Level Up

Arcade bars and retro gaming: these were the initial inspirations behind the email marketing campaign Level Up. I was tasked with creating a year-in-review email campaign that highlighted four specific investments by the company to “level up” in the year 2022. The campaign ran over five weeks with five separate emails highlighting:

Introduction: Overview to the “game”
Compass: The company’s proprietary software product
Team Investment: The expansion of a Leadership Team
Roadshow: The Long Game Roadshow traveling event
Insights: The weekly emails and blog-style articles written for the craft beer industry

Type
Email Campaign

Year
2022

Concept

Whether readers were gamers or non-gamers, I aimed for subscribers to identify the inspiration immediately upon opening the first email. From that point forward, I crafted a simple framework for the four “levels”: we start in space, fly high in the sky, travel on ground, and dive deep into the ocean. Each level represented each investment:

Level 1: Compass - Space: Limitless possibility and innovation
Level 2: Team Investment - Sky: Inspired by the company retreat to Utah (That's a lot of sky!)
Level 3: Roadshow - Ground: Traveling to meet craft owners/operators in their cities
Level 4: Insights - Ocean: Diving deep and sharing knowledge on industry trends

Along the way, readers (or gamers) would "unlock" new items and new characters, meeting members of the company as they shared their expertise, experience, or knowledge on each specific investment.

As part of the final level, readers would come to discover a treasure chest and click to reveal The Tools to Success, a webpage that listed all of that year’s insight articles, podcast episodes, and conference presentations for them to explore and add to their “toolkit” as the craft industry entered the new year.

Email Metrics

  
      Email
      Open Rate
      Click to Open Rate
      Click Rate
    

  
      Introduction
      53.80%
      4.35%
      2.34%
    

      Level 1: Compass
      56.59%
      8.10%
      4.59%
    

      Level 2: Team Investment
      58.02%
      5.70%
      3.30%
    

      Level 3: Roadshow
      58.50%
      6.68%
      3.91%
    

      Level 4: Insights
      55.22%
      7.77%%
      4.29%
    

Game Start: Introduction

Level 1: Compass

Level 2: Team

Level 3: Roadshow

Level 4: Insights