{"id":4741,"date":"2018-05-17T11:11:48","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T10:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/?p=4741"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T09:26:06","slug":"case-study-imaginaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/case-study-imaginaire\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Case Study: A Peek Inside Imaginaire Digital Agency’s Cold Email Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I was approached by one of our customers, offering to share their experience using Woodpecker<\/span>. I knew\u00a0I wanted to hear their story, so\u00a0Seb and I collaborated on this customer interview you’re about to read. Here it is. Learn how one of our customers – Imaginaire Digital<\/a> uses email<\/span> automation to send multi-touch campaigns, how they went about it, and what kind of results they usually get.<\/p>\n

About Imaginaire Digital<\/h2>\n

Imaginaire Digital is a UK-based web design and digital marketing agency. It was established to help their customers developing a kind of websites that would support their marketing strategy and increase sales<\/span>.<\/p>\n

They\u00a0have been particularly successful in helping furniture and interiors companies to build ecommerce websites and then get new customers to them via search.<\/p>\n

I talked with Seb, who shared\u00a0their backstory, their target groups, and how they use Woodpecker<\/span> to make the most of their email<\/span> outreach. Let’s start.<\/p>\n

How did you start your company?<\/h2>\n

I started Imaginaire Digital when I was working at another agency. I felt like a lot of the work they were doing was very basic and the staff was bored a lot of the time, so I wanted to start something myself where we could do more interesting work.<\/p>\n

Initially, I just started Imaginaire Digital\u00a0as a web design and SEO agency, but it soon became clear that there was a\u00a0huge demand for other ongoing marketing services, such as PPC and social media marketing, so we expanded into those areas too.<\/p>\n

How has your company developed since then?<\/h2>\n

Although it was very tiring at the time, I still look back fondly at the early days of Imaginaire, when I used to do absolutely everything — accounts, sales<\/span>, the fulfillment and ongoing client contact.<\/p>\n

Since that, luckily for my hairline, we\u2019ve grown and we now have a really solid team of 5 people. I\u2019ve never wanted the agency to be a \u2018vanity agency\u2019 that\u00a0has hundreds of staff. I\u2019ve wanted to hire people that are experts in their fields and do good quality work. We\u2019re growing significantly every year and I think this strategy is working nicely.<\/p>\n

Who are your ideal customers?<\/h2>\n

We do a lot of work in the interiors and furniture industries and those clients tend to be a good fit for us, they usually have an established business<\/span> with a good cash flow and they\u2019re enthusiastic and ambitious about their products, which gives us a good atmosphere to work within.<\/p>\n

Our criteria for a client being a good fit tends to just be that they\u2019re enthusiastic, easy to work with and want to be the best in their niche.<\/p>\n

What do we use Woodpecker for?<\/h2>\n

A lot of our SEO work is carrying out outreach for clients to get content placed on different blogs, in news outlets and high authority websites. We use Woodpecker<\/span> to speed this process up. It really does that when compared with doing the outreach manually.<\/p>\n

From time to time, we also use Woodpecker<\/span> for cold email<\/span> campaigns to generate business<\/span>. We\u2019ve found it to be an effective solution for both uses.<\/p>\n

Why did you choose Woodpecker?<\/h2>\n

We chose Woodpecker<\/span> because it allows us to personalize campaigns and schedule follow-up emails<\/span>. We find that the bulk of the content we place is done on the 2nd and 3rd emails<\/span>, it\u2019s nice to have this as an automated process.<\/p>\n

About the cold emails<\/span> to generate business<\/span> side of things, we like the ability to send in specific time frames (we\u2019ve found that first thing in the morning and last thing in the working day are great times for getting responses, as people are more active then).<\/p>\n

What does your average cold email campaign look like?<\/h2>\n

Outreach<\/h3>\n

An outreach campaign for us will be heavily personalized but make use of very short emails<\/span>. We\u2019ve found short, to-the-point emails<\/span> massively outperform the typical \u2018send-them-a-novel\u2019 type of advice that is given on SEO blogs. We\u2019ve written about that at length in our article about simple email hacks<\/a> to improve your results, and in our post for Agency Analytics about making link building transparent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Campaign structure<\/h3>\n

Typically we\u2019ll have a campaign structured in a similar way to this:<\/p>\n

Email 1<\/h4>\n

That’s\u00a0a short email<\/span> to introduce the idea\/content piece and ask them for their thoughts on it.<\/p>\n

Email 2 (sent after 3 days)<\/h4>\n

As a second message, we send a follow-up email<\/span> asking them if they saw the initial email<\/span>. We set all follow up emails<\/span> as replies, so that they form a chain to make it easier for them to refer back to earlier emails<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Read on the Woodpecker Blog:\u00a0Follow Up Sales Email: 5 Important Rules to Follow >><\/a><\/p>\n

Email 3 (sent after 7 days)<\/h4>\n

We use humor in the third follow up – we tend to say something like, “Ok, we\u2019re going now, we\u2019ll miss you.”<\/p>\n

Sales Emails<\/h3>\n

Again, we stick to the principle of keeping emails<\/span> short and sweet. We contact business<\/span> owners that fit into the niches we specialize in.\u00a0We introduce our company and explain some of the unique ways we add value\u00a0to their industry.<\/p>\n

Email 1<\/h4>\n

That’s\u00a0a short email<\/span> introducing the company and how we add value to their industry. We\u2019ll also have a link to our website, encouraging them to take a look at our case studies.<\/p>\n

Email 2 (sent after 3 days)<\/h4>\n

The following email<\/span> is a very short one.\u00a0We just ask them if they\u2019d like us to call them for a quick chat about their website.<\/p>\n

Email 3 (sent after 7 days)<\/h4>\n

In the third email<\/span>, we show them a relevant case study and then asking for an appointment.<\/p>\n

What are your results?<\/h2>\n

General outreach<\/h3>\n

We\u2019re very lucky to see some really strong results thanks to our qualification of websites to reach out to and the level of personalization we use. Generally, we get an open rate of 60-70%, and a positive reply rate of 15-20%.<\/p>\n

This has led to us gaining some excellent placements both for ourselves and for our clients and it provides us with an efficient and effective process for client work.<\/p>\n

Sales outreach<\/h3>\n

We tend to get slightly weaker results on the sales<\/span> side of things, generally because we\u2019re dealing with owners of companies who\u00a0are rather very busy. On the sales<\/span> outreach side, we\u00a0usually see open rates of 40-50%, and positive reply rates of 5-10%.<\/p>\n

Although this may sound small, our customers are of a high lifetime value, and this form of marketing is low cost. We acquire new customers for around $90, which is much cheaper than something like Google Adwords.<\/p>\n

What do you think is the greatest power of Woodpecker?<\/h2>\n

Without a doubt, it\u2019s the quick execution of campaigns. We can have a campaign on either side of our use for Woodpecker<\/span> within around 5 minutes, this allows us to launch and test campaigns quickly.\u00a0We’re much more effective for clients than we were when handling outreach manually.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in it for you?<\/h2>\n

Overall, we\u2019ve found Woodpecker to serve two purposes for our digital agency:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It helps us find new customers in a cost-effective manner;<\/li>\n
  2. It helps us be more effective for our clients.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The way that the UI works is great. The same goes for the core functionality of Woodpecker which is excellent and makes it easy for me, as a business owner, to train new staff on. For this reason, it\u2019s one of our \u2018must-have\u2019 tools.<\/p>\n

    That’s all from Seb. If you’re interested in trying out Woodpecker to see if you can get as efficient as Imaginaire Digital, try Woodpecker for 7 days for free.
    \n\n