Case Study

PR Cold Outreach Secures 50M+ Monthly-User Site Features & Backlink Placements with a 48.1% Open Rate and 11.2% CTR

Email Marketing PR AI Creative Psychology

Built and deployed a newsletter repurposed as a digital press kit for targeted cold outreach, achieving a 48.1% open rate and securing earned media placements to expand brand visibility and organic acquisition channels.

About This Project

Company: Evoke Marketplace
Industry: Luxury Blockchain E-Commerce
Campaign Duration: 30 days

United States 5–10 Employees Luxury Blockchain E-Commerce

At EVOKE Phygital Marketplace, we believe in giving back and making a positive impact in the world. Through our platform, we are dedicated to supporting charitable organizations and causes that help create lasting change with every purchase.

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+50M

Monthly user features

+11.20%

Click through rate

+48.1%

Email open rate

+1.20%

Conversion rate

30 Days

Campaign duration

+403

Emails delivered

Approach

The Strategy

Gender distribution in cryptocurrency knowledge and blockchain

Figure 01. Shows the gender distributions of the variables on knowledge, security, purchase and the relationship with cryptocurrency and blockchain (Alonso, S., et.al, 2023).

Identify the Crypto-Luxury Target Demographic

EVOKE Phygital Marketplace is a luxury e-commerce brand with a humanitarian twist; every purchase will allocate a percentage to a charity of the buyer's choice. This is only possible with EVOKE's blockchain technology, which is the same technology that enables transactions for decentralized currencies. The Campaign's goal was to promote the Oceanic 333, a men's luxury watch priced at $4,999.99.

Upon further research, I found a drastic disproportion in how much more men in America understand Blockchain and cryptocurrency technology than women do. Because of this, I decided to avoid promoting Blockchain as the center of the story, but instead focus on the clean water the watch will bring to underserved nations — while promoting this story to high-authority publications that were blockchain-literate, which opened up opportunities.

Establish Effective Communication

After researching the socioeconomic status of the average luxury shopper, I decided to use Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development Theory for my messaging and approach. Erikson's theory focuses on the challenges every human must overcome at different stages of life to lead a fulfilling life.

For this campaign, I focused on his stage 7: generativity vs. stagnation (middle adulthood ages 40–65), which is about giving back to society to avoid stagnation. This fits perfectly with the Oceanic 333 timepiece's charitable efforts and EVOKE's purposeful purchasing — creating a story to justify the luxury price while resonating deeply with the target demographic.

Erikson's Psychosocial Development Theory stages

Figure 02. Shows the eight stages of Erikson's Psychosocial Development Theory (Cherry MSEd, K., 2025).

Implementation

The Execution

Create the Promotional Material

The first step was to create a promotional video for the Oceanic 333 that displays its sophistication, significance, and purpose. This would make it easier to send to publications while effectively conveying the powerful story of this timepiece and its role in supporting clean water in underserved countries.

This video was made using Adobe After Effects, ArtGrid.io stock video footage, Creatify AI for the underwater mockup of the watch variations, and EVOKE token animation.

Strategically Target Publications

Given EVOKE's Blockchain business model, I knew crypto and finance publications would be interested in this product. Not only was the watch beautiful with charitable significance, but it also moved blockchain technology forward in practical ways.

I compiled a list of editors and decision-makers at institutions that would empathize with EVOKE's efforts and products. Once compiled, the contacts were put into a cold email outreach sequence that would automatically reply to the thread if there was no response. Erik Erikson's stage 7 language was implemented to support the tonality of attracting luxury timepiece buyers.

Create and Repurpose the Newsletter

I knew the cold email sequence alone would not suffice for telling the Oceanic story to editors, so a newsletter-style email was created and linked to the cold outreach. This told the full story of the timepiece's charity efforts upon purchase, product videos, and how blockchain technology weaves it all together.

This proved very effective upon promotion; it could also serve as a blog post on the company's website as it was keyword-rich. You can view the newsletter article here.

Outcomes

Performance Results

The cold outreach publication campaign was a success. Publications such as Techbullion, The Blockopedia, Medium, and TechRound were willing to cover the story of the Oceanic — many editors calling it a powerful story and highlighting the blockchain innovation factor. Not only was the outreach a success, but the email metrics also significantly outperformed industry standard benchmarks across open rate, CTR, and conversion rate.

+50M

Monthly user features

+48.1%

Email open rate

+11.20%

Click through rate

$100

Total budget spend

Takeaways

Final Thoughts

This campaign demonstrated that a compelling brand story — grounded in psychology, purpose, and innovation — can break through to high-authority publications without a massive budget. The Oceanic 333's charitable narrative and blockchain foundation created a uniquely compelling hook for crypto-literate editors, validating the hypothesis that earned media can be more impactful than paid placement at the right stage of brand development.

The results confirmed strong outreach fundamentals: a targeted contact list, psychologically-aligned messaging, and a repurposable press kit. With refinements to follow-up sequencing and expanded outreach to luxury lifestyle publications, this framework is positioned to drive sustained backlink acquisition and brand authority growth.

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