Bass Pro Shops & Cabela's Case Study

Bass Pro Shops is an outdoor and recreation retailer known for its large-format stores that offer a wide range of products and services related to fishing, hunting, camping, boating, and other outdoor recreation activities. The company was founded in 1971 and has since grown to become one of the leading retailers in the outdoor industry, generating multi-billions of dollars of revenue each year. In 2017, Bass Pro Shops acquired Cabela's. 

As part of the overall challenges faced by a retail-first company adapting to the everchanging ecommerce landscape, Bass Pro Shops had many needs and opportunities within email marketing. 

1. The need to increase email marketing revenue and the optimize overall email marketing profit margins. 
2. Email personalization and individualized marketing efforts were lacking, coupled with a lack of segmentation strategies and outdated systems to manage customer data. 
3. Outdated email templates and designs. 
4. The acquisition of Cabela's and the merging of two email marketing programs posed challenges with ESP migrations and system integrations.

In addressing the above needs and challenges, Amanda led strategic initiatives that yielded transformative solutions across the program, all the while leading the email marketing team. 

A comprehensive and dynamic triggered email marketing program (comprising over 70 tailored automated flows for Bass Pro Shops) was implemented to address each customer's needs at each point in their lifecycle journey. 

Additionally, Amanda implemented strategic sign-up forms in pop-ups, seamlessly collecting new customer email addresses and substantially expanding the email list for Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's.

Amanda led a systematic A/B testing framework resulting in an optimized email template system, which led to an overwhelming increase in customer engagement for both brands.

Leveraging the innovative prowess of AI-powered product recommendations through Bluecore, Bass Pro Shops email marketing was enriched with personalized dynamic content and individualized product recommendations for each customer. The integration of Liveclicker technology fostered real-time interactivity at the time-of-open to increase engagement at key points in the customer's journey for both brands. 

Amanda's strategy for the program expanded to embrace the evolving communication landscape, resulting in the launch of the Bass Pro Shops SMS program. 

Working closely with product managers and graphic designers, Amanda and her team re-worked and revamped several key flows and automated campaigns in the email marketing program including (but not limited to): 

• Welcome series 
• Abandoned cart 
• Browse abandonment 
• Rating & review request 
• Transactional emails
• Automated e-receipts
• Automated e-gift cards
• Re-engagement 
• Site correspondence emails (such as password reset, my account, etc.)

This included integrations of new systems, API updates, and design overhauls for both Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's. 

This integrated suite of solutions resulted in a huge transformation for the email and SMS marketing programs, further amplifying Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's email marketing efficacy, growing customer affinity, and propelling long-term business growth.

Amanda's initiatives led to an impressive 200% increase of email revenue YoY, with the revenue for the triggered email marketing program growing by 3.5x. Additionally, Amanda and her team grew the annual email file size by a substantial 35%, expanding Bass Pro Shops' reach and influence to new customers. By implementing an innovative email template system, Bass Pro Shops saw a 33% lift in overall click-through rates, and Cabela's saw a 17% lift in overall click-through rates. Bass Pro Shops & Cabela's both saw a 95% increase in website ratings and reviews after the relaunch of the Rating & Review Request flow – a testament to the optimization and restructure process of optimizing flows and automation processes. 

These metrics show Amanda's pivotal role in elevating email performance metrics and fostering substantial growth for Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's digital marketing programs.