Nikon Email Journey Captures Customers’ Attention

Picture a soon-to-be father, beaming with excitement, and a little fear, in anticipation of his first child’s arrival. Let’s call him Mike. Mike has made the decision to purchase a quality camera to document the childhood of his daughter as she grows from a newborn to a toddler to a child, so he purchases a Nikon D3300 camera. Nikon’s job of marketing to Mike is done, right?

Perhaps it could be, but Nikon knows that to transform one-time customers to ones loyal to the brand, the marketing can’t drop off. Purchasing a product is not the end. It’s just the beginning of another journey.

Nikon came to DEG to find a way to better communicate with owners after the purchase was made.

The Ask

As a global imaging and optics brand, Nikon excels as a leader in the camera industry, giving Mike and others the tools necessary to capture life’s greatest moments. But the brand didn’t want to stop at the point of purchase. Does Mike have all the information necessary to get the most out of the camera? Will he need other accessories? Nikon came to DEG to find a way to better communicate with owners after the purchase was made.

The Answer

Nikon and DEG decided on an email customer journey that would launch after a customer registered his/her camera. The journey would be providing helpful information about the camera that the customer just registered, while also driving engagement and excitement around the purchase, ensuring customer satisfaction, and enhancing loyalty to the Nikon brand.

The journey, built using Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder tool, contained six emails customized to the owners of nine Nikon DSLR camera models. Nikon’s understanding of its personas allowed for every email in the journey to contain highly dynamic messaging based on the camera model—not just names and camera information, but the actual content varied to fit that particular model.

Mike, for instance, would receive emails offering tips on how to take great photos, connect his camera to WiFi, and other helpful information that would make a photography newcomer get the most out of his camera. Meanwhile, the emails for those who purchased higher-end models—likely more accomplished and skilled photographers—focused more on highlighting all the features the cameras had to offer.

Nikon’s journey provided helpful information, while also driving engagement and excitement around the purchase.

But what Mike and high-end users had in common were the bookends to the journey. All customers received an initial email thanking them for registering their camera, while the final email asked all users if they loved their camera model. The final email’s call-to-action leads to a Salesforce Marketing Cloud landing page. Those who said they were “feeling the love” were asked to review their camera, and for those who were not yet feeling the love, an incident was created in Salesforce Service Cloud, allowing Nikon’s customer service team to reach out proactively.

The success of the registration journey led to the creation of a second journey—and likely the pilot for a repeatable strategy for Nikon to engage through email—this time targeting and encouraging lower-end model customers to upgrade to the newly released D7500 model. The journey introduces the new model, and directly compared features of the customers’ current model and the D7500.

The Results

The journey served its purpose in creating increased engagement with customers during a time when communications normally trickled off. Not only did it exceed Nikon’s goals for both open rate and click-through rate—the series’ open rate exceeded 50 percent, while the click-through rate was more than 25 percent—but the content Nikon was providing was valuable, as many customers clicked on multiple links within a given email. Whether it was Mike as he prepared to capture his daughter’s childhood or a professional photographer trying to make a living, Nikon and DEG were able to help them become closer to their cameras, while increasing the likelihood that they will come back to Nikon when the next camera need hits.