Case study: Yes Friends
“... some encouragement on your newsletter. I think it’s one of the best i subscribe to, and i’m a newsletter fan”
- Yes Friends customer
In 2021, Yes Friends launched to make ethical clothing affordable.
By end of 2024, their email list had shot beyond 20,000. The founder — Sam Mabley — wrote to the audience for years but was looking to pass on the responsibility.
So he gave me a call…
“Email had been our biggest marketing play over the last few years… so there was a lot riding on handing it over to a new creative.”- Sam Mabley, founder
I wrote a single test email for Yes Friends — and the copy along with the higher-than-usual open rate convinced Mabley to bring me in.
So I sat down with the founder for a strategy session day and, after a lot of back and forth, I convinced Yes Friends to bet on three ideas:
Send more emails — so long as they’re all fire. As long as they made sure every email was rich with stories and humour, they could keep the open rate high while being in their customers’ inbox more often.
Double down on the company’s wry, honest “everyman” brand by sharing more personal anecdotes and narrowing down the tone of voice — so people knew what to expect every time they opened an email.
Encourage more customer interactions by calling out any customers who leave particularly noteworthy reviews or comments, and riffing on them in the newsletter, so the audience would feel part of a community. For instance, if a customer commented on an Instagram post announcing new linen trousers, we would write this…
“At the end of the session, we didn’t just get strategy but got someone who’s going to execute that strategy,” says Mabley. “Someone who believes in the strategy so much, that they’re willing to be the one to deliver it and be accountable for the results.”
Speaking of results…
“Over the past 5 months, Sam has achieved an average open rate of over 50%… copy that not only does our audience love to read, purely for its wit and originality, but copy that has delivered some of our best sales days.”
- Sam Mabley, Founder
“Sam picked out the best of what we had done before and ran hard with that,” says Mabley. “He gave us the confidence to start upping the amount of emails we were sending whilst retaining the quality of creative and the results, with continued high open and click through rates.”
I was building on momentum that the brand had built over four years, but now the brand was seeing a new upswing.
Mabley adds, “People have replied to the emails with praise like “I have to message and say this email was perfect,’ and ‘whoever writes your newsletters deserves a raise’.”
“Whoever writes your newsletters deserves a raise. Or at least regular baked goods of their choice. I'm super tired today (Ramadan + bad sleep) but this newsletter made me smile multiple times”
- Yes Friends customer
I spun up copy for a few other projects, too: a video ad script for a canvas jacket launch, and the narrative for the launch of a new sportswear line, YF Sport. I also worked directly with the founder to create copy that would feature on Yes Friends products.
“Sam has become so much an extension of our team, that we invited him to join us in our office each week,” says Mabley. “And if that wasn’t enough, he recently bought in some of the finest summer strawberries, to sweeten the deal even further.”
And they all lived happily ever after.
Want to see more of the work? Check out past Yes Friends email copy here.
Tempted to see what you and I can get up to? Talk to me here.
