Uswitch turns AI-optimized subject lines and CTAs into a smarter path to smart meter connections

Use CaseOnboarding

TopicsMultivariate Testing

IndustryTechnology

ProductBrazeAI™

RegionEMEA

Uswitch email promoting eight hours of free electricity through its Power Hours app offer.

Problem

Uswitch shifted its marketing strategy from a web-first model toward one focused on increasing customer usage of (and engagement with) its mobile app. But creating and testing subject lines and CTAs by hand was slow, prone to internal creative bias, and hard to sustain across high-volume seasonal campaigns. It also didn’t have a big positive impact on engagement.

Strategy

Uswitch's CRM team adopted BrazeAI Content Optimizer™ to create and test subject lines and CTA wording across onboarding, seasonal, and reactivation email journeys.

Results

Content Optimizer messages repeatedly outperformed their control messages, including a 43% higher clickthrough rate on a follow-up reactivation email. A new CTA surfaced by the tool—one the team hadn't tested before and was initially unsure about—drove a 17% increase (directionally) in offer takeup, and Uswitch has since adopted the CTA as the new default.

INDUSTRY

PRODUCTS USED

BY THE METRICS

43%

Higher click-through on reactivation email

9.6%

Higher open rate in the interest-stage email journey

17%

Directional increase in CTA clicks led to adoption as the new default CTA

Uswitch is a UK comparison site that helps consumers switch providers for energy, insurance, broadband, and mobile contracts. Prices in these markets tend to shift substantially year to year, so many households make a habit of reviewing their options annually to find a better deal. Over the past several years, Uswitch has shifted its strategic focus from the web experience and one-time switching decisions, toward the mobile app, where deeper engagement is easier to build. For example, once a user connects a smart meter, the app becomes an ongoing management tool for tracking consumption, monitoring appliances, and managing costs.

Uswitch's customer relationship management (CRM) team's top KPIs are tied to encouraging smart meter connections, app downloads, and long-term retention. These are important engagement signals that show a user has moved from making a one-off switch to building an ongoing relationship with the brand.

Evaluating creative options takes time

As Uswitch knows, it takes time to research copy options, read the fine print, and make important decisions, which is exactly why it helps consumers compare providers and surface better deals. Similarly, testing the creative for engagement takes time, and the CRM team needed a solution to help. Testing subject lines and CTAs one at a time limits what you can effectively optimize for at scale.

Seasonal campaigns (like the May Bank Holiday push) were another challenge, as they put additional pressure on the team’s capacity to test copy and CTA options for an additional six email sends in a month, each needing its own manual pass for quality assurance. One-off sends were especially difficult to test properly, since there wasn't time for the kind of iterative optimization that longer-running journeys allowed.

Changing the subject (lines) with BrazeAI Content Optimizer™

Already a Braze customer, Uswitch's CRM team began using the BrazeAI Content Optimizer™ (currently in Beta) to test key email elements like subject lines, CTAs, across onboarding, seasonal, and reactivation journeys. CRM manager Elisa Rosai found the tool easy to get up and running, especially since it is seamlessly integrated into Canvas. “It’s super intuitive and I didn’t have to think twice to understand how it works,” she said. “Setting up a test with Content Optimizer takes, honestly, not even five minutes.”

A smartphone displays a Uswitch email offering eight hours of free electricity, set against a pink-to-orange gradient background.

Results: Testing at a scale creative instinct couldn't match

The team's strongest result came from a follow-up reactivation email, where a Content Optimizer variant beat the team's control by 43% on clickthrough rate. Rosai was clear about what that number actually proves: Not that AI writes better copy, but that testing more variants, more often can surface winners that a single round of manual A/B testing would likely miss.

That showed up again in a CTA test the team almost didn't run. Content Optimizer surfaced a wording variant they hadn't planned to try, the kind of option their own instincts would have ruled out before it ever reached a live send. It won by 17% on offer takeup, a strong enough signal that Uswitch made it the new default CTA.

A subject line test in the interest-stage journey turned in a statistically significant 9.6% lift in open rate. Without conversion tracking on every send, the team used clickthrough as a proxy metric and treated each incremental win as part of a bigger pattern: More testing volume compounds into stronger engagement across the funnel. A voice and tone refresh already in the works will give the team a fresh batch of copy to run through the same process.

“Content Optimizer helped us test variants we couldn't on our own. Even a simple test on a CTA drove a 17% lift in offer redemption—something that wouldn't have happened had we not been able to experiment.”

Elisa Rosai

Associate Director of Social Impact, Braze

Key Takeaways

Content optimizer enabled the team to bypass internal bias to surface winning ideas humans rule out

The team's strongest-performing CTA was one they were initially skeptical of—a variant their own creative instincts would likely have never tested.

Small wins compound toward core KPIs

Clickthrough and open rate lifts translate directly into Uswitch's top engagement metric—smart meter connections—even without full conversion tracking on every send.

One-off sends are worth optimizing, too

Even without time for continuous optimization, testing a few variables per send cut down on Uswitch's manual QA burden and allowed the team to test more than usual within fast-paced campaign windows.