​​How Firestar Toys drives 16x ROI with Dotdigital

Firestar Toys is one of the leading producers of custom-printed LEGO parts and accessories. Founded in 2008, the UK-based company designs, prints, and 3D-prints minifigures and upgrade parts that LEGO doesn’t make.

Despite being a team of just 15, the company ships globally, with 50-60% of revenue coming from the US. Their customers are fiercely loyal. When a fire destroyed Firestar’s HQ and all stock in September 2023, the community rallied around them as they rebuilt from scratch.

​​Lisa Nicholls joined in 2021 to run a website migration and never left. Today she manages ecommerce, ops, project management, and HR. When she puts her marketing hat on, that’s where Dotdigital Personalization and Dotdigital come in.

The foundation was there, but the full picture wasn't

​​Firestar Toys had been using Dotdigital Personalization for years, and it was doing serious work. Product recommendations, browse and cart abandonment triggers, price drop alerts. All running across the site and driving real revenue.

​​But the other half of the equation wasn’t keeping up. Their previous email provider offered limited functionality, virtually no support, and no way to act on the behavioral data Dotdigital Personalization was collecting. Contacts were being added to mailing lists automatically without proper opt-ins, bloating the database with disengaged subscribers and dragging down deliverability.

​​For a team of 15 with no dedicated marketing function, the result was a disconnect. Dotdigital Personalization was doing the heavy lifting on-site, but the email side was running on autopilot with no strategy, no segmentation, and no one to call when something needed fixing.

“I’m very acutely aware that Dotdigital and it’s personalization tools don’t get the time, attention, and love they deserve on our side,” Lisa admits. “I could do an 80-hour week just looking into the stats and where we can tweak things. But sadly, I’m not at that stage. I’ve got too many other hats on.”

The customer base deserved better, too. Firestar’s fans care about the brand on a personal level, but there was no welcome journey, no birthday program, and no real strategy for rewarding that loyalty. The data to make it happen was there, but it was scattered.

“I literally have data in so many places,” Lisa says. “That’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to what Dotdigital could do. I could finally see everything in one place.”

Dotdigital Personalization: the engine already running

Dotdigital Personalization had been embedded across Firestar’s site for over six years before Dotdigital entered the picture. For a business selling to obsessive collectors, personalization isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s how the audience shops.

Browse and cart abandonment triggers are the biggest revenue driver in the business. A three-step series with a 10% discount catches browsers and cart abandoners with personalized reminders. Cart abandonment alone accounts for over 56% of all trigger revenue, with browse abandonment driving another 39%. ​​Together with low stock, back-in-stock, and price drop triggers, Dotdigital Personalization campaigns account for more than 10% of total site revenue.

“It only takes a fraction of a percentage in the positive direction to make a huge revenue difference for us,” Lisa says.

Product recommendations run on the homepage, product pages, and cart page, showing collectors upgrade parts and related figures based on their browsing and purchase history. Price drop, low stock, and back-in-stock triggers round it out, all running on autopilot.

A homepage popover is now collecting mobile numbers too, laying the groundwork for SMS. The plan includes transactional updates to reduce service queries and product drop alerts to catch fans while they’re still excited.

Dotdigital: connecting the dots
The switch to Dotdigital was about bringing the email program up to the same standard as what Dotdigital Personalization was already doing on-site.

​​”The way our personalization and email tools work together and seamlessly use that data, to us, that was fantastic. This made our lives easier.”

The first win was cleaning up the database. Dotdigital made it easy to spot disengaged contacts who’d been added without opt-ins. A sunset campaign now manages them automatically. From there, the team built out a welcome series, lapsed buyer campaign, and geo-targeted on-site banners, with Lisa able to create and target content herself. No dev team needed.

“With Dotdigital, I can just do it. I don’t need to brief our dev team, wait for changes, review it. I can make it myself and target it to exactly the right audience.”

The partnership that ties it together
For Lisa, the standout isn’t a feature. It’s the people.

“Almost all of what we’re doing now is a result of recommendations from the team. They’re forever saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got this really cool thing, it might work for you.’ It’s not just an account manager who checks in at renewal. They genuinely care.”

Two platforms, one connected strategy

The numbers speak for themselves:

• 16x ROI on Dotdigital Personalization. The platform has returned 16 times its annual cost in directly attributed revenue.
• 10.6% of total site revenue from triggered campaigns. Browse and cart abandonment, low stock, back-in-stock, and price drop triggers all running without manual input from the team.#
• 9.3% increase in average order value. AOV has climbed since moving to Dotdigital, driven by smarter targeting, more regular campaigns, and better segmentation.
• Cleaner data, better deliverability. The sunset campaign cleared out disengaged contacts that were dragging down sender reputation.
• Everything visible in one place. For a team that previously had data scattered across multiple tools, having Dotdigital Personalization and Dotdigital working together finally gave them a single view of what’s working.

Making the site a destination

​​Firestar’s roadmap is ambitious, and largely shaped by conversations with the Dotdigital and Dotdigital Personalization teams.

Loyalty expansion and gamification. The StarPoints program already rewards purchases and referrals. The plan is to gamify it, rewarding actions like logging in, sharing content, and engaging with new releases to make the site a destination, not just a store.

SMS for product drops. Firestar releases new products every Friday. Customers literally sit on the site refreshing the page. SMS alerts will catch fans the moment a drop goes live.

Growing trade. With global shipping costs rising, dedicated welcome journeys and segmented comms for trade resellers are a strategic priority.

“We’re a very small team, but we want big things. Dotdigital and Dotdigital Personalization give us the tools and the support to actually go after them.” Lisa Nicholls, Firestar Toys