Our idea needed to convince our members that regular emails from IKEA FAMILY are like no other, and are worth signing up for. We did this by creating the world’s first cross-stitched email, made entirely from fabric.

The outer envelope mimicked the email notification we are all familiar with on our mobile devices, with the headline ‘You have 1 unread message’. Once opened the ‘email’ was revealed. This very analogue solution captured members’ hearts and in turn their email addresses. Memorable, unique and ‘hand-crafted’, it gave members a hands-on demonstration of the lovely stuff they’d get in their inbox, in a very IKEA way.

The handcrafted email was sent to 40,000 members from 01/09/16 to 15/10/16.

Our idea needed to convince our members that regular emails from IKEA FAMILY are like no other, and are worth signing up for. We did this by creating the world’s first cross-stitched email, made entirely from fabric and posting it to 40,000 valued members.

The outer envelope mimicked the email notification we are all familiar with on our mobile devices, with the headline ‘You have 1 unread message’. Once opened the ‘email’ was revealed. This analogue solution captured members’ hearts and in turn their email addresses. Memorable, unique and ‘hand-crafted’, it gave members a hands-on demonstration of the lovely stuff they’d get in their inbox, in a very IKEA way.

With a clear CTA and £5 opt-in incentive, members were directed to a simple landing page to update their opt-in status. 2 days later they received their first lovely email from IKEA FAMILY. Each stage mimicked the charming cross-stitched design.

The results were a success from the start. Over 13% of IKEA FAMILY members went online to share their email addresses with us. Whilst our ongoing tracking of customer spend levels is still underway, working towards our forecast of an additional £5.4 million worth of annual sales, we can already detect within the first two months that the DM communication has had a positive impact on the spending behaviour of members contacted who went on to opt into email communications.

The £5 offer also had a very healthy redemption rate of 6.5% (1.5% above predicted), proving this is a suitable solution and offer for the purpose of an opt-in action across audiences.

Unique, ground-breaking and never been done before, the idea crosses media boundaries using something analogue to get members more digitally engaged. And more importantly in a direct medium it speaks to the recipient in a personally relevant way, engaging them and eliciting a response. In this case, we were asking the reader to sign up to our emails. A difficult sell. And with a 13% response rate, the execution surpassed our goals and engaged even more IKEA FAMILY members than expected.

In a world where billions of emails are sent daily, we needed to cut through the noise and convince members that our emails are like no other, and are worth signing up for.

We identified that nearly 1.3 million of our member base have the potential to be worth at least £35 a year more to us. This led to the enticing challenge to get mail-only members to opt into our IKEA FAMILY emails.

Analysing our member data base, we could see that like for like, our most valuable (highest spending) member segment were worth £70 more when opted in email communications. We selected all members of this group, along with two test pots of secondary segments to measure segment response.

To incentivise opt in, we offered a £5 gift voucher, with a clear and effective call to action directing them to a memorable URL: IKEA.com/email.

IKEA FAMILY members are at least £35 a year more valuable to IKEA if opted in to both direct mail & email. With 1.3m only reachable by mail, we had an opportunity not to miss.

We also discovered that in the previous year ad blocking grew over 90%. Moreover, 6 in 10 recipients of direct mail felt more valued - a sign of a more genuine two-way relationship. We also found people are influenced by the physical nature of mail, triggering an emotional ‘endowment effect’ attachment to a pack.

We were tasked with helping build stronger relationships with our contactable member base and drive incremental sales. This meant convincing these direct mail only members to opt in to emails in a unique and inspiring way – whetting their appetites as to what they would receive from us digitally.

Proposition: IKEA FAMILY emails are like no other.