TechStyle Fashion Group and General Assembly are drastically different companies that use email marketing in different ways. One thing they have in common is doing so exceptionally, as evidenced by their new EIS Awards.

Because email is such a crucial channel — every dollar spent sees an ROI of $38, according to the Data & Marketing Association — MediaPost launched the EIS Awards last year to recognize the best of the best. Deemed “outstanding email marketing programs and initiatives undertaken by brands and their agencies,” inaugural winners included American Express’s Your Business By The Numbers newsletter, a Royal Caribbean campaign with dynamic pricing, and Olive Garden’s Meatball Day sale.

A jury selected winners at the EIS Cocktail Party in New York City. Here’s a summary of what made these winners stand out:

General Assembly: Winner of the EIS Award for Lifecycle Programs

General Assembly teaches tech skills to companies and individuals alike, helping them stay competitive in the digital economy. But with a lean marketing team, General Assembly struggled with audience acquisition and retention. Using Sailthru’s Lifecycle Optimizer, the global education company evolved its email program, which previously involved time-consuming, manual workflows. (Local teams would pre-course assignments to new students individually.)

Designed with fully-integrated artificial intelligence, Lifecycle Optimizer enabled General Assembly to automate and personalize its email marketing, improving lead generation and curbing cancellation rates. As a result, product marketing has improved, increasing leads for their highest-value full-time career accelerators by 12%.

TechStyle Fashion Group: Winner of the EIS Award for Transactional/Ecommerce

Personalization is the hallmark of the customer experience for TechStyle Fashion Group, the parent company of JustFab, ShoeDazzle, Fabletics, FabKids and Savage X Fenty. The five subscription-based retailers onboard new customers with detailed quizzes about their sizes, preferences and even celebrity style inspirations. That data lives in robust profiles, which Sailthru’s artificially intelligent solutions helps TechStyle brands use to further personalize every interaction.

They send emails with the Sailthru platform that are personalized based not only on behavior, but interest. For example, JustFab calls out customers’ most-purchased product category in email subject lines and hero images with dynamic categories. This minute change — say, promoting animal print with “Bags and More in Prints That Roar!” as opposed to “Prints That Roar!” — helped increased JustFab’s click-to-open rates by 4.2% and drove conversion-per-click rates by 9.6%