You have certainly heard about DARK (a concept store with original street fashion pieces from Czech and foreign designers) from me before. After all, we shared a brick-and-mortar store in Prague’s Letná with za5dvanáct. Email marketing is certainly not the main communication channel for DARK, yet it regularly generates revenue. And it only takes a few hours of a specialist’s time per month to do it. How is that possible?

DARK and za5dvanáct under one roof was a ride
When we decided at za5dvanáct that we wanted to enter retail, we didn’t want to do it completely on our own. We certainly could have managed it, but we saw great potential and opportunities in teaming up with someone who doesn’t compete with us directly. At that time, Eliška suddenly “appeared” who wanted to launch her own original clothing store. One thing led to another, and we decided to open a shared store. Given that my brother Michael is a designer/architect and is well acquainted with Eliška and my partner Daf, it was clear who would design the space.

I was involved in the creation of DARK from the beginning, and I dare say I influenced it a bit. Among other things, we advised and helped Eliška as much as we could. It made sense because if her store did well, it would do well for us in retail too.

Over 40 events in a year and a half
We ran the shared store for almost 3 years until we came to the conclusion that we didn’t see a future in retail anymore. In those 3 years, or rather 1.5 years, we organized more than 40 events, which we did together with Eliška, with a few exceptions. The COVID-19 pandemic closed our store for about 1.5 years and with it the events, of which there would have been significantly more otherwise.

If I had to pick a few highlights, it was certainly the legendary Opening Party, which you can read about here or watch the video. Nearly 500 people attended the event, which was a beautiful start to our foray into retail. Wasn’t it?

Back to email marketing
During all that time, I advised Eliška on social media, occasionally hooked her up with an influencer, but also launched email marketing. DARK has a slightly different strategy than usual. For example, it doesn’t offer many discounts, so collecting contacts through mailing is a bit more challenging. We don’t even need to talk about influencer work. There’s almost no budget for the brand, and without discounts, it’s a hard-to-use channel.

Let’s look at what we’ve been dealing with in email marketing. We didn’t have to go far to choose the right tool for email marketing. Surprisingly, we chose Ecomail, where we launched basic automations such as abandoned cart, birthday, or welcome campaigns tied to a popup. They run and continue to generate revenue. It’s not anything extraordinary, but it ensures the essential maintenance of customer contact. All the mentioned automations have an OR over 50% and a CTR over 20%. But it’s not entirely effortless. I’m constantly trying to fine-tune and move it forward.

We also create some mass campaigns from time to time, but we haven’t managed to establish complete regularity yet. There are sometimes months when there’s really nothing to send, but we’re still working on that and trying to maintain the frequency. Mass campaigns boast an average OR of 30% with a click-through rate over 3%.

Almost maintenance-free email marketing accounts for nearly 10% of revenue
If I had to sum it up, email marketing for the DARK Concept store accounts for higher single-digit percentages of revenue. Given that it’s not the primary channel that Eliška wants to focus on more, it’s a respectable number. But what it will look like going forward is in the stars.

And what am I trying to say with this? Even if you don’t have full capacity for email marketing and don’t see it as that important, it’s worth investing a few hours of a specialist’s time per month. They will create a channel that not only pays for itself but will generate profit for you. There is more potential in email marketing than you might think. They say that risk is profit, but in this case, it’s more of a sure bet.

If you’ve just changed your mind about email marketing, write to me!