This online retailer emails new offers once a day or more, yet has strong retention and generates 85% of its revenue from users who are subscribed to email. This is because SportPursuit can send truly personalized emails at scale using Acoustic. 

SportPursuit is focused on using email to inspire its members with compelling offers that are relevant to each member. 

“Our big thing is personalization,” reports Andrew Bell, Head of CRM. “We send a lot of emails because we have so much new merchandise on-site on a daily basis, and we have a lot to talk about.”  

SportPursuit offers exclusive sale events for members each day, where they can get up to 80% off premium sporting brands. Most deals only last one week and at the end of the sale period, SportPursuit purchases inventory from its suppliers and ships it to customers. This model enables the online retailer to deliver unbeatable value to customers. Plus, while the pandemic significantly impacted brick-and-mortar retailers, SportPursuit was well-positioned to support the increased demand for outdoor activities. 

Email communication is the key way SportPursuit connects with customers to inform them of deals and encourage new shopping missions. “Our best offers sell out fast and we don't want people to miss out. We have a savvy customer base that knows a good deal when they see one — and snap stuff up quickly.”  

To regularly keep in the loop with the latest offers, the typical customer receives at least one email per day, while some customers can receive up to two. “With that sort of frequency, if you’re not staying relevant, you’re going to suffer.” 

To achieve its goals, SportPursuit has been using Acoustic Campaign, which enables it to build, run, and measure the results of highly targeted campaigns without inefficient manual processes. 

Bell comments, “We’re constantly testing, from a macro-level to the subject line. Everything we’ve seen points to increased personalization leading to better conversion. Our emails are highly personalized based on user behavior. We want to present members with products relevant to them, in their size and following their sport interests. Our browse abandon retargeting emails are some of our highest performing sends. We base them on the products customers have viewed in the last week — that we think they’re most likely to convert on — and build out an individual email campaign for that user with related products.” 

SportPursuit uses the Programs features of Campaign to help with lifecycle management and run automated campaigns that are triggered by customer actions. “The way it’s set up allows us to use machine learning models and complex algorithms to build out personalized customer content.” 

“We utilize the relation table and child relation table features in Campaign to do this — which enables us to very efficiently deliver as much personalization as we need, from basic segmentation to true one-to-one personalization where you’re building all of the content within that email for the individual.” Daily “one size fits all” emails would soon be blocked; truly personalized emails are engaging and generate sales. 

As its personalization has become more precise, SportPursuit sees even more opportunities to improve Campaign and has sent that feedback to Acoustic. “We’ve seen developments for Campaign come through, things we’ve asked for that help personalization efforts like the child relation tables. Campaign can deliver high-level personalized campaigns for us in a reliable way, which we really like. We can plug in complex automation and algorithms, and it utilizes that data. We find it really consistent for getting personalized campaigns built and in front of the customers quickly and efficiently.” And that means delivering 45 million emails per month, across over 150 distinct campaigns, built and sent by a team of just three people. 

Campaign not only helps with more precise targeting, but also with the efficient delivery of those messages. “The relation tables are fantastic, enabling us to do the personalization efficiently. We have been automating some of the more repetitive tasks to allow us to focus on other things. You can build a relatively complex, segmented email, and deliver it to customers in minutes in some cases. The way we use Campaign enables us to operate really efficiently.” 

While sales are made through the SportPursuit website, 85% of revenue comes from members who have subscribed to its marketing emails.  

Sales were up 50% in 2020, due both to the pandemic demand and the increasingly personalized email campaigns. “We've been increasing revenue from long-time members in the past year, which goes against the grain for what you normally see, but we’ve been able to grow long-term engagement from our members. We lean on Campaign a lot for that.” 

SportPursuit also has remarkably high retention metrics among key customer groups, showing that customers appreciate the offers and personalization. Even with a high volume of email, people want to stay on the distribution list. “Being able to send A/B tests enables us to optimize our strategy for whatever we’re looking for, whether that’s reducing unsubscribes or getting clicks. The ability to test in the platform is super easy for us.”