Alpindustria is a chain of professional mountain equipment stores that launched in 1988. Now, they have 25 retail stores throughout Russia and the online store, alpindustria.ru.
In addition to selling equipment, Alpindustria organizes trips and mountain ascents around the world, and hosts training sessions in its Mountain Club.
In this success story, we will share with you how we automated marketing for Alpindustria. In parallel, we are automating and improving communications with clients related to the mountain school and tours. But that’s something we’ll cover in our next success story.
Results
By March 2018, the first automated campaigns were launched and Alpindustria’s transactional mailings were transferred to Mindbox.
As a result of our joint work, it was possible to systematize Alpindustria’s email marketing and double the share of revenue for the email channel in 11 months, growing it from 8.6% to 16.5%

How things were before
- Data about purchases in the retail and online stores were stored in different systems, which complicated segmentation and analytical processes.
- Several systems were used simultaneously to send email messages. This led to configurational difficulties and frequent errors.
- There was no segmentation by subscription topic (tours, mountain school, and shop).
How we changed that
- Combined data on purchases in Alpindustria’s retail stores and an online shop in Mindbox.This made it possible to more precisely tune Alpindustria’s customer segments and enrich data for automated mechanics involving product recommendations.
- Transferred manual and automated transactional letters around the store to Mindbox.As a result, the project received a unified client profile, which contained all data regarding sent emails.
- We set up a system with mailing topics (Tour, Mountain School, Shop).
- Depending on the type of on-site form in which a client left his email, we will send a double opt-in letter with a proposal to confirm a subscription to a specific topic.
- We added a subscription management page to personal user profiles. A client can mark the topics that he wants to subscribe to, and all of that data automatically goes to Mindbox.


Internet marketer
Alpindustria Opinion
We wanted to attain a universal solution for our tasks when we made the decision to work with Mindbox.
In general, all of our expectations were met. We assembled our entire communication strategy, along with customer data on one platform. As a result, we received some impressive opportunities for growth of both the email channel (which didn’t leave us waiting for too long) and tools to execute complex tasks, for example, analyzing the impact of our online store on our brick and mortar.
The support we have now is of the highest level, an all-in-one solution without the need to use different platforms to solve varying tasks, and impressive capabilities right out of the box (triggered mechanics, personal recommendations, etc.). However, most importantly of all, a readiness to create new solutions.
There are some queries related to the interface part, though, there’s no gloom and doom.
Launched basic automatic newsletters
In total, there are 30 triggers currently deployed on the project. Among them there such mechanics as:
- Abandoned viewing of goods.
- Abandoned category viewing.
- Abandoned shopping cart.
- Repeatedly abandoned session.
- Happy Birthday congratulations.
- Offer to leave a review of the store on Yandex.Market immediately after receiving an order.
- An offer to complete an NPS survey two days after receiving an order.
- An offer to subscribe to our newsletters three days after receiving an order.
- Welcome letter after confirming the subscription.
- Personalized letters about order status changes.
Replenishing the newsletter subscriber base
In order to replenish the email subscriber base in October, Alpindustria launched an automated transactional mailing to go out three days after an order has been received with a subscription offer.
The newsletter was sent only to customers who met the following conditions:
- Not subscribed to the store’s overall subject.
- Never unsubscribed from email newsletters, so as to not irritate customers.
- Has not received a similar newsletter after making an order.
Since launching this newsletter, 16.9% of its recipients have been converted to subscribers


We use NPS polls to collect feedback
To improve service quality, Alpindustria uses a survey for feedback. The survey is sent two days after an order has been received. In this automated letter, a client can rate Alpindustria’s work on a 10 point scale.
Based on survey results, from its launch in March 2018, the Alpindustria NPS was calculated ( calculation method description):
NPS = % of supporters (9-10 points) -% of critics (0-6 points) = 74%


Set up auto-event letters for orders
For order changes, we set up automated personalised letters. Triggers are set off based on 11 events related to customer orders:
- New order creation.
- Order confirmation via customer’s voice.
- Failure to reach customers via call.
- Cancellation of an order 5 days after a call.
- Order has been successfully paid for.
- Sending an order to a courier or transport company.
- Sending a link to pay for an order.
- Sending a link in a letter to pay for an order using bank transfer.
- Cancellation of an order upon a client request.
- Cancellation of an order due to non-payment.
- An order is ready.
We conduct AB testing of topics and newsletter templates
For example, in a recently launched welcome letter, after a subscription confirmation, the topic was tested:
Bob, happiness cannot be bought, but there are places where it can be met!
Bob, welcome!

With a confidence of 95%, the second option won with a click rate of 19.7% versus 13.6% for the first.
Conclusion
The collaboration between Mindbox and Alpindustria yielded the following results:
- The email channel share has grown to 16.5%.
- A unified customer profile, taking into account purchases in all stores of the network, was created.
- Automated communications with customers via the email-channel.

E-commerce Director
Alpindustria Opinion
«I was initially skeptical, as the process is long and laborious. And I did not expect results right away, since, factually, we just completed setting up main processes. But the revenue obtained is indicative of the opposite, so now there’s enthusiasm and a keen desire to forward and at a faster rate. It’s very interesting to contemplate over what awaits us once we launch everything.
And a big thanks to Anton for his perseverance when it came to certain questions and issues. Mindbox has a desire to do truly well, and not because the customer wants it either, but because it influences overall success».
Next steps
- Launch automated SMS messages.
- Launch web push mailings.
- Automate communications in regards to the mountain school and tours.
- Launch new store mechanics.
This material was prepared by
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