Email Marketing: Microsoft Store segmentation campaign increases overall revenue 1,200% in three years

The balance between lofty plans and practical resources is one that every company struggles with — even ones that seem too big to have that problem.

This is a balancing act that Shawna Dahlin, Senior Email Marketing Manager, Microsoft Store, knows well. Dahlin spoke at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 on her restructuring of Microsoft Store’s email marketing.

She wanted to find a way to optimize email sends to in-store and online customers without considering where those two segments overlapped.

"We were coding two different emails and, if you were a lucky one, you might get both, and we never knew if you did," Dahlin said. "We were just hoping that maybe you just opened one and never found out."

"It shows that even a big company like Microsoft, we still had some fragmented stuff going on," she added.

However, when Dahlin developed a strategy to fix the email gaps she found, she was met with an obstacle. She did not have the IT resources at her disposal to execute this campaign as thoroughly and quickly as she wanted. That is when Dahlin decided to take Microsoft Store’s email marketing into her own hands.

By evaluating the content Microsoft Store had, segmenting its audience and personalizing the customer journey, Dahlin and her small team were able to completely overhaul Microsoft Store’s email marketing. As a result of this campaign, the brand experienced:

• 500% increase in CTR for segmented emails


• 300% increase in open rate for segmented emails


• 1,200% overall revenue increase in three years


• 600% increase in revenue per email (for lifecycle)

"My key takeaway from working on this case study is to keep digging into your data," Dahlin said. "As you look more and think about what product you’re trying to sell, or service, or whatever industry you’re in, there are segments there. Dig in and see what you can do."

Watch the video replay from Dahlin’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 session to learn how the team at Microsoft Store was able to utilize data they already had to improve the brand’s email strategy.



This case study won the MarketingSherpa Award — Reader's Choice Campaign.

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Related resources

MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015: Top takeaways and strategies from experts and marketers in the field

Email Marketing: Ecommerce retailer increases email revenue 71% with personalized content layout

Download the MarketingSherpa Awards official guide — One PDF with all of our award winners and finalists' stories, presented by BlueHornet