From the Ground Up: An Email Program That Moved the Needle

The Oxford Hills (TOH) is a multi-experience destination in Mount Elgin, Ontario, offering 18-hole park-style golf, fine dining at KALOS, blissful retreat at Wave Nordic Spa, year-round events, and a premier wedding venue. Rooted in their community, TOH serves both a dedicated golf membership and the broader Oxford County region. We partnered with them to build their email marketing program from the ground up, with the intention of growing it into an audience engagement machine.

The Challenge

Crafting connection

When we began working with The Oxford Hills, they had no email marketing program in place. For a venue with multiple revenue lines, a seasonal membership base, and a growing calendar of events and experiences, that represented a significant missed opportunity. Guests and members had no consistent channel to stay informed, and the business had no reliable way to drive repeat visits, promote new offerings, or build the ongoing engagement that keeps a hospitality brand top of mind between seasons.

Our Solution

We built the email marketing program deliberately—starting with the right infrastructure, then layering in the strategy and consistency that turn a mailing list into a genuine marketing asset. Here is how we approached it:

Platform setup & list strategy

We set up The Oxford Hills on MailerLite and established a segmentation framework from the outset, separating golfers from the main list, and sorting the rest based on their various attributes and interests. This allowed us to send broadly when appropriate, and with surgical precision when the content called for it. We also installed a newsletter opt-in form on their website, using strategic offers at different points to drive enrollment.

Weekly Content Production

We built the email program around a Weekly Digest—a consistent, editorial-style email sent every week without exception. We treated it like a publication, not a promotional vehicle: reliable timing, genuine content, and a format the audience came to expect.

Campaign Layering

On top of the digest, we designed and executed campaigns across every facet of the property—golf season openings, KALOS restaurant announcements, event promotions, Wave Nordic Spa programming, and seasonal updates.

Intentional List Management

As the list grew toward approximately 7,000 subscribers, we recognized that size was masking a quality problem. We deliberately contracted the list to ~3,000 highly engaged contacts. Open rates rose from the low 30s to the high 40s almost immediately.

Measurement & Iteration

Every campaign was tracked and reviewed. We monitored open rates, click rates, and engagement patterns quarter over quarter, testing subject lines and send timing as the program matured. The improvements were not dramatic single moments—they were the compound effect of small, consistent adjustments over three years.

The Outcome

We built the core of an evergreen audience engagement engine

What started as a blank slate became one of the highest-performing email programs we’ve run. Across 39 months and nearly 900,000 sends, we delivered results that consistently outpaced industry benchmarks—and translated directly into website traffic, audience engagement, and meaningful actions on the site..