The JUDY Email Marketing Teardown

Judy is an ecommerce brand that (fittingly) launched in 2020 and whose mission is to “help every family stay prepared” for natural disasters and emergencies. 

They sell power generators and pre-prepped emergency bags with food, water, flashlights, first aid kits, and more. 

Because they’re such a successful ecommerce business, we subscribed to Judy’s email list back in March of 2021 to monitor their emails and see what we could learn — as we do with all of our teardowns.  

If you’re building an ecommerce business (or marketing for one), then there’s a lot here to learn. You’ll discover how Judy generates leads, as well as what their welcome email, promotional emails, and abandoned cart email look like. 

Check out the right sidebar to navigate this teardown. 

And check out some of our other ecommerce teardowns by clicking the links below…

• The YETI Email Marketing Teardown
• The Warby Parker Email Marketing Teardown
• The Casper Email Marketing Teardown
• The Nike Email Marketing Teardown
• The Huckberry Email Marketing Teardown

Judy’s Lead Generation

Judy’s lead generation efforts are very similar to other ecommerce brands we’ve analyzed in the past — it’s product-led. 

The first thing we noticed while perusing Judy’s website was the sheer lack of lead-gen opportunities (which is not necessarily unusual in the ecommerce space). 

Except for the email snag during the checkout process… 

And this exit-intent popup…

…there wasn’t much to write home about regarding lead-gen. 

Even these downloadable guides — which we thought for sure were going to be lead magnets — turned out to be 100% accessible without providing an email address. 

The only other noteworthy thing that Judy does on its website is have a chat popup in the lower right corner that says, “Thanks for checking out the JUDY site! Let us know if you have any questions” after a few moments of browsing the site (we tested this chat out and were connected with someone within about 2 minutes!).

A chat box like this is a good form for ecommerce brands — especially as it relates to new visitors who might have questions or concerns about your products. 

Finally, we noticed that Judy runs Facebook ads… 

And Google ads…

But again, these efforts are product-led — they try to persuade people to browse Judy’s website and buy (or at least, learn about) Judy’s products. 

As far as we can tell, Judy’s two primary lead-gen sources would be… 

1. Exit-intent popup offering 10% discount. 
2. Checkout process email opt-in. 

For this teardown, we opted in via the exit-intent popup. 

Judy’s Welcome Email

Since we opted into Judy’s email list via their exit-intent popup promising 10% off, this is the first email we received with the subject line, 2021 disasters won’t stand a chance… 

It’s simple and just delivers the 10%-off code — which is smart. If someone opts into that popup, then they’re probably interested in buying… and it wouldn’t make sense to get in the way of that with an in-depth welcome email. 

The next day we received a follow-up email about our discount (probably because we didn’t use it) — it had the subject line, It’s true…

You’ll notice that this email has just a touch more effort put toward persuading than the previous email, via a quote from Hwang Kee (at the top) and a “Certified Emergency Manager” (near the middle). 

On the same day that we received that follow-up email, we also received Judy’s welcome email with the subject line, The JUDY Mission…

This welcome email gave us a new 10%-off discount code (perhaps we could use each code on different orders?), told us about Judy’s mission, and called us to take action — quite persuasively we might add…

We — the team over at Email Mastery — were seriously considering getting a Judy kit as we monitored these emails… so they must be doing something right!

A big part of what they’re doing right within this welcome email (and around the rest of their marketing materials) is their copy. 

They push on a pain point that’s backed up by real data (“the amount of natural disasters is on the rise”), they build credibility (“Every JUDY Kit was hand-picked by preparedness specialists”), and they make the solution specific to YOU (“We’ve also made it as easy as possible to prep for the potential emergencies you may face based on your zip code.”). 

(Not to mention how darn clean their branding is — both the graphics and the images — that certainly has an influence on people’s perception)

What’s not to like? 

If you’re in the market for an emergency preparedness kit, you’re almost certainly going to be converted by Judy’s emails — and if you’re not, well… you might just start wondering if you need to be.

Two days later, we received one more email that appeared to be a part of Judy’s welcome sequence. It had the subject line, More than a kit…

If you were on the fence about trusting Judy as a brand, this email is crafted to help you hop off. 

They reveal four “add-ons” that Judy customers receive — including a free texting service, custom action plans based on zip code, emergency checklists, and JUDY TV — and they have a CTA for each. 

At the bottom, they offer some “Fast Facts”, which are also meant to persuade people that they need an emergency preparedness kit. 

Notably, this email doesn’t have a direct “Shop Now” CTA — and that might offer a nice reprieve from the previous (and upcoming) hard-sell emails. 

In fact, this email is really more about building credibility and proving that Judy is a high-quality brand that really cares about its customers — it gives recipients a way to differentiate Judy from other brands in the industry.   

Judy’s Promotional Emails

Like most ecommerce brands, the bulk of Judy’s email marketing efforts are put toward offering discounts, celebrating holidays, and promoting their products. 

Heck — even as we’re writing this, Judy is having a Labor Day Sale on their website…

And take a look at their subject lines… 

But what exactly do these promotional emails look like? What do they say? What are they offering? 

Let’s take a more detailed look. 

Here is Judy’s Mother Day email…

 

And here’s their Easter promotion…

 

And here’s their World Health Day email… 

These emails aren’t groundbreaking, but they do follow a tried-and-true format — they celebrate a holiday, offer some sort of discount, and encourage people to take action. 

That’s an effective cadence for ecommerce companies. 

And if you want to get some promotional ideas of your own every month, then keep an eye on our monthly Email Marketing Ideas series — every month, we share three month-specific ideas with subject line, segment, and copy suggestions. 

As for how often Judy sends these emails, since March 2021, we’ve received between 6-12 emails per month (pretty evenly distributed throughout each month). 

Other Noteworthy Judy Emails

The majority of Judy’s emails are promotional like the ones you’ve seen so far. 

But not all of them are. 

And before we take a look at Judy’s abandoned cart email, there are a few other stragglers that we’d like to point out — emails that will get your gears turning. 

First, this Memorial Day email with the subject line, JUDY Memorial Day PSA… 

That’s it. 

There is no CTA in this email and no mention of Judy’s products. One might even wonder if it makes sense for a business to send an email like this…

And our answer is that it absolutely does. 

By pulling back the curtain and revealing the company’s true values, emails like this do a wonderful job of building customer-to-brand trust. 

(Just consider that, according to Oberlo, 86 percent of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support)

People — your potential customers — want to buy from brands that have deeper values and beliefs that are similar to their own, they want to know that there are real people behind the logo, and they crave opportunities to connect with servant-minded businesses. 

That is why emails like the above are effective. 

They don’t directly make sales — but they do build trust. 

Here’s another example of a thoughtful email that Judy sent right before triggering their Mother’s Day email sequence. 

At a glance, maybe that seems crazy… encouraging people to OPT-OUT of your promotional emails…

But again, emails like this (which are great ways to keep subscribers for the long term) make Judy feel like an authentic brand that cares more about its customers than it does about making sales. That’s a powerful message — one well worth sending. 

Of course, not all of Judy’s emails are outright promotional or outright un-promotional. 

There are some emails that fall somewhere in between… like this email that points (at least partly) toward one of Judy’s how-to blog posts… 

Sending emails that point toward blog posts instead of directly toward products is a great way to dampen the friction of hard sales emails and show that you’re willing to provide your audience with free value… even if they haven’t bought your products yet.   

Judy’s Abandoned Cart Email

As with all of our teardowns, we added a product to our cart and abandoned it during the checkout process, triggering one of the most important emails in the eCommerce world. 

Here’s what Judy’s abandoned cart email looked like. It had the subject line, Hey, what happened?

Notice how much more personal this email is than some of the others? It uses our assistant’s name (Priya), references the exact product that got left in our cart, and, most interestingly, it’s a text-only email that’s lacking the graphical suave of Judy’s other emails. 

We received one more email a few hours later (but on the same day) with the subject line, Get 10% Off Your JUDY Kit

In case we didn’t finish our purchase after the first abandoned cart email, Judy sends another email that provides 10% off — a tad bit more incentive to push us over the fence. 

That’s the end of Judy’s abandoned cart sequence. 

It’s simple and effective. 

Final Thoughts

Judy has achieved massive success since its inception in 2020. 

Sure enough, that success is due to Judy’s clear and trustworthy brand image, its high-quality products, and its email marketing efforts. 

Here, we’ve looked at Judy’s email marketing strategy — from lead generation and welcoming new subscribers to promoting products and bonding with their audience. 

Hopefully, this teardown has given you some ideas to grow and optimize your own email marketing efforts. 

Often, small changes make a big difference!