How the INKEY List’s SMS programme with Attentive drives incremental revenue
Learn how skincare brand The INKEY List uses personalised text messaging to increase growth, revenue, and retention.
The INKEY List knows that skincare can be confusing. That’s why they take an educational approach to marketing to their “skincare curious” Gen Z and millennial consumers, who want to understand more about their skin so they can make better decisions.
As a relatively young brand founded in 2018, The INKEY List needed a channel to supplement their marketing efforts and drive more shoppers to their website to make purchases.
Georgie Little, Head of Retention and Loyalty at The INKEY List, knew from experience that SMS could help the brand increase website traffic and revenue from their mobile-first audience. But it was also important for the team to work with an SMS partner that understands the UK consumer landscape and can provide guidance on best practices for engaging them with marketing text messages.
Growing an engaged audience of SMS subscribers
With Attentive’s support, The INKEY List launched their UK SMS programme in a matter of weeks. The brand leaned into the platform’s full suite of sign-up units from the start, which allowed them to harness their existing website traffic to grow a healthy list of subscribers.
This was a crucial step to make sure The INKEY List could reach a large audience with their first SMS campaigns and see worthwhile results right away. It also helped the brand grow their email list simultaneously.
Maximising engagement and revenue at key touch points
The INKEY List set up a series of triggered text messages early on, to engage subscribers with personalised messages at critical points in the customer lifecycle. These messages are sent based on specific behaviours or actions their subscribers take, like opting in to SMS, abandoning their shopping cart, or making a purchase.
For example, their welcome journey encourages new subscribers to make their first purchase soon after opting in to SMS. They incentivize these shoppers with a discount code and friendly follow-up reminders if they still haven’t converted after a few days.
The brand uses triggered browse and cart abandonment messages to re-engage high intent shoppers and drive them back to the website to buy, recovering otherwise lost revenue. And, recently, they introduced price drop journeys into the mix. These messages alert subscribers when a product they viewed or added to their cart is available at a lower price, creating a sense of urgency for them to shop.
The INKEY List also uses their post-purchase journey to share relevant product knowledge with recent shoppers, like the top five ways to use a specific product or tips for how to make it last longer. This strategy is a nice and easy way for the brand to offer customers advice, but it also allows them to add value and increase retention through SMS.
Using data to power personalisation
Having access to data from their website, loyalty program, and the rest of their tech stack is key for The INKEY List to be able to send more targeted text messages.
For example, the brand has a quiz on their website to help customers find the right products for their skin and build a personal routine. They’re able to use that data and insight to send customers relevant content and recommendations based on their responses. It’s a smart move considering shoppers in the UK, Canada, and Australia would like to receive a personalised recommendation after sharing their product preferences, according to a recent survey report.
Driving revenue by helping customers make informed choices about their skincare is at the core of The INKEY List’s retention strategy.
Seeing immediate and impactful results from SMS
Since launching their UK SMS programme with Attentive, The INKEY List has seen 26x total ROI. The average conversion rate across all triggered messages in the UK is 36%, accounting for 80% of total SMS-attributable revenue.
Little emphasises that the results they see from SMS complement the work of their email program, driving additional incremental revenue for the brand.
The INKEY List has also successfully launched SMS programmes in the US, Canada, and Australia with Attentive.
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