Leading household appliances company lifts conversions by 32% with invite-only

This global leader in household appliances operates in 26 markets and brings in over $4 billion in annual sales. Their high-quality products, competitive prices, and commitment to their customers have inspired a community of loyal and engaged customers, who actively share with one another how to get the most out of their appliances.

We spoke with the company’s Global CRM Director to find out how the team used Queue-it to uphold trust and deliver a fair experience during surging demand, and how they now use the invite-only waiting room to boost sales while delivering on their exclusive access promise to loyal customers.

The company began using Queue-it after one of their products exploded in popularity almost overnight.

“We sold out of this product very quickly, and a lot of customers registered to be notified when they were back in stock,” says the CRM Director. “But the restocks sold out faster than we could get the emails out. Customers were frustrated and disappointed.”

“We’re so fortunate to have a trusted brand. But we felt like we were betraying that trust by not letting customers who signed up for stock alerts get a fair chance to purchase products,” says the CRM Director.

“That’s why we introduced Queue-it, to protect that customer trust and our brand reputation. Not everyone who wanted this product could get one, but with Queue-it we put a fair process in place. It meant our website was more stable and customers all got an equal chance to get the product they wanted.”

“Queue-it is super easy-to-use system that delivers really effective results. The marketing team found it very useful and straightforward. You don’t need to be a developer, you don’t need to be a designer. Anyone can use the tool and create a great customer experience with minimum effort.”

Global CRM director, Top global household appliances company

The hype around the company’s most popular product eventually died down once supply caught up with the demand. But the experience taught the team an important lesson.

“The demand for that product really showed us how important it was to prioritize the loyal customers in our database, our newsletter subscribers,” says the CRM Director. “We wanted to not only give them a fair chance at getting our products, but also make sure they had ample time to get them—so we started looking into exclusive access solutions.”

But if this appliances company was going to run exclusive access sales, they were going to do it in a way that inspired customer trust, the CRM Director explains.

“A lot of brands say they’re running early or exclusive access for members and they just send out a link that anyone can access. I didn’t want to just say ‘exclusive’ like so many other companies do. Customers don’t trust brands who make promises they can’t keep. We started using Queue-it’s invite-only waiting room to ensure the customers who gave us their data could access lower prices or new products before the rest of the market.”

The invite-only waiting room controls access to a site or page by verifying customers as they access it. Think of it like a security guard for your site, controlling the inflow of people and checking IDs to ensure only invited customers can enter.

The appliances company first tested invite-only for their End of Summer sale, and according to their CRM Director, “it exceeded all expectations.” The strategy delivered:

• 32% increase in conversion rate
• $59k increase in sales revenue
• 38k loyal customers given fair access
• 14k bots and uninvited users blocked

“The early access strategy was so successful we immediately started incorporating it into our plans for our biggest sale of the year, Black Friday,” says the CRM Director.

The appliances company already ran their invite-only proof-of-concept and knew it worked. So ahead of their Black Friday sales, the team turned their focus to how to promote and optimize the exclusive access experience.

“A big focus of mine is segmenting the database to deliver more personalized communications and avoid spamming customers” says the CRM Director. “So for Black Friday, we concentrated our efforts only on customers who expressed interest in the early access sale.

“The segmentation meant it was a smaller audience,” the CRM Director continues. “But our email open rates jumped to 60-70%, which is pretty much unheard of. And when we looked into revenue attribution, we found the smaller audience brought just as much as the full database would have.”

Ahead of their Black Friday sale, the company sent out early access invitations to over 200,000 customers. Each invite-only link was completely unique and could only be used once per customer.

The invite-only sale lasted for three days. As the team learned from the hype around their popular product, it was important to not just give first access to loyal customers, but also to ensure these customers had ample time to take advantage of the perk.

In those three days, with the help of Queue-it’s invite-only waiting room, the company achieved:

• A "massive" jump in conversion rates
• A 60-70% open rate for Black Friday comms
• Fair exclusive access for over 100k loyal customers
• 30k bots and uninvited visitors blocked
• 100% uptime during their biggest sales period of the year

“Black Friday is always a good month for us. But the year-over-year improvement we saw by offering early access with invite-only was phenomenal. Conversion rates and open rates jumped massively.”

The chart below shows the invited (trusted) and not-invited (untrusted) traffic to the two sites across the three sales days. Bots and uninvited users made up 23% of the total traffic—all of which was blocked from the sale.

The CRM Director we spoke to said the team doesn’t just measure success by sales numbers, they’re focused on community sentiment and customer trust.

“We know we’ve done a good job when customers start talking about it within their groups and communities,” says the CRM Director. “We saw that with this exclusive access strategy. Customers were sharing with each other that they could product X at price Y if they signed up to our newsletter. We really saw that word-of-mouth drive a lot of engagement and sign-ups and that’s how we ultimately knew we’d not only succeeded, but also delivered on the promise we’d made.”

“After the success of Black Friday, we really want to hone-in on the exclusivity strategy for more events,” says the CRM Director. “We’re looking to incorporate invite-only into product launches to make those a better experience for customers too.”

The company’s reliable and affordable product offering has already inspired a community of loyal and engaged customers. But after the success of their exclusive access campaigns, the company’s team are eager to nurture that loyalty and trust even more.

“The business value of Queue-it really comes from how much it improves the user experience. It lets you deliver on your promise to customers and that builds trust. And when customers trust your brand, that’s when they get really excited and involved with it. Ultimately, lifetime value grows from that.”

Global CRM director, Top global household appliances company