synced, and complete.

Keeping these in check helps prevent overestimating or underestimating customers’ true interest.

The impact of privacy changes and new engagement signals

Customer behavior is shifting and so is what you’re able to track. With cookie restrictions, increased privacy controls, and changes from platforms like Apple and Google, traditional signals (such as email opens or third-party cookies) aren’t as reliable as they used to be.

• In-app behavior
• Event attendance
• Onsite search
• Mobile app interactions
• Zero-party data customers willingly share
• Product views and browsing patterns
• Preferences captured through forms or surveys

These signals give you a clearer, privacy-friendly view of customer interest. They also help you build trust because customers know how their data is being used.

Final thoughts

When selling and building relationships online, brands need to work harder to gauge the interest of browsers and customers. Luckily, technology allows you to track this reliably, perhaps even more accurately than in person, as someone behind a screen feels no societal pressure to be polite.

Make sure you’re tracking your customers and potential customers, and have segmentation and automation set up to react to changes. When you’re acting on customer engagement and activity, you’ll be offering super reactive, relevant customer service, at scale.

Anthem Publishing runs six core magazine brands. With titles like Vegan Food & Living, Women’s Running, Classic Pop, and Colouring Heaven, they’re all about helping people dive deeper into their passions. Each brand has its own editorial site, shop, newsletter, and community.

Anthem has a small team wearing a lot of hats. Digital Editors double as Client Managers. Marketing Managers handle everything from Black Friday campaigns to automations.

A disconnected web experience

The editorial websites had basic article recommendations built by developers, but they weren’t always serving the right content. Recipe lovers sometimes get news articles instead of more recipes.

With the business relying on banners for advertising as well as promoting relevant content, there wasn’t enough banner space to go around. There was no easy way to promote magazine subscriptions without showing the same offers to existing subscribers. Marketing and the Ad Sales team were getting frustrated.

Once on the site, the team was reliant on text links in articles to generate leads. Pop-ups and forms were separate, rather than embedded, with the extra step causing traffic to drop off.

And with separate editorial and shop websites, connecting the two took manual work.

High-effort email builds

On top of managing the website, the team was building three email newsletters a week for Vegan Food & Living alone, plus weekly sends for other brands. Every article link in the emails was manually chosen, which was very time-consuming.

The team needed a solution that could deliver more personalized experiences across web and email, across multiple brands, without scaling headcount.

The solution

Dotdigital personalization provided the perfect solution for both the marketing and editorial teams. Rachel Smith, Digital Editor on Vegan Food & Living, summed up the appeal: “We’re quite a small company with really limited resources. Anything that helps us boost our traffic without us having to do lots of extra work was really appealing.”

Tailored website experience that supports everyone’s objectives

Dedicated website banner slots with smart targeting rules were set up using location, subscriber status, and visit frequency to show a relevant message to each visitor.

New visitors now see a lead generation message encouraging them to sign up for the newsletter. Return visitors, or those already in the email list, see a subscription offer tailored to how new they are. Existing subscribers never see subscription offers.

The marketing team can tailor the right content to everyone. No more negotiating with Ad Sales. Best of all, the results picked up. Brands that hadn’t converted from web banners in years started converting.

Content recommendations that keep visitors on site

Rachel replaced the old content recommendation system that appears on article pages with SmartBlocks. Rules like “last browsed” and “frequently browsed” surface more relevant article recommendations that encourage people to keep reading. Pages per visit have since jumped from 1.6 to 1.82 — a 14% increase.

This approach has also been used to keep sponsors happy. A bespoke recommendations block was built for an energy company who sponsor a category on the site. The block only shows on their articles, keeping readers engaged with their content and boosting reach without constant manual promotion.

Email conversions on autopilot

The power of Dotdigital is being able to create a joined-up, personalized experience across all marketing channels.

Like on the website, Rachel added automated SmartBlocks to the weekly newsletters, showing articles and recipes the recipient has previously browsed on the website. Clicks from these emails drive 500 extra visits to the website per send, at very low effort.

The health newsletter now has a fully automated section where the platform picks the most relevant lead article from its catalog of thousands. It often surfaces older articles that the team had forgotten about. The result: 1,000 extra clicks per newsletter – a 30% lift on previous performance.

And it’s not just about adding personalized content into existing emails to increase conversions. A new, fully automated monthly round-up has been introduced to engaged subscribers with personalized carousels from major site categories. It launched recently and is already generating 1,000 extra website visits per send.

The Shop team also now sends two monthly automated emails showing things like “recently browsed but not bought.”

Encouraging action using countdown timers
Both the editorial and shop teams use real-time countdown timers to drive urgency. Editorial uses them for advertiser deadlines, marketing drops them into Black Friday campaigns.

As a small company with limited resources, anything that helps us boost our traffic without requiring lots of extra work is invaluable. Dotdigital has been really good for that – the SmartBlocks do the heavy lifting for us.

Rachel Smith, Digital Editor on Vegan Food & Living

Results

14% increase in pages per visit (1.6 to 1.82)
30% Increase in clicks from newsletters (1,000 additional clicks on baseline of 3,500)
5.7x ROI in the last year

For more than 70 years Essentra Components has been manufacturing precision metal and plastic products to support projects across the globe.

When Essentra’s customers get in touch, they’re often building something big – and they need the right part, fast. Keeping Essentra top‑of‑mind with buyers and engineers has been Simon Wade’s mission since he joined as E‑CRM Manager in 2020.

Back then, the list of challenges was long:

• No CRM integration or email editor meant building emails, segmentation and automation was only possible with knowledge of coding. Looking to scale his team, Simon needed a platform where non-technical marketers could be self-sufficient.
• Management of multiple brands, teams and languages was difficult – slowing down campaign roll-outs with lots of duplicated work
• Revenue opportunities missed as more B2B buyers moved online but left without making a purchase and couldn’t easily be retargeted.

On top of that, Essentra’s setup with their previous ESP was clunky and hard to scale and the support was poor, with a revolving door of account managers. “We needed a platform that works for an international B2B business without slowing us down,” says Simon.

After demoing various B2B marketing platforms, Dotdigital ticked every box, and became the foundation for a smarter, faster, more connected marketing operation.

Talking to 1.25 million contacts — in 17 languages

Five years on, Simon’s small-but-mighty team of three now speaks to 1.25 million contacts across 30 countries, in 17 different languages. That adds up to around 25 million targeted emails every year.

Here’s how…

Connected data for easier, smarter segmentation

Before Dotdigital, Essentra could only segment customers by location. Now, thanks to Dotdigital’s integration with its Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, the team can target by industry, product type, buying stage, whatever’s relevant.

“Dotdigital and Dynamics talk to each other,” says Simon. “It means we can send the right product to the right person, at exactly the right time.”

With 45,000 products in the catalogue, that matters. An alert about the right add‑on can turn a small order into a big one, and makes life easier for the customer.

Automation that saves days

Gone are the days of batch-and-blast campaigns. Now, data passes from its CRM and website to Dotdigital in real-time. This means Essentra is able to run over 1,900 automated campaigns across its multiple accounts, including 1,500+ one-off transactional emails and 400+ automated journeys.

Now the team runs fully automated customer journeys, from abandoned cart nudges and prospect follow‑ups to retention emails, all without touching a line of code.

Child accounts that make scaling simple

With child accounts set up for each region, (EMEA, Asia-Pacific, US and Canada, Brazil and Mexico) plus separate accounts for internal comms and other Essentra brands like Wixroyd and Reid Supply, the team can quickly replicate winning campaigns across markets and see what’s working with cross-account analytics.

Simon comments, “This is another reason of why Dotdigital has been really good for us, it’s allowed me to add additional accounts for reasonable cost”. This is particularly important when dealing with multiple market and languages.

“We build the master in English, send it for translation, get approval from the teams, and we’re ready to go,” Simon explains.

The next step? Using Dotdigital’s AI tool not just for subject line ideas but to automatically translate and localise content. That’s going to make the team even faster.

A partnership built on consistency and trust

Simon’s experience with Dotdigital stands in sharp contrast to his time with their old supplier, where he had four different account managers in just over a year and “no real connection.”

With Dotdigital, he’s had the same dedicated Customer Success Manager, for the entire four years since joining. That consistency has built trust and deep understanding of Essentra’s unique needs.

“It’s hugely valuable to work with someone who knows our setup inside out,” Simon says. “I’ve also been able to feed ideas into the product roadmap and I’ve seen a lot of improvements to the platform over the years”.

When we went looking for a marketing automation partner, yes, we wanted great features. But more than that, we wanted a team willing to work with us, give advice, and help a small Email marketing team with big ambitions. We found that in Dotdigital.

Simon Wade, E‑CRM Manager

Results that speak for themselves

Essentra’s email click‑throughs have surged by 52%, rising from around 57,000 to almost 87,000 unique clicks – thanks to always‑on, automated campaigns. That’s tens of thousands more customers visiting product pages, exploring the catalogue, and moving closer to purchase.

Word also got around internally. Dotdigital is now used for employee communications too.

After five years with Dotdigital, Simon’s advice to any B2B or B2C marketer is clear: “Hook Dotdigital up to your CRM, add product and order data, and watch your campaigns fly.”

Start with abandoned carts, he says. “It’s so easy to set up, and even in B2B the response surprised us. Remind people about what’s left in their cart and they come back to buy.”

Deeper integrations

The next step is to integrate their websites directly with Dotdigital to further enhance personalization, targeting and programs. After experiencing the benefits of Dotdigital’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, the Essentra team is also exploring using other integrations with platforms like Trustpilot, Bynder and LinkedIn to automate more of its marketing processes and provide more personalized experiences.

“When we went looking for a marketing automation partner, yes, we wanted great features. But more than that, we wanted a team willing to work with us, give advice, and help a small Email marketing team with big ambitions,” he says. “We found that in Dotdigital.”