How to Build a Non-Salesy Product Marketing Campaign

Accept it – not being salesy and truly being helpful are often at odds.

But here's a story about an experiment I tried recently to defy this adage at Mailmodo. This began with the idea of creating a campaign to empower marketers to conquer email marketing challenges and shortfalls. (Trust me, it's a slippery slope, a die-easy situation– you get the drift!)

The way to fix this (your opens, deliverability of click-throughs) is usually through a disciplined following of best practices. But then, the discipline is the difficult part. One way to make it easy was to gamify implementing these best practices. But how do you do that?

That's when it struck me - why not build a 21-day challenge as folks do for the gym or other habitual exercises? And that's how our brainchild, the 21-Day Email Performance Challenge, was born!

To give you an idea about the success of this campaign - today, the 21-day challenge has crossed the 450 participants mark. And also, today marks the end of the first cohort of participants – 300 of yous – a big, hearty congratulations.

So what do we do in this challenge?

1. One email a day to keep bad things away - We send participants one email daily packed with carefully curated, bite-sized action tasks to supercharge their email performance. (These tasks range from email authentication to list segmentation, design, deliverability, and more)
2. A reminder should you forget- A few hours later, we send a reminder email that sets up accountability. We asked them whether they had finished the task via an interactive email.
3. A report to measure your progress in 21 days- We collect the pre-21-day email data and post-21-day email data. And also build up a report on the progress and recommendations for improvements.
4. A community to help you figure it out- We provided a community with members like Samar Owais to help folks facing blockers or feeling lost.

Here are the sample emails for these -

1. The Daily email template showcasing a challenge

2. The reminder email that goes out after the daily tasks

Sounds savvy?

So, here's how we went about promoting it

1. Pre-launch → Our soft launch on May 3rd, alongside the brilliant conversion copywriter Samar Owais and our fantastic distribution partners, created an electrifying buzz. We saw an inspiring turnout of 300 participants.
2. Product Hunt launch → On D-day (May 10th, 2023), we launched Product Hunt. We got some genuine traction there as well by being featured amongst the top product.
3. Referral loops → Who better to promote you than those already signed up to take the challenge? So we built up an interactive referral widget inside the email.
4. Social Shares → We shared many of our stories and updates regularly on social to inform folks about what was happening and generate interest.

The Impact:

This is an ongoing and evergreen asset that we have fully automated. Following are the numbers we have seen so far-

• Total participants till now: 450 (and growing every day)
• Open rates: 39%
• Click rates: 10%
• Submissions: 3%
• Signups to the product: 35 (attributable)
• Main impact: Product awareness about Mailmodo

Now, we won't sugarcoat it—the number of registrations didn't skyrocket as we initially hoped. But let us share a little secret: it’s not about quantity but the fire burning within each participant.

We've been fortunate to attract individuals driven by ambition, thirsting for knowledge, and eager to see tangible improvements in their email performance. Their unwavering commitment has surpassed our expectations and kept the excitement alive, even halfway through the challenge. 📈

Here are some examples of great feedback that we received -

Submissions we received from participants inside the email - part 1

More submissions, referrals...

Submissions we received from participants inside the email - part 2

Our Hall of Fame

300+ folks have completed the challenge till now. We wish them all the best of emails.

These incredible individuals have shown us that remarkable progress is possible in a few weeks. Their unwavering dedication and hunger for success have set the bar high and left us in awe. 🌟

If you, dear reader, participated in this, do comment and share your feedback. Would love to hear from you.

Ready for a challenge?

Credits obviously to the MI team.

Feeling inspired or even curious?

Join us on this awe-inspiring journey, and together, build better emails. Here’s the link- https://www.mailmodo.com/email-challenge/

Have questions about the campaign? Or how to build one for yourself? Share it in the comments, and I will try to answer them asap.

About Mailmodo: Mailmodo is a complete email marketing that helps folks create and send beautiful interactive emails and get amazing returns on each campaign. Interested in exploring Mailmodo - sign up for free here.

Liked the email templates? You can find more of these at our Email Template Library.