Small Team, Big Impact: How Blockchain.com Grew User Engagement with Iterable

Since 2011, crypto services provider Blockchain.com has managed 28% of all Bitcoin transactions. Blockchain.com was one of the first names in the crypto space and today, the company is synonymous with trading in cryptocurrency. Its millions of users have created more than 72 million wallets and more than $800 billion in transactions across 200 countries (as of April 2021). 

Blockchain.com offers traders a single platform experience, a built-in user-controlled wallet, interest accounts and other clients services.

With Blockchain.com’s growth and the increasing adoption of cryptocurrency, the team knew the opportunity of delivering a more tailored user experience was significant. 

“We have people coming to Blockchain.com every day with a vast difference in knowledge of crypto and from different places in the world with different restrictions on crypto. In order to retain those users and increase adoption we have to speak to each of them as individuals,” said Indi Pollard, Email Marketing Lead.

But with only a small team managing email marketing for millions of users, Blockchain.com needed to prioritize personalization strategies that capitalized on individual user behavior and were quick to implement and prove ROI.

With Iterable in place, Blockchain.com can leverage user behavior to personalize both the email content and overall user journey. The initial goal was to simply increase email open rates, which had suffered from a largely batch-and-blast approach, and automate as much of the user journey as possible.

First, they evaluated user engagement across two axes—Last Email Open and Last Wallet Access. This provided the insight that guides how Blockchain.com engages with each cohort. Cold users are driven toward more email-oriented actions, while disengaged users are driven toward more product-oriented actions.  This analysis of user behavior shifted Blockchain.com’s approach from high-volume email sends to targeted, goal-oriented campaigns.

Once the Blockchain.com team had a grasp on how engaged their audience was, they built automated journeys to segment and engage with each cohort. 

“Iterable’s Studio is a great way to segment and personalize so we can send a single campaign to different cohorts with just small changes that personalize the content for each audience,” said Pollard. 

For example, Blockchain.com’s monthly Market Outlook events are an important part of their education and retention strategy. With Studio, they can easily filter users into two groups—users who have attended previous events and those who have not. Users who have attended past events receive a straightforward invitation, while those who have not attended, or didn’t open earlier invitations, receive additional contextual information to help nurture them to action.

Having access to user event data in Iterable enabled Blockchain.com’s nascent email team to identify and automate critical moments of the customer journey.  

When users become disengaged or are identified as being at-risk of churning, they trigger a re-engagement flow. By personalizing the subject line to say “It’s been [X] days since we’ve seen you” instead of “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you,” Blockchain.com saw a 32.4% relative increase in engagement.

Even small data-driven tactics, like mentioning when a user was last active, or greeting users by name, can have a significant impact on performance. Blockchain.com tested first name personalization on a Cyber Security Awareness campaign and saw an 8.8% relative increase in engagement. 

Beyond “Hi {{defaultlfEmpty firstName “there”}}” Blockchain.com implemented simple logic statements to personalize email content based on the currency each user is interested in. 

For example, to promote a product feature called Swap, which allows users to directly trade one cryptocurrency for another, they use simple logic statements to deliver targeted messages like “Do you want to swap your Bitcoin for Ethereum?” instead of “Do you want to try Swap?” 

With a small team and restrictions on how customer data can be used in the Financial Services industry, the Blockchain.com team looks for creative ways to reward user behavior and build customer loyalty. 

Identity verification is an important step for new users to take when joining Blockchain.com. Verified users are granted additional permissions and higher trading limits, while verification provides Blockchain.com additional context to each user. 

Using a basic logic statement in the snippet of Blockchain.com’s email headers, verified users will see a “VIP” symbol on all communications they receive. This is a small way to leverage data, and incentive and reward favorable in-product behavior. 

When the right tech stack is in place, even small marketing teams can execute effective personalization strategies and have a significant impact on user engagement and retention.

Pollard urges other marketers not to let lack of data keep them from exploring personalization. Having data in Iterable such as “last email open” and “last wallet login” enabled her to begin segmenting and personalizing messages, she says. After that, “it’s all about figuring out how you can make your job easier by letting Iterable do the work of personalization to bring you higher conversion metrics.”