How Wilderness Safaris Doubled Their Email Open Rate
Wilderness Safaris went from a bloated, low-engagement database to 47.1% active subscribers in 30 days. Here is exactly how the re-engagement campaign and segmentation work got them there.
"Working with TouchBasePro has been an absolute pleasure, their email marketing, customer service, training, and reporting are all excellent. Being based in Johannesburg, we have enjoyed one-on-one training, monthly meetings and quick access to their expert team. With their in-depth report system we have gained valuable insights into our audience interests. Their user-friendly platform has made it easy for us to produce high-quality content that our customers love." Kate MacWilliam, Digital Marketing Manager at Wilderness Safaris.
Wilderness Safaris is a safari operator dedicated to the conservation and restoration of Africa's wildlife. They have been a TouchBasePro client since July 2016 and have worked with a dedicated account manager since January 2018.
Executive summary
Wilderness Safaris needed to improve their email marketing on three fronts:
Communicate more effectively
Increase engagement
Create a more personal experience for recipients
The database was segmented, a new newsletter layout was launched, and a targeted re-engagement campaign was run. The campaign lifted their open rate by 
. Once inactive subscribers were removed from the database, that figure doubled to 
.
Challenges faced by Wilderness Safaris
Wilderness Safaris had no central point for managing their email marketing. Their database was large but full of inactive subscribers, and engagement across the board was low.
They were sending the same communication to everyone, with no personalisation and no clear structure. The newsletter itself had no defined sections, no calls to action, and was not optimised for mobile.
The goals set for the TouchBasePro engagement were:
Increase engagement
Centralise email marketing efforts
Create a more personalised experience
How TouchBasePro Helped
A re-engagement campaign was launched to bring inactive subscribers back. A segment of inactive subscribers was created from the existing database, and each person in that segment was offered a gift to incentivise re-engagement. Giving subscribers a reason to open the email raised the perceived value of future communications from Wilderness Safaris.
Running a series of these campaigns served two purposes: inactive subscribers who did not respond could be removed from the database, and genuinely engaged subscribers were identified for ongoing communication.
Wilderness Safaris also introduced personalisation in subject lines and email content.
Emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Campaign Monitor
In the Wilderness Safaris re-engagement campaign, each subscriber was thanked by name. That personal touch gave the campaign a one-to-one feel, which drove higher engagement and made subscribers more likely to open future emails.
Results
After the re-engagement campaign series, both open rates and click-through rates on the Wilderness Safaris newsletter improved.
Active subscribers grew from 23.5% to 47.1% in 30 days, a 23.6 percentage point swing in the ratio of active to inactive subscribers. That shift made their database a far more useful tool for future marketing.
The improvement was straightforward to explain: the team was now sending to people who actually wanted to receive the emails. Segmentation by sales agent added another layer, allowing content to be tailored to specific recipients.
A handful of technical changes also improved the overall experience. Clear calls to action were added, the logo was linked to the Wilderness Safaris website, content was personalised throughout, and the layout was optimised for mobile so newsletters displayed correctly on every device.
Where Wilderness Safaris is now
Wilderness Safaris now has a database of engaged subscribers who want to read their emails. Their marketing team works with a dedicated account manager who provides monthly business intelligence reports and best practice guidance to keep their email marketing on track.
If you want to know what similar results would look like for your database, call us on 011 477 9716 or drop us an email. We also have excellent coffee if you would rather come in and talk it through in person.
Frequently asked questions
- How long did it take Wilderness Safaris to double their email open rate?
- Active subscribers grew from 23.5% to 47.1% within 30 days of running the re-engagement campaign and removing inactive subscribers from the database.
- What does a re-engagement campaign actually involve?
- TouchBasePro created a segment of inactive subscribers from the existing Wilderness Safaris database and sent them a personalised email with a gift offer to bring them back. Subscribers who still did not engage were removed, leaving a cleaner database of people who genuinely wanted to receive communications.
- Why does removing inactive subscribers improve open rates?
- Open rate is calculated as opens divided by total sends. When you remove subscribers who never open, the denominator shrinks and your rate rises. More importantly, sending only to engaged subscribers protects your sender reputation, which helps deliverability for future campaigns.
- What role did personalisation play in the results?
- Personalised subject lines were used throughout the campaign. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. In the Wilderness Safaris campaign, subscribers were also thanked by name inside the email, which reinforced the personal feel and lifted engagement further.