We were recently part of a large email marketing RFP for a family resort chain. The RFP process included two phases – supplying written answers to 30 questions, and then a more standard response with an in-person presentation. While we won’t include everything here, we wanted to share a few that speak to what we do and how we approach email marketing.
In one paragraph, please tell us what single ingredient or aspect allows you to have a decisive marketplace advantage over all other agencies.
There are many good agencies, but we believe that no one combines experience with ambition better than Drexler. When we began, we were full of drive and passion for creating great work, but had to build the experience needed to consistently deliver the type of results we desired. Now, with many years of running email programs for everyone from leading retailers to DTC startups, we have the vital experience required to power our ambition. As we approach 2025, Drexler is a highly-experienced, senior-level team that is full of even more ambition than when we began. By combining these two into a single, powerful ingredient, we are able to help equally ambitious clients exceed their goals.
In two paragraphs, describe the two accomplishments that your agency is most proud of.
In creative businesses, it really is all about the people. One of the things we’re most proud of is the many deep, long-term relationships we’ve made with some of the best people in the industry. Many of us have worked together for over a decade, and our client relationships are just as enduring. In fact, clients often bring us along to their next ventures—a testament to the trust and value we bring. For example, when the CMO of Crate & Barrel joined Caleres (parent company of Famous Footwear), she hired us again. Similarly, former email marketing team members at Cue Health turned to us when they moved on to roles at eero and VenturEd Solutions, respectively. If there’s one thing that speaks to our legacy, it is that people want to continue working with us.
Beyond any single client or project, our other greatest accomplishment lies in the wide breadth of work we’ve done over the years. In addition to our deep retail experience, we’ve worked in everything from fashion to finance, and from health tech to consumer space travel. Our work also reaches beyond email with vast experience in web design and development for ecommerce, editorial, and interactive experiences. This all speaks to how well rounded our team is and the thoughtful perspectives we bring to every client.
How do you see yourself managing a large queue of promotional email development while balancing updates to daily campaigns & real time transactional emails?
We believe in planning for everything we can control and being prepared for everything we can’t. It’s one part structured calendar planning and one part being ready for the unexpected. We cut our teeth working in retail email marketing where we wrote, designed, and coded 1,600 emails every year for a single client–over 9 streams of communication in two different languages. This experience helped us develop ways of working so we can execute daily promotional emails at a high level while also reimagining triggered, loyalty, and transactional emails. We’re also always prepared to pivot to any unexpected needs that may arise.
Here are some of the ways we approach email account management:
- Prioritization and Planning: Develop a comprehensive calendar that maps out all emails, highlighting priorities and deadlines, and assigns levels of urgency to each campaign.
- Clear communication and cross-team collaboration: Use project management tools to ensure all teams (strategy, creative, production) have clear visibility into the queue and timelines. Schedule regular checkins to coordinate efforts across creative, analytics, and account teams, ensuring alignment and efficiency.
- Real-time monitoring and rapid response capabilities: We believe in an always-on mindset when it comes to email as there are things that can change at the last minute. From updating live creative to real-time testing, we have experience handling it all.
- Frameworks and templates for last-minute requests: While we all plan to avoid these situations, we also know that last-minute changes are inevitable. We not only keep handy templates to use for these requests, we also allocate additional resources during peak periods, such as holidays, to manage surges in promotional email demand.
Our Email Marketing Process with Crate and Barrel:
In order to have an omni-channel input, we collaborated with in-house teams across the board. We set up processes for the marketing department to work with merchandising, catalog and e-commerce teams to find the right balance between storytelling, product features and calls-to-action.
Explain your A/B and multivariable testing approach to optimize emails. What email components do you test; how do you track results; and leverage learnings?
Testing plays a critical role across our client work, and we tailor our approach to fit each client’s scale and data sophistication. Here’s how we bring testing to life:
- A/B Testing and Champion vs. Challenger Models: For clients with large-scale sends, we focus on A/B testing of content and subject lines, often using a champion vs. challenger framework. This ensures automated journeys remain fresh and relevant.
- Data-Driven Testing: By leveraging dynamic email builds, we select random samples to ensure statistically significant results for all tests. We avoid relying on one-off A/B tests to guide future activations; instead, we treat results as insights for optimizing the current campaign. These insights are then fed back into the database as valuable inputs, not absolutes.
- Streamlined Content Versioning: We use a grid (or data extension) to map content to audience segments. This streamlines versioning and testing, making campaigns efficient and scalable.
- Always-On Optimization with Machine Learning: For clients with robust data, we implement always-on optimization powered by machine learning. This approach refines audience targeting and content mapping, supported by holdout audiences to measure algorithm effectiveness. Multivariate testing across campaigns allows for real-time optimization.
- Advanced Platform Capabilities: We have hands-on experience with tools like Einstein in Salesforce Marketing Cloud to execute real-time tests, including send-time optimization, ensuring emails are delivered at the most impactful times.
Our approach ensures testing is actionable, iterative, and designed to maximize both immediate and long-term results.
Please share how you bring strategic thought leadership to your clients’ email program? What is your typical end-to-end process for incorporating strategy and innovation into the planning process?
To break through the crowded inbox and engage subscribers on a regular basis without brand fatigue, we believe that campaigns must be backed by deep customer and category insights. While our primary focus is on email strategy, we ensure every initiative aligns with your broader business objectives (KPIs, sales goals, etc.) and brand strategy (platform, identity, etc.).
This approach ensures your email program delivers measurable results while building trust and maintaining your brand’s integrity in the minds of your customers. At Drexler, we don’t just manage your email campaigns—we elevate them. Our approach combines strategic thought leadership with data-driven insights to build a program that continually adapts to your audience’s evolving preferences and your business goals.When it comes to our client’s role in the strategic and creative development processes, we are committed to collaboration at each step, following a few key principles:
- A collaborative work style, as opposed to an “our way” attitude.
- Working relationships designed to solicit input and feedback, because our job is to elevate and create based on your knowledge.
- No baton handoffs—we ensure that more meaning is created as a result of building together from the start.
- Our ideas drive action—we want to make sure your email program moves your business forward, as well as your brand.
Describe how you drove business performance through trigger emails in the past?
Triggered emails are a key part of the work we do for our clients. To begin, we map out the full customer journey to discover points along the way where we can strategically use triggers to increase revenue and improve customer satisfaction. Our work with PetSmart is a good example of how this process comes to life.
In 2019, PetSmart was working towards a shift in perception about the brand due to negative chatter in the media. We were tasked with uncovering key opportunities in the email journey and crafting communications to improve the salon service experience(s) in the near term.
New customers to PetSmart’s grooming services didn’t know what to expect when they brought their pets to the salon for the first time. It was a moment of uncertainty for them and their pet (What should I bring? How will my dog react? Do I need proof of vaccinations?).
As a result of inconsistent or missed communications, there was often a gap between their expectation and their salon reality, leading them to opt out of a return visit.
We identified opportunities to leverage key touchpoints on the grooming journey (such as email, SMS, phone and in-store) to not only set appropriate expectations before the groom, but also manage those expectations during and after, to ensure that the customers we work hard to acquire enjoy their experience and come back. Based on this work, we built 15 new automated emails to tackle the following:
- Setting Expectations
We leveraged transactional touchpoints to nurture relationships, simplify the process, and set reasonable expectations for the appointment. We also created a series of three pre-visit emails to preempt and resolve moments of anxiety or uncertainty before they could happen. - Showing Care
Our team developed post-visit emails that highlighted added value by detailing services provided while delivering their digital invoice. We showed appreciation of their trust in us and laid the foundation for a lasting relationship. Finally, these emails helped gather experience feedback to proactively manage negative experiences immediately. - Re-engaging Inactive Users
We built four new emails to engage inactive customers at different stages—from cancellation to no-show, and book abandonment to rebooking reminders. - Delivering Delight
At the end of each salon appointment, PetSmart groomers were to hand-off a “Pawgress Report” about the pet groom. However, only 50% of customers were receiving this (feedback from the groomers told us that it took too long to fill-out). Drexler then designed a new report to help groomers share the love more consistently and effectively by simplifying the design and equipping them with the language and tools to make completion easier.
What is your approach as a strategic email partner as you work with your clients throughout the year? How do you prove your strategic value?
We are strategically led and creatively driven. We believe that impactful creative and the ability to innovate are driven by sound strategic input, and are therefore inseparable. Unlike most agencies, our creative leads are engaged from the start of strategic development and our strategy leads remain engaged throughout execution to ensure that the strategy continues to be reinforced as the brand experience is brought to life.
At Drexler, we see ourselves as an extension of your team, committed to driving measurable impact and continuously evolving the CRM program. This comes to life both in the strategic leadership we bring to client engagements as well as the strategic lens through which we view every brief. Here are a few real world examples of this approach:
American Express initially brought us in to help with a very specific problem–How do they engage with Card Members that were failing to pay their bills? In our initial discovery process, we realized that every Card Member was spoken to in the same manner whether they had just missed their first payment or had repeatedly failed to make payments. The strategic unlock for us was that we needed to meet each Card Member where they were at that exact moment. To address this, we developed a complex testing matrix of segments and variables such as tone of voice (empathetic, urgent, matter of fact, etc.), solutions offered (payment plans, etc.), and calls to action (chat now, speak with us, etc.) in order to find the best combination for each situation.
For another example, Famous Footwear initially brought us in to manage the workload for their Black Friday and holiday campaigns. During the process, we identified two other key areas in need of transformation. First, we revamped their calendar planning process to prioritize cohesive messaging. Second, we discovered that to carry out our strategic guidance, the internal team needed a full design tool kit to bring everything to life. We then designed and delivered 20+ hard-working email templates to address this and empower the internal team.
Ultimately, the proof of our strategic value is shown in the success of the email marketing program. Our vision for this partnership is to become an indispensable extension of your team, delivering strategic insights and measurable results that make us essential to your success. With our extensive experience and proven processes, we’re confident in our ability to start delivering on this vision from day one.