Email marketing that deserves a double tap: Inside Buffer’s strategy  

When it comes to customer engagement, relevance is everything. And Buffer, a social media management platform, knows this better than most. With 100,000 new users joining every month and more than ten social networks supported by the platform, Buffer’s marketing team faces a dual challenge: making every message feel personal while scaling their efforts to meet growing demand.

• The challenge: Craft marketing emails as curated as a customer’s social media feed.
• The strategy: Tap into real-time data to deliver timely, tailored emails that improve the user experience.
• The results: Reduced unsubscribe rates by 41.5%, achieved a 28% increase in click-through rates, and earned a 22% increase in open-to-conversion rates.

Buffer’s world is fast-paced. Customers have different goals—some want to conquer TikTok, while others aim to perfect their Threads game. The challenge? Tailoring messages to fit these varied customer journeys. Sending a one-size-fits-all email about “social media tips” simply wouldn’t cut it.

So how do you make a platform with ten-plus social networks feel personal? By knowing what your customers need (even before they know they need it). That’s where a well-integrated tech stack can make all the difference.

For Buffer, the seamless integration between Customer.io, Segment (their customer data platform), and Mixpanel (their product analytics tool) forms the backbone of their strategy. Together, these tools deliver a unified, real-time view of each customer, ensuring every email is driven by accurate, actionable insights.

• Segment: Acts as the central hub for customer data, seamlessly feeding real-time events and customer properties into Customer.io.
• Customer.io: Turns that data into action, enabling Buffer to trigger personalized, event-based email campaigns at just the right moment.
• Mixpanel: Closes the loop, providing detailed insights into how customers interact with the platform and tracking the effectiveness of campaigns over time.

For the Buffer team, it’s not just about knowing that someone connected TikTok to their platform—it’s about understanding how they’re using it, what they need to succeed, and how Buffer can help them reach their goals.

By delivering content that speaks directly to customers’ needs, Buffer creates a sense of connection that’s hard to replicate—and even harder to ignore. Here’s how Buffer pulls it off.

Buffer uses event data to segment customers and create customized email journeys. For example, customers who connect TikTok receive tailored tips and resources specific to the platform, while Threads users get strategies for text-based content. This personalized approach has paid off, driving a 28% increase in click-through rates for customers in tailored branches of the campaign

Buffer injects dynamic customer intel into every email they send using Liquid. Whether it’s the name of the channel, the country where a customer is located, or the type of customer account (personal or business), the team leverages those properties within the body of the email using Liquid. They also use conditional content to recommend blog articles or resources tailored to each user’s persona or specific job to be done. This tailored approach doesn’t just feel personal—it works. By making emails more relevant to individual users, Buffer has seen a 22% increase in email open-to-conversion rates.

By segmenting users based on event properties—like whether they’re on a trial or free plan—Buffer creates two distinct programs that mirror each other but address the unique needs of each group.

Buffer doesn’t rely solely on intuition; experimentation is baked into their marketing strategy every step of the way.

One of their most revealing experiments came recently from holdout testing. When launching a high-frequency notification campaign, they asked a bold question: What if sending fewer emails actually improved user experience? By running a holdout test—where a segment of users is excluded from receiving a campaign—the team compared engagement and behavior between the holdout group and the recipients to measure the campaign’s true impact.

The results? A resounding yes. Removing unnecessary notifications reduced unsubscribe rates by 41.5%.

By leveraging a tightly integrated tech stack, personalizing messaging at scale, and embracing bold experimentation, Buffer has unlocked a marketing strategy that feels as dynamic and relevant as their customers' needs. Even better? They’re delivering a great experience by creating content that helps their customers succeed.

That alone is worth more than any metric—building trust, fostering loyalty, and creating lasting connections with their customers is what truly sets Buffer apart.

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