Tefal Doubled its Revenue from Direct Marketing Thanks to Customer Base Segmentation, Trigger-Based Emails, and A/B Tests

This is the first time I’ve worked with an company that is so proactive. Maestra team members make it their job to suggest, advise, and provide super fast support, and celebrate positive results with us.

The important part is that Maestra regards its client’s business as its own. So, it’s not as simple as launching a task in Basecamp — working on it, declaring it impossible to complete, and then just quitting. Instead, we combine our efforts in solving challenges, boosting KPIs, and analyzing results. “I can’t do that” simply does not exist for us. The team always makes sure to come up with alternative solutions, and that is what I appreciate the most.

We plan to improve our campaigns by delivering “smart” segmentation based on purchase history and deep customer behavior analysis.

My overall opinion and experience are incredibly positive. However, there was one fly in the ointment — integration. Though through no fault of the consultant’s nor the manager’s, the time it took — two months — was too long. I understand that this all depends on a client’s IT team or (like in our case) a client’s partner’s IT team. However, I would have liked for this issue to have been resolved sooner. My ideal plan was to launch our marketing communications in September, whereas these had to be launched in late October instead. Fortunately, we at Groupe SEB have a friendly and positive working environment. There was no pressure put on me by my management. Instead, I was continuously and reasonably doing what I could to help the project progress smoothly. However, I’m sure there are companies where the situation would have turned sour.

Integration expectations really do matter. Integration is just a milestone or the end goal — its centered around each client’s campaign plan. Maestra’s Customer Success Manager creates an integration brief based on this plan within the client’s first 3-5 days with us. After that, a lot depends on our client’s IT team or their partner’s IT team. To speed up the integration process, you can:

— Show Maestra’s documentation to your IT team. This will allow the integration team to analyze Maestra’s API before the project’s inception and prepare their questions.

— Split the integration into milestones to avoid getting overwhelmed by trying to complete everything at the start. Even with just a portion of the integration blueprint completed, it is often possible to launch the first campaigns. Then the team can proceed to the next integration step while preparing new campaigns at the same time.

— Sync the integration plan with the date when the integration team will actually be able to get started. Usually, in-house IT development resources are scarce and expensive. Thus, some departments may have to wait in line for an allocated IT sprint for the integration. This is why it’s important to align the date when you want to get started with Maestra with when your team will have all the necessary resources available.

Every single campaign is launched with an accompanying A/B test. These tests are usually about the business as a whole, rather than about a specific email.

Surprisingly, emails with a video are received a little better, even though these videos are placed at the bottom of the email. As we have to make tons of landing pages, this insight has helped us make the decision to keep adding videos to these pages as well. This is despite the fact that there is a belief in e-commerce, where the less information you provide, the closer your customer is to the target action. If we’re talking about the “buy” step, then it seems obvious that this does not need a video. However, it seems that our customers do click and watch, so we will continue to put videos on our landing pages.

Another example: we A/B tested emails where we had put an “As Seen On TV” label on items that had appeared in TV ads. The first A/B test showed a higher conversion for such messages, whereas the second showed the opposite. We are about to run new tests to get a more accurate assessment. These insights are vital for our offline communications.

Creating Point of Sale Materials (POSMs) for a store takes a lot of time and effort for the whole department. Additionally, there is too limited a space for all the information we’d like to include. There had been debates on whether to put an “As Seen On TV” label on POSMs or fill the space with more distinctive features of the items. So, if the A/B tests with emails show a positive reaction to mentioning TV ads, we might use this insight for our POSMs or e-commerce.