Tiger Tags: a small family business on a mission to make school life easier

What started as a small family idea has grown into Tiger Tags, a trusted name label brand helping parents keep track of the belongings children are most likely to lose: school uniforms, nursery items, and everyday essentials. Founded in 2024 by Joe and his mum, Sonja, the UK-based, family-run team of four quickly realised the value of connecting directly with their audience.

Shortly after launching, they took their first steps into email marketing with EmailOctopus, using it to reach parents and schools at key points in the school calendar. For a team used to face-to-face conversations and physical print, email marketing felt unfamiliar at first, but by keeping campaigns clear and simple, they’ve made it a reliable way to nurture trust, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sales – all while supporting schools and PTAs through their fundraising initiatives.

Read on to see how they’re using email marketing to make school life a little easier for families.

Can you tell us a bit about Tiger Tags and the customers you serve?

Tiger Tags came to life in 2024, when Mum and I (Joe) decided to turn a little family idea into something real. What started as a casual chat at the kitchen table, helping parents keep tabs on school uniforms and rescue them from the depths of lost property, has now grown into a name-label brand trusted by families all over the country.

We specialise in high-quality, long-lasting name labels for school uniforms, nursery items and everyday essentials. Our labels are designed to withstand the real world of childhood: frequent washing, muddy PE kits, swimming lessons and the occasional forgotten jumper. They are quick to apply, durable and created with busy families firmly in mind.

Many of us in the team remember our own parents painstakingly sewing name tapes into uniforms, a job that seemed to take an entire evening! Modern family life moves much faster, yet the need to label belongings has not disappeared. We simply provide a smarter, quicker solution.

Most of our customers are parents of nursery and primary-aged children, with a sprinkling of secondary school families and even a few care homes, too. We also work closely with schools and PTAs, who kindly recommend us at key moments in the school calendar, such as starting Reception, moving schools, or gearing up for a new term or a seasonal uniform switch. We understand those little pressure points because we’ve been there ourselves.

The lovely extra is the fundraising element. For every set of name labels sold, schools and PTAs earn £1 when families use their referral code. Being able to give something back means a great deal to us, very much in the same spirit as our Christmas fundraiser.

As a small business, every order is hand-packed with care. Friendly, responsive customer service and products that genuinely do what they promise sit at the heart of everything we do. When a parent places an order through Tiger Tags, they are not simply buying name labels. They could be supporting their school’s fundraising efforts while gaining a little slice of calm in the chaos of the morning routine. It is one small purchase that keeps jumpers out of lost property and quietly gives back to the school at the same time.

Tiger Tags is built on family values, practical solutions and the belief that small details make a big difference. If it belongs to a child and has a habit of disappearing into the cloakroom, we’re here to help it find its way home.

When did you start using email marketing as part of your business strategy? What were your main goals for using email marketing?

We started using EmailOctopus in August 2024, not long after launching Tiger Tags. It was our very first step into email marketing as a brand and, if I’m honest, into large-scale email marketing full stop!

Having worked in commercial print for over 20 years, and having previously built our Christmas fundraising brand organically from scratch through cold calling schools and sending sample boxes, email campaigns at scale felt completely unfamiliar and, initially, quite daunting. We were used to conversations, relationships and physical print. Suddenly, we were talking about automation, segmentation and open rates!

That said, we knew that to give Tiger Tags the strongest possible start, we needed to cast the net wider and reach parents in a way that felt natural to them. Email is part of everyday life for families, especially at key school moments, so it made sense to meet them there.

We also had a valuable bank of data from our Christmas project, which had enormous potential if used thoughtfully and responsibly. Email marketing gave us a way to reconnect with an audience that already knew and trusted us, while introducing them to a new brand built on the same values.

For us, the main goals were clear: build awareness, nurture trust, drive sales at key seasonal peaks and create a direct line of communication with our customers that we owned. EmailOctopus gave us a simple, accessible way to do exactly that, and made what once felt intimidating suddenly feel achievable.

How does email fit into your overall audience engagement strategy versus your website or social media channels?

Email is probably the most steady and dependable part of our audience engagement strategy.

Our website is where everything ultimately happens – it’s basically our shop window. It’s where parents come to browse, customise, and place their orders, and where PTAs and schools find out more about fundraising potential. Social media helps people discover us, for sure, and see what we are about as a small family business. It gives a bit of personality and shows our products in real life.

Email feels different, though. It’s more direct and more intentional.

With social media, you are always slightly at the mercy of algorithms, the magic formula for which seems to change like the weather. Posts get missed, timing is unpredictable, and attention spans are short. With email, if someone has signed up, they have actively invited us into their inbox. That changes the dynamic.

It allows us to speak to parents at very specific points in the school calendar. Back to school, summer uniform swaps, starting Reception, the January fresh start. These are predictable pressure points, and email lets us show up at exactly the right moment with a reminder that feels useful rather than random.

It also helps us build familiarity over time. A parent might not need labels today, but in three months, they probably will, and our emails will be nestled safely somewhere in their inbox to refer back to. Email keeps us gently on their radar without relying on them happening to scroll past a post at the right time.

In simple terms, social media helps people find us, our website educates and processes orders, and email keeps the connection warm in between.

How often do you send campaigns and why? Have you experimented with different frequencies, and what have you learned about what your audience prefers?

We actually approach email frequency slightly differently depending on who we are talking to.

For Tiger Tags, we have two distinct audiences and mailing lists. One is parent-focused (encouraging purchases), and the other is aimed at schools and PTAs from a fundraising angle.

Our parent emails go out more regularly, but always around key moments in the retail and school calendar. We tend to align campaigns with supermarket and high street uniform sales, half terms, and the times of year when research and our own data show parents are most likely to realise they need name labels. It is a consumable product. Children grow, uniforms get replaced, items get lost, and we often see parents ordering two or three times within a year. We consistently see spikes around Easter in April and again at the end of the summer holidays in late August. That pattern is very clear in our EmailOctopus reporting, which has helped us time campaigns more confidently.

Our school and PTA emails are much less frequent and far more intentional. We only send them when we have something genuinely useful to say. For existing partners, that might be reminders and practical tips to promote their school code to parents. For potential new partners, it provides clear guidance on how to sign up for free and make the most of Tiger Tags as a simple fundraising stream.

We have experimented with frequency, particularly on the parent side, and what we have learned is that relevance matters far more than volume. When an email lands at the right time with a clear purpose, engagement is strong. When it feels unnecessary, it shows.

We are very deliberate about not emailing for the sake of it. It wastes our time and theirs. Our goal is to be helpful, timely and respectful of busy inboxes.

How has email marketing influenced customer relationships or brand loyalty for Tiger Tags?

Email marketing has already played a key role in building relationships and encouraging repeat orders for Tiger Tags. Around 10.7% of our total orders are reorders, and we can clearly see that these often follow our seasonal campaigns. On average, repeat customers place a second order about 160 days after their first, which aligns closely with the back-to-school and Easter periods – our busiest seasonal peaks. In fact, we often see our click-through rates double during these periods, showing that well-timed emails directly drive engagement and sales.

Interestingly, many repeat customers continue to reorder even without using a discount code, which shows that the quality and convenience of our product have built genuine loyalty beyond promotions. 

For us, email has not only encouraged repeat purchases but also strengthened trust. Parents know they can rely on Tiger Tags to arrive quickly, be high-quality, and make school life a little easier. As a relatively young brand, there is still much to learn, but the data so far shows that targeted, timely, and helpful email communications are already shaping customer behaviour and building brand loyalty.

How do you balance promotional emails vs value-driven content for your subscribers?

Most of our parent emails are promotional in nature. They are reminders to order, often supported by a seasonal discount code. That said, we are very conscious of how crowded inboxes are. We send roughly 30 to 40 emails in total across the year, concentrated around key seasonal periods, specifically when parents are most likely to buy uniforms or replace items.

We are parents ourselves. We know what happens when brands send daily, sometimes hourly emails. It becomes a reflex ‘swipe and delete’. That is exactly what we want to avoid.

Alongside promotional campaigns, we include “why use Tiger Tags” messaging and product education, and we plan to build more value-led content into our strategy throughout 2026. The 2024 to 2025 period was intentionally a little experimental for us. We were testing whether email marketing was right for our audience and whether it would genuinely support the business in the way we hoped, having used ‘old-school’ traditional methods for so long.

Our promotional messaging is deliberately simple and familiar. Our discounts are supportive rather than dramatic. We don’t rely on huge price cuts because the quality and longevity of the products speak for themselves. However, we are mindful that the uniform season can be an expensive time for families, so where we can ease that pressure a little, we will.

For us, the balance comes down to timing and intention. If an email lands when a parent actually needs name labels, and it makes that decision easier or more affordable, then it feels helpful rather than sales-driven.

What was the biggest challenge you faced with your email marketing strategy, and how did you address it?

The biggest challenge was simply getting started. Having built previous brands entirely through real people picking up the phone and having a conversation, modern, widespread email marketing felt completely alien. What had worked brilliantly before – a personal, hands-on approach - was suddenly replaced by automation and digital campaigns.

To tackle it, we decided to take the plunge and start small. We created a simple, promotional template with a clear message: who we are, what we do, why we’re great, and why parents should give us a try. Almost a year and a half on, we’ve made a few tweaks, but our campaigns still follow that original approach - simple, clear, and focused on building trust.

Have you noticed specific campaigns that performed especially well? What do you think made them successful?

The campaigns that do best are usually all about timing. When we, as parents, suddenly realise we need labels, we find most other parents are in the same boat! Send a reminder at that moment, and people actually open, click, and order.

We’ve noticed school holidays tend to get higher open rates than term time, but the time of day matters too. Sending an email about half an hour before school pick-up, when parents are sitting in the car waiting for the gates to open, seems to be our magic hour!

What results have you seen since using EmailOctopus for your email campaigns?

We’ve seen steady, comfortable growth. We’re seeing organic growth in reorders and a huge increase in new customers. It’s clear our “bread and butter” formula works, so it feels like it’s only up from here.

The template function in EmailOctopus has been a huge time saver – it’s very much a case of working smarter, not harder! Having our regular marketing reliably covered gives us the freedom to explore new campaigns, brand collaborations, improve our systems, and eventually expand our product range. Email has become a comfortable, dependable part of how we connect with parents and schools while supporting growth in other areas of the business. 

Looking ahead, are there any new content formats or strategies you’d like to experiment with next?

Looking ahead, we’re excited to focus on building relationships with new partner schools, increasing brand awareness, and reaching new customers. As a fun, family-run brand with bags of personality, we’d like to continue letting that shine through in our emails. Over time, we hope our reliable “bread and butter” campaigns will start to have a little touch of jam – experimenting with more playful, engaging content while still keeping things practical and helpful for parents and schools.

What’s one lesson you’ve learned from your email marketing journey that surprised you?

At the beginning, we assumed we’d need clever automation, fancy designs and lots of bells and whistles to make email marketing effective. In reality, our strongest campaigns are usually the most straightforward. A clear subject line, a simple message and good timing outperform anything overly complicated.

We’ve also learned that you don’t have to show up every day to stay relevant. Fewer, well-timed, intentional emails tend to perform far better than frequent ones.