Hallmark partnered with DEG to set up its baby line email marketing program for long-term success and develop an ongoing strategy for email acquisition.

Following the launch of your brand, it’s vital to have a customer acquisition strategy in place for long-term success and revenue growth. When your brand is not only in its retail infant stage but caters to infants, your business strategy looks similar to new parents arriving home from the hospital—working hard to provide all the nutrients and care needed to help a baby grow.

The challenge

Hallmark launched its baby product line in 2013 and needed to acquire and grow its email subscriber base to market its products to more parents. The brand partnered with DEG to set up its email marketing program for long-term success and develop an ongoing strategy for email acquisition.

Baby product shoppers can search several websites before making a purchase, so DEG focused on a cross-channel approach to collecting new customer data and retargeting website visitors with engaging ads.

The strategy

Hallmark had already sent emails introducing its new baby line of products to its subscribers and created a homepage pop-up and landing page for email opt-ins, in hopes of driving consumers to subscribe to the new brand. To build on this, DEG recommended migrating Hallmark’s baby line email program to Salesforce Marketing Cloud to gain a better view of its customers, as well as the ability to target customers through personalized email messages. DEG also developed a strategy for retargeting consumers who learn about Hallmark’s baby line online.

Since the implementation of its new acquisition strategy, the subscriber base for Hallmark’s baby line grew by 18%, with approximately half of both homepage pop-up and landing page opt-in subscribers being driven by social channels.

The solution

DEG configured Salesforce Marketing Cloud for Hallmark and partnered with PadiAct to create a number of campaign ads designed to capture names and email addresses from the baby line’s website traffic. These campaigns collected customer information from social platforms—like Facebook and Pinterest—and also traffic from general direct and organic sources. By developing individual campaigns, DEG was able to more sophisticatedly target the brand’s online customers, which also allowed for easier reporting on the back end within Marketing Cloud.

In addition to the campaigns, DEG also bolstered the brand’s landing page, providing strategic recommendations regarding homepage call-out placement and leveraging it for targeted Facebook acquisition traffic. This provided a cleaner capture and reporting process for Hallmark.

Finally, DEG leveraged its deep email expertise to develop a more refined strategic process for targeting potential Hallmark baby line subscribers across a number of channels. In particular, the subscribers who came from the Hallmark parent brand and not the general opt-in channels, received a specific welcome email to build engagement with the new brand.

The outcome

Since the implementation of its new acquisition strategy, the subscriber base for Hallmark’s baby line grew by 18%, with approximately half of both homepage pop-up and landing page opt-in subscribers being driven by social channels. Using this data, DEG’s email team collaborated with the agency’s social and paid media teams to optimize both organic social and paid placements to continue growing the brand’s email subscribers.

Putting the right strategy and email program in place provided Hallmark’s new baby line of products to quickly skip the terrible toddler stage of a brand and begin nurturing new parents with the care and attention every customer needs.