Case Study: How I helped Clarion Events Ltd. drive 14% of all revenue from their email list
Highlights
✅ Average newsletter click-through rate (CTR): 3%.
✅ Highest promo email conversion rate (CVR): 10%.
✅ Email performance: Drives 14% of all revenue as of 2023, and stands among the top 3 channels generating traffic to the website at 22%.
"...we love working with Joe. His creativity, the way he can really bring a brief to life, and his absolute reliability to not only get the job done on time, but to get it done to such a high standard, are some of the reasons we decided to work with him—and continue to work with him."
—Amy Llambias, Head of Marketing
The client:
Clarion Events Ltd. is the company behind world-renowned marketing events like Traffic & Conversion Summit, Affiliate Summit (East & West), and others.
And as you can imagine, they manage hundreds of paid and email campaigns to attract, acquire, convert, and retain attendees.
When it comes to promoting the Traffic & Conversion Summit (T&C) specifically, however, their messaging and marketing team have gone through several changes.
And that was making life challenging for head of marketing Amy Llambias…
The challenge:
To start, T&C had made strategic changes to its messaging and value proposition.
T&C used to focus on celebrity speakers. Now, it focuses on marketing titans and quality content.
Which meant the old copy Amy had used in the past, and would have refreshed, simply didn’t work or wasn’t relevant any more.
Her team needed new copy for their websites, social media, and most importantly, for their single biggest revenue driver: Email.
Unfortunately, when it came to email…
“...open rate was down, engagement rate was down, conversions were down. We were seeing a decline across the board.”
And her team didn’t have the time or capacity in-house to write copy that would engage and convert their list.
Amy needed copy that:
Captured the new T&C messaging and positioning.
Felt natural and conversational. “Even though we're marketing to B2B,” Amy said, “we're not very corporate, we're very conversational.” While T&C is managed by a corporation, its branding and style are anything but—which is vital if they’re going to attract owners, founders, and entrepreneurs to their events.
Had an “American” tone, something their UK-based team found difficult to do.
Could engage and motivate readers to buy tickets and attend. “Our number one thing is conversion,” Amy said.
To make matters worse…
“We’re up against the clock and we don’t have the time to actually give it the justice or dedication that it needs…as much as it’s enjoyable.
And our focus really is more on optimization, data analysis, and briefing the campaign across all of our different channels and agencies.”
The alternatives:
Traditionally, Amy and her team had written content themselves, collaborated with the founders of T&C to produce copy, and outsourced copy to freelancers.
She and her team had also begun experimenting with AI to produce copy.
“We’re looking at incorporating certain AI tech across the board at Clarion, more from a kind of optimization point of view rather than anything.
All of us collectively across sales, marketing, and even Ops have at one point used ChatGPT.”
But the problem was…
“...even with the correct prompts, it does tend to regurgitate a lot of sayings or sometimes not get it quite right. It takes so much work to actually get it to a point where it’s even usable.”
Amy and her team started looking for alternatives.
They could have hired freelancers again, or produced the copy in-house.
But they had been reading the Stacked Marketer newsletter, which not only produces excellent work, but also speaks to their target audience.
And that’s how they found me.
“Stacked Marketer is up there as the kind of creme de la creme for us as a marketing team. We thought, ‘This is what we’re looking for, this is the kind of tone of voice that we need.’”
The solution:
Because Amy and her team were familiar with my work, they reached out to me to discuss an email campaign project.
What started as an email campaign project went on to become numerous email campaigns, web copy projects, and even newsletters.
A few reasons why:
I know their target audience (avatar) because I am their target audience. I’m a small business owner myself, but also a marketer, someone who is trying to make sense of the business, marketing, and economic landscape as much as everyone else. I’m motivated by similar needs and desires. I can also write about the digital marketing world (and about client products) in a simple, intriguing, and compelling way. No jargon. No complexity.
I map their briefs and products to the psychology and emotions of their target avatar. T&C does a good job of writing tight, concise briefs, usually including things like campaign objectives, key messages, offer and upsell details, links to bios and media kits, testimonials, and so on. And because I know their target audience, I can map those briefs to the daily life and psychology of a marketer/business owner—to their emotional states, their ambitions, their fears, their hopes, etc. Lots of freelancers and agencies say they can do this—but very few actually can.
I have both writing and editing chops. When they have edits (which is rare), most of the changes Amy and her team request are cosmetic or content related. I don’t turn in work with poor structure, inexplicable or jarring transitions, weak calls to action, disconnected ideas, or glaring typos. So Amy and her team can usually copy/paste and hit the ground running.
“...the edits are so miniscule now, I very rarely have any critical feedback, which proves how well you know our products and our audience.”
Direct results:
Since working with me to write promo emails and newsletters in 2023, email has been T&C’s best performing channel in terms of revenue, generating 14% of all 2023 revenue.
It’s among the top 3 channels generating traffic to the website at 22%.
T&C has also seen:
T&C campaign average OR of 26%, higher than their portfolio of average at 23%.
An average newsletter OR of 42% and an average CR of 3%.
Sales campaigns have an average OR of 26%, higher than their portfolio average of 23%.
Examples of best performing campaigns:
T&C Alumni promo campaign, 1st email:
Subject line: {First name}, it’s baaaaack…
OR: 33%
CTOR: 7%
CVR: 5%
T&C Alumni promo campaign, 4th email:
Subject line: {First name}, T&C tickets are 70% off. But you have to buy them now…
OR: 31%
CTOR: 3%
CVR: 10%
T&C Newsletter #41:
Subject line: Wait…you don’t need a website to run ads??
OR: 44%
CTOR: 6%
Indirect results:
In mid 2023, I checked in with Amy to see how things were going.
“We’re pacing ahead of last year, which is great. Our engagement CTR and everything is looking higher in terms of conversions.”
I also wanted to find out how this was helping her and the team as a whole.
“You’ve allowed me to have time back to actually look at my campaign as a whole. And you’ve given my team the opportunity to plan and capitalize on things we wouldn’t have otherwise.”
In 2024, I checked in again. Thankfully, Amy had nothing but good news:
“You have often kept us accountable on our briefs, where things may have been missed or improved which is really invaluable. Also the edits are so miniscule now, I very rarely have any critical feedback, which proves how well you know our products and our audience.
And you can really bring a brief to life and your absolute reliability to not only get the job done on time but to get it done to such a high standard is one of the reasons we decided to work with you and continue to work with you.”
Lasting results:
Not only has working with me made life easier for Amy and her team—it’s even made her look good in front of the T&C founders and executives:
“I’ll always share the copy [ with my senior leadership team], and their enthusiasm for the copy that you produce is always tenfold. They’re incredibly thrilled that we’ve got you. They even pull out certain bits of your phrases that they’re like, ‘Love this.’
And it’s always nice that when I get your copy in…I actually really enjoy reading it. Reading your copy is quite joyful for me as part of my job.”
It’s also helped Amy and her team manage project details that might have otherwise fallen through the cracks:
“...you have often kept us accountable on our briefs, where things may have been missed or improved which is really invaluable. I can see you care about the copy you are producing that is consistently shown week in week out.”
It’s even helped her team improve their own copywriting skills:
“We have a copywriting course which everyone in our marketing team undertakes. I often use your copy as an example of what good copywriting looks like. And often ask them to highlight in your copy some of the things they have learnt in the course which you demonstrate.”
Need help?
Right now, I have limited spots open to help teams like Traffic & Conversion Summit get conversions and sales from their email lists.
…As long as:
Your brand or business wants to engage and sell services to owners, founders, and entrepreneurs.
You and your team don’t have the time, capacity, and/or skill to produce sales copy for your email campaigns.
Your list has at least 20k+ subscribers.
You want and need to drive more revenue from your list.
I’m also available to discuss your goals and needs, and see if we can work together.
Spots are limited—and I only work with clients who meet the criteria above.
Book a call with me and find out how you can turn your subscribers into paying customers.
By the way, I’m also offering copy consultations for just $150 for one asset, or $500 for an entire campaign.