Case study: How a pet insurance brand boosted email conversions by 32% with smart segmentation and strategic partnership

If you're an email marketer looking to improve conversions, you know that smart segmentation and strategic partnerships can make all the difference. In this case study, Olga Kovalenko walks you through how a pet insurance brand boosted conversions by 32% by personalizing their email journeys and leveraging a powerful partnership with a significant retail warehouse chain.

In this case study for our Email marketer’s code, Olga shares how they revamped their email strategy — segmenting by traffic source, personalizing content, and working through compliance hurdles — to boost conversions by 32%, reduce unsubscribes by 21%, and double the revenue. The best part? They found a way to beat the ban on explicitly indicating discounts in the insurance industry.

Expert

Olga Kovalenko

Senior Lifecycle Manager at Independence Pet Group (IPG)

Meet Olga Kovalenko

With over a decade in email marketing, Olga Kovalenko has seen it all — from managing campaigns for almost 20 brands simultaneously to fine-tuning email strategies for subscriber lists of almost 2 million. Currently, she leads lifecycle marketing at Independence Pet Group (IPG), where her expertise in product management, client interviews, and customer analysis drives impactful email campaigns.

Interestingly, Olga’s journey into email marketing was anything but planned. In 2013, when her manager unexpectedly quit, she was quickly trained to step into the role. That moment sparked a career-long passion for email marketing, optimization, and growth.

Beyond marketing dashboards and campaign performance metrics, Olga finds joy in karaoke and trampoline workouts — a continuation of her childhood passions as a choir singer and rhythmic gymnast.

Finding the appropriate formula for a pet insurance brand’s quote drip journey

When I joined a pet insurance brand in 2022, the company was in the middle of a major rebrand — a new look, a new voice, and a fresh approach to customer experience. One of the first things that caught my attention was our quote drip journey — the email sequence sent to users who began but didn’t complete a quote request. Think of it as an abandoned cart email, but it is for pet insurance.

At that time, it was one-size-fits-all — everyone received the same emails with no dynamic content or personalization. The rebrand helped make the emails visually appealing, but the conversion rate still wasn’t where we wanted it to be.

I knew we had to go beyond tweaking colors and messaging. Personalization was the next logical step. Adding simple touches like a pet’s name helped, but not enough to make a major impact. We needed a much bigger optimization win to meaningfully drive conversions.

Cracking the code: Traffic sources matter

I began digging into the types of leads coming into our funnel. Were they all behaving the same way? Turns out, not at all. After some deep analysis, I found that our leads were coming from three distinct sources:

• SEO + ads;
• affiliate partners;
• a major discount retail warehouse chain.

Here’s where it got interesting — the time it took for users to convert varied dramatically among these traffic sources. This implied that treating them all the same was a mistake. We needed to nurture each segment differently to match their behavior.

The challenge: No discounts… except for one

Working in insurance, we don’t have the luxury of using discounts like eCommerce brands do to recover abandoned carts. That’s just not how our industry works. But every rule has an exception; in our case, the exception was a significant discount retail warehouse chain.

This chain was a major partner, bringing in a significant share of our sales. Unlike other traffic sources, their users were eligible for a 10% discount. This meant that while we planned to separate our quote drip journeys for each traffic source, optimizing the journey for this partner was the biggest opportunity.

We had the right insights — now, we just had to turn them into action.

Turning insights into action

Once we realized that different traffic sources behaved differently, we knew we had to divide the quote drip journey into three separate flows. The challenge? The original setup didn’t account for the partner code, which was the main means to distinguish among these traffic sources. A significant discount retail warehouse chain, being the big partner they are, wanted to track the engagement levels of their users separately.

Thus, instead of managing one quote drip journey, we now had three, and instead of 6 email creatives, we suddenly had 18.

That’s when we hit our first big roadblock — keeping up with legal changes. Compliance reviews are part of life in the insurance industry, but when you have 18 different email creatives, even a minor update (like tweaking the legal text in the footer) means a lot of manual work.

Then, there was the discount challenge. The discount for users from the significant discount retail warehouse chain wasn’t available in all states, and we had to be very careful about how we mentioned it in emails. Moreover, we needed approval from our compliance team and the warehouse chain’s compliance team.

This is what a standard no-segment company looks like:

(Source: Email campaign by Olga Kovalenko)

The solution: Finding the right fixes

We had to find a smarter way to manage content with triple the workload. Instead of making edits to 18 different emails every time legal wanted a change, we built a single modular block that could be simultaneously updated across all emails. This way, any compliance request could be handled quickly, without repeatedly going through the entire creative process.

Further, we made a few key changes to improve performance specifically in the warehouse chain’s journey:

1. Added a co-branded logo: Including both our pet insurance brand’s logo and the warehouse chain’s logo helped build trust and reinforced the partnership.
2. Mentioned the discount: Since users from this source were eligible for 10% off, we highlighted this in the email copy. However, compliance quickly flagged this, so we added an asterisk and a footnote to clarify that the discount wasn’t available in all states.
3. Dressed up our email heroes: For fun, we put the heroes in our email images in the warehouse chain’s uniform. This wasn’t just an internal joke — it helped create a stronger brand connection and made the project more enjoyable for both teams.
4. Linked to the warehouse chain’s services webpage: While they were happy with a co-branded journey, they were rather cautious about how their logo was used. We negotiated a compromise — we can place their logo at the top (where we knew it would drive conversions) if we include the link to their services webpage at the bottom. This was not ideal for us since it could lead users to explore other products instead of focusing on pet insurance, but it was a middle ground both sides were comfortable with.

Ultimately, this co-branded journey was a win-win. The warehouse chain was happy with the visibility and we improved the personalization; most importantly, we were on track to increase conversions.

(Source: Email campaign by Olga Kovalenko)

The results: Did it work?

After all the changes we made, the big question was, “Did it actually improve conversions?”

Absolutely.

By splitting the quote drip journey into three separate flows and optimizing the emails for each traffic source, we saw real results, fast:

• conversion rate jumped by 32%: More people who began the quote process actually went on to complete it;
• deliverability improved by 2%: Even a small increase here implied thousands more emails landing in inboxes instead of spam;
• unsubscribes dropped by 21%: Our audience responded better to emails that felt more relevant to them;
• revenue doubled — Yes, doubled! This was the ultimate proof that our personalized approach was the right move.

The co-branded journey with the significant discount retail warehouse chain was a major highlight. Their audience responded well to seeing familiar branding, and the 10% discount (even with the fine print) gave them an extra reason to convert.

Looking back, the biggest win wasn’t just the numbers, it was proving that small, thoughtful changes (such as tweaking design elements, adding personalization, and adjusting messaging based on traffic source) could have a massive impact on performance.

Of course, we learned something important along the way: Occasionally, even compliance teams can compromise… if you’re willing to negotiate a little. 

Recommendations for email marketers

One of the biggest takeaways from this campaign is that getting to know your audience on a deeper level makes all the difference. Personalization isn’t just about adding a first name, it’s about understanding where users come from, what motivates them, and how to speak their language.

Here are three key lessons that can help any email marketer optimize their campaigns:

1. Customer insights are your best friend

Before sending out any email, take the time to map out your customer’s journey. Where are they coming from? What do they expect? What barriers keep them from converting? Knowing that different traffic sources had different conversion timelines unlocked the potential for better segmentation. Don't rely on generic best practices — ensure your segmentation fits your audience.

2. Collaboration brings unexpected wins

Your colleagues in other departments — sales, customer support, partnerships — know things about your customers that you don’t. Even though they aren’t email marketers, their insights can give you valuable ideas. Listen, ask questions, and then refine those ideas into winning campaigns.

3. Not every customization is worth it

At first, creating separate journeys for different partners seemed like a great idea. However, adding more partner-specific versions made us realize the workload wasn’t worth the impact. Now, we use dynamic content for smaller partners instead of creating entirely separate flows. It is important to find the right balance between customization and efficiency.

Wrapping up

We thank Olga Kovalenko for sharing her insights and experiences with us. This case proved that the right segmentation and personalization strategy can transform the results.

By tailoring email flows to different audience segments, we saw higher conversions, better engagement, and even doubled revenue. At the same time, we learned that not every idea scales well. Over-customizing for smaller traffic sources became a burden rather than a benefit. 

For email marketers looking to improve their campaigns, the best advice is to be curious, experiment often, and always keep your audience at the center of every decision.