Max Spielmann drives 41% peak season revenue growth while cutting sends by 63%

For over 70 years, Max Spielmann has been helping UK customers turn their memories into something they can hold. As part of the Timpson Group, Max Spielmann specializes in photo printing, personalized gifts, and same-day services across stores in supermarkets and high streets nationwide.

When Alannah Sneyd joined as Digital Marketing Manager in August 2024, she knew there was work to do.

The challenges were clear

Legacy database dragging performance down – Hundreds of thousands of inactive contacts from in-store photo kiosks were inflating email send volumes but contributing almost nothing to engagement or revenue.

Batch-and-blast approach – Segmentation was based solely on open rates (increasingly unreliable), with a “sales are down, let’s send another email” mentality rather than strategic engagement.

Generic automations with zero personalization – Browse abandonment didn’t show customers the products they’d viewed. Welcome emails didn’t check if someone had already purchased before asking for reviews.

No dedicated owner – Email had been managed as an afterthought rather than a strategic channel.

For a small team managing marketing across multiple Timpson Group brands, it was time for a change.

Rebuilding email from the ground up

Working closely with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager, Alannah took a phased approach to transforming Max Spielmann’s email program.

Phase 1: Getting the data right

The first priority was audience quality. Alannah discovered that engagement from contacts acquired through in-store photo kiosks was dramatically lower than those who signed up via the website.

The solution:

• Introduced double opt-in for all new kiosk sign-ups to ensure quality over quantity
• Rebuilt segments based on click behavior, browsing activity, and recency – not just opens
• Removed long-term inactive kiosk customers, reducing average newsletter sends from 323,000 to 63,000

“People get nervous about reducing volume, but with the right insights in place, testing it on a handful of newsletters is often enough to show the impact,” Alannah notes.

Phase 2: Automation with actual intelligence

Next came a complete overhaul of Max Spielmann’s automations.
Key improvements:

Browse abandonment that actually works – Customers now see the exact products they browsed, not generic category links.

Extended abandonment series – A follow-up email added to the browse abandonment journey.

Welcome series with logic – Added purchase checks so customers who’d already bought didn’t get irrelevant “leave a review” emails, and those who didn’t purchase received a reminder to use their offer.

“It was a mix of everything – technical setup, design refresh, messaging, and adding sophisticated rules that just weren’t there before,” Alannah explains.

The team also tested continuously throughout the year to understand what resonated before peak season.

Phase 3: Smarter seasonal strategy

With cleaner data and better automations in place, Max Spielmann approached peak season differently – sending more strategically while actually reducing overall volume.

“Even with additional sends during peak, volume was down year on year,” Alannah says. “It’s about sending to the right people, not just the most people.”

For Christmas (when December 23rd is consistently their biggest day), the team pulled back on discounting and focused on convenience messaging for last-minute shoppers.

Working with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager made the transformation possible, Alannah says “with our Customer Success Manager’s support, we’ve been able to achieve things that would normally require a much bigger team or agency support. The relationship is more like a consultant-client dynamic – I come with challenges, and he gives me the blueprint to execute.”

Less really is more

The numbers tell the story:
Peak period 2025:

• Total email revenue increased 41% YoY
• Email sends reduced 63% YoY
• Open rates increased from 35% to 42%
• Click-through rate improved from 1.58% to 3.17%

Automation performance:

• Revenue up 78% YoY
• Automations now account for 38% of total email revenue, up from 30%
• Conversion rate increased from 17% to 37%

“The results show that revenue increase isn’t just from the send criteria changes,” Alannah reflects. “It’s come from the testing we did, designs looking better, and probably just consistency in sending more relevant emails to relevant people over time.”

Impact beyond the metrics

The efficiency story resonated with leadership too. “Senior people in the business like efficiency. The fact the results have been driven from fewer sends – and we didn’t have to spend more – that went down really well. Especially when other channels are getting more expensive year on year, having email working better is just a good story internally.”

With solid foundations in place, Alannah is eyeing bigger opportunities:

Unlocking in-store data – “We could almost replicate all the campaigns we’ve got just around those kiosk machines if we sorted out the data.”
Multi-channel expansion – SMS and WhatsApp remain untapped. “For customers using their phone to get photos onto the kiosk, it makes sense to explore.”

“Dotdigital has been really good for us,” Alannah notes. “The drag-and-drop builder means I can do things myself. The automation builder with visual notes means I can document why I built things a certain way. For a generalist marketer managing multiple brands, that matters.”