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Email Marketing Case Study: When Lower Open Rates Result in Greater Business Impact

The Counterintuitive Power of Email Engagement

CR24's recent A/B email testing campaign for their ējis® digital compliance solution revealed a surprising truth that challenges conventional email marketing wisdom: challenger emails consistently outperformed champion emails where it matters most-generating meetings and potential revenue.

The three-email campaign before the Fintech Meetup Conference produced stark results:

• Champion emails achieved higher open rates (averaging ~30% vs ~20% for challengers)
• Only challenger emails converted to meetings, securing 6 total meetings while champion emails produced zero
• Each potential meeting could result in a $1.6-$2.0MM contract, representing a possible $9.6-$12MM revenue pipeline from the challenger campaign
• Some recipients opened challenger emails 14-20 times, indicating deep engagement and internal sharing among decision-makers

The Email Mini-Funnel Discovery

This case study introduces the concept of "email as a mini-funnel," where different content strategies excel at different stages of the customer journey:

1. Top of funnel (Awareness): Champion emails dominated with higher open rates
2. Middle of funnel (Engagement): Challenger emails generated deeper engagement with recipients
3. Bottom of funnel (Conversion): Challenger emails were significantly more effective at generating meetings

The challenger emails were developed from the messaging framework created by The Small Biz CMO, incorporating targeted value propositions for each of CR24's key audience personas. This persona-based approach enabled more resonant messaging that drove deeper engagement and better conversion rates despite lower initial open rates.

Key Performance Metrics