MarketingSherpa Video Archive

How HomeAdvisor Tested More Relevant Content to Better Tap into Subscribers’ Motivations and Increased Conversion by 85%

Jill McEwan, Director of Direct Marketing, HomeAdvisor


Three years ago, Jill McEwan, Director of Direct Marketing, HomeAdvisor, and her team completely relaunched the email marketing program for the online local services marketplace.

“[Relaunching] gave us a good opportunity to really rethink about how we were marketing to our customers. We wanted to really connect with our customers on a new level,” she said.

HomeAdvisor connects homeowners with background-checked service professionals, and were sending a one-size-fits-all newsletter to a large, yet stale list of subscribers and experiencing major deliverability problems.

“We were sending to as many people as possible, blasting and batching, and … with a 4% open rate, that means that 96% of people aren’t seeing our email,” she said.

The team set out to tackle their inbox placement issues and provide a better customer experience by increasing the relevance of their email marketing communications. 

In this session, McEwan explains the steps the team took to deliver a better customer experience, including:

  • How to use account data to personalize the customer experience 
  • How to use email click activity to trigger relevant emails
  • How to segment your audience to increase deliverability

“We saw big increases from 2012 to 2015, that’s a few years of blood, sweat and tears to bring these campaigns to light. This doesn’t just happen overnight,” she said.

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