How Good Dye Young Increased Their Monthly E‑commerce Revenue by 305%

Founded in 2016 by musician Hayley Williams and her best friend (and longtime stylist) Brian O’Connor, Good Dye Young is a Nashville, TN-based fashion hair dye company specializing in vegan, cruelty-free hair products. Through their products, they aim to build an all-inclusive community centered around creativity and self-expression.

Right from the start, Good Dye Young’s vibrant, semi-permanent hair coloring was a hit with folks in the pop-punk music scene—particularly fans of Hayley’s band, Paramore. Fueled by that success, it wasn’t long before the company decided it was time to expand its offerings and branch out to new audiences.

In recent years, they’ve expanded their lineup to include hair care and hair makeup products, and they’ve updated their branding to look more high-end. Through it all, they’ve stayed true to their roots. “We want to look like an elevated and reputable brand,” says Jackie Myers, Marketing Manager at Good Dye Young, “but we’re still a fun, quirky company that’s selling neon orange hair.”

The new products and branding helped Good Dye Young increase sales and reach new audiences, but to maintain that growth, Jackie and the team knew they needed to rethink how they communicated with their customers.

The challenge: Send more targeted, relevant messages to their customers

Email has always been an important part of Good Dye Young’s marketing strategy, but prior to Jackie joining the team, they primarily used it to tell customers about sales and other types of promotions. As the company grew, it became clear that their strategy needed to evolve, too.

“I saw it as an opportunity,” Jackie says, “because I know email is a really high revenue driver.”

Using email to advertise promotions was a great first step. Still, Jackie and Good Dye Young felt they needed to update their strategy and explore other ways to keep the conversation going with customers. They wanted to do a better job of creating targeted, relevant messages that reflected the brand’s fun personality. And since Good Dye Young already used Mailchimp and WooCommerce, the data they needed to help take their marketing to the next level was only a few clicks away.

The tools: Email, segmentation, and WooCommerce

When Jackie first took over the email program at Good Dye Young, they saw solid results—for a while, at least. “We doubled our subscribers and our open rates were pretty steady,” she says. “Then, as the cadences picked up, the open rates started to drop because people weren't used to getting emails 2-3 times a week.” So she turned to Mailchimp’s educational resources to find answers. She learned all about segmentation, tags, and how those tools could help her target customers in a smarter, more effective way.

Since Good Dye Young has connected their WooCommerce store to Mailchimp, they can easily sync customers, order information, and more, then use all of that data to personalize their marketing. When someone buys something from the Good Dye Young store, that customer—along with their purchase details—gets added to Mailchimp automatically. Then, Jackie can create segments based on purchase activity or use our predictive analytics tools to target customers who are likely to buy from Good Dye Young again. She can even send out exclusive coupon codes to specific segments to thank shoppers for their loyalty or reengage folks who haven’t purchased in a while.

“That seamless integration is really, really helpful. It’s nice to know that Mailchimp has our back and we’re not losing any essential customer information,” Jackie says. “And it makes our life easier because we don’t have to do anything manually.”

Adding segmentation to their email marketing strategy has been a game-changer for Good Dye Young because it’s allowed them to connect with their customers in a more meaningful way.

“We’re diving into segmentation so that people don’t get email marketing fatigue. “Our emails are more fun, and we’re communicating with our customers beyond just sales. We’re doing actual cadences and campaigns.”

With the help of Mailchimp’s CRM tools and the data they’ve collected through the WooCommerce integration, Good Dye Young has developed an email marketing strategy that yields consistently impressive results. Over the lifetime of their account, Good Dye Young’s campaigns have averaged a 20% open rate and a 2.2% click rate—both of which exceed their industry benchmarks—all while generating an average of $557 in revenue per campaign. And in just 2 years—from February 2019 to February 2021—the company saw its overall monthly e-commerce revenue jump 305%.

“Utilizing all of Mailchimp’s resources—and combining them with all the data power we have from WooCommerce—has driven the evolution of our email marketing program,” Jackie says.

Looking ahead: Goals for 2021

Despite all of the challenges brought on by the pandemic, 2020 was a successful year for Good Dye Young—and they have plans to build on that success throughout 2021. “We hope to expand to more retailers,” Jackie says, “so we’re going to reach even more potential customers that might not have known about us before.”

That expansion will allow them to introduce new audiences—in the United States and internationally—to their products. But as their business grows, Jackie knows that they can’t get complacent with their marketing. “We’re going to have to be even more segmented and specific. We’re hoping we can use the WooCommerce integration to expand our segments even further and be more targeted with our emails.”

Good Dye Young also has plans to explore different messaging strategies, test new cadences, and use tags to help keep track of customers’ locations. As the brand expands internationally, they want to make sure they’re making it as easy as possible for customers to buy their products. In some cases, that might mean adjusting the call to action in their emails to direct shoppers to a local retailer instead of the Good Dye Young website, where higher shipping charges may apply.

Advice for other small businesses

Email marketing has played an important role in the growth of Good Dye Young, and Jackie knows it can help other businesses, too. “I think a lot of people forget about email and don’t value it as much as they should. But it’s definitely still a high-value marketing channel and something you need to hone in on.”

Jackie also encourages other small businesses to take advantage of all the powerful tools that Mailchimp offers. “When I run out of things on my to-do list, I go on Mailchimp, see what awesome new things are available, and I try to figure out how we might be able to utilize them,” she says. “So immerse yourself in the Mailchimp platform. If there’s something you want but think ‘Oh, they can’t do that,’ don’t settle; go ask the Support team because they can usually help you figure it out. Dream big, Mailchimp can make it happen.”