Challenge

With three decades of retail experience, Jawns on Fire founder Brian Dein was determined to bring the sneakerhead community together. And while Jawns on Fire is approaching their first official year in business, the brand is already thriving by connecting customers with their favorite sneaker brands including Nike, Nike Jordan, Adidas, and more.

Although the brand had more of a brick-and-mortar presence, they were looking to create more personalized experiences with their customers. Doing so would allow the brand to build on their community and reach a wider audience beyond their physical store with online sales.

The brand’s sneakerhead customers want to stay connected after making a purchase. Because of this, staying in communication with their favorite sneaker store allows shoppers to plan their purchases around future drops, receive educational updates on how to care for their shoes, and so much more. Customers even say that although they can buy sneakers anywhere, they choose to come to Jawns on Fire because the brand treats them like family.

For Dein, it’s all about finding the right balance of communication via SMS and email to ensure that his brand’s messages don’t come across as intrusive to his shoppers. “There’s a fine line between intriguing your customers and bothering them,” says Dein. “And our previous email provider made it hard for us to give shoppers that personalized experience and to connect what we’re sending between SMS and email.”

And with a clunky email editor that made it challenging to design the kind of branded emails that Dein was looking for, Jawns on Fire’s previous email provider simply wasn’t cutting it. But when Dein learned that Yotpo SMSBump offered email in addition to SMS, he was excited to bring both communication channels under one roof for more personalized, one-to-one outreach to his loyal customers.

Solutions

When Jawns on Fire started using Yotpo’s email solution, they noticed how the user-friendly editor unlocked more customization options almost immediately for more on-brand emails. They can now easily apply their brand’s look and feel with a brand kit of standard colors, fonts, and styles to any of the hundreds of creative template designs available in Yotpo’s Email Library. Then, they can customize with unique features to make emails even more engaging.

“Canva is a huge piece of our toolkit when it comes to designing emails,” says Dein. “Now, we have the flexibility to add our Canva designs to emails in just one click, or create new Canva designs without ever leaving the email editor.” Plus, they can easily click and drag elements to add Youtube and TikTok videos to their emails to share their brand’s content. “Now, it’s so much easier to build on-brand designs,” says Dein.

Not only did the email editor empower Jawns on Fire to create on-brand emails, but it was simple to use as well, which stood out from their previous provider. “Quite frankly, without looking at any of the videos, manuals, or support articles, I was able to figure everything out easily, which felt so different from other email providers. If I do need anything, I can simply meet with my dedicated CSM to ask questions, learn about new features, and optimize my email strategy.”

According to Dein, the biggest benefit is having SMS and email in one seamless tool as it allows for more efficiency and opens up deeper orchestration. “Yotpo SMSBump is really a one-stop shop,” he says. “Now, all of my content is at my fingertips. I only need to upload that image or graphic once and it’s there for me when I’m writing a text or drafting an email.”

Yotpo’s detailed segmentation also helped the Jawns on Fire team unlock personalization with ease — creating a segment only once to send more curated text and email touches. For instance, the brand can create segments for new releases based on which sneakers customers purchased in the past — recommending the next model via text and email seamlessly. “We can personalize in a way that not only makes customers feel special, but also cuts down on the cost for both our texts and emails since we only pay for what we send,” says Dein.

With Yotpo SMSBump, Jawns on Fire can grow and scale their subscribers in one place, evaluate how their subscriber tools perform, and optimize as needed. After a high-value transaction of designer sneakers, customers often want to stay in the know by signing up for SMS and email. In this case, the Jawns on Fire team can seamlessly connect with their Shopify POS in their brick-and-mortar store, as well as their online checkout to grow and scale their lists to deliver on those customer expectations.

Results

With clear dashboard analytics, the brand is able to see performance for both SMS and email as well as the performance of their overall marketing strategy on both channels combined. Yotpo’s best-in-class analytics empower the Jawns on Fire team to dive into what is working well for their customers and what isn’t. “Within seconds, I can easily see how my SMS campaigns and emails have performed in a clear, effective way,” says Dein.

In the designer sneakers space, Jawns on Fire doesn’t expect prospective customers to shop right away. That’s why they focus on building a community first, with authentic, engaging outreach to their loyal shoppers via text and email. Enabling automated flows via text and email ensures that they focus their energy on outreach that meets customers in the right moments — earning over 410x ROI.

In addition, engaging authentically with their most loyal customers through text and email not only fosters that community further, but it drives exceptional results. For their nine month anniversary, Jawns on Fire sent personalized texts and emails to their early, loyal customers who had been there from the start — offering an exclusive 20% off discount in-store only. The brand’s SMS campaign earned 246x ROI, while the follow-up email campaign had 161x ROI.

With the ultimate visibility of their campaign results at their fingertips, Jawns on Fire has learned from each and every communication with their customers — focusing on the optimal email strategy for strong results. Jawns on Fire has seen over 346x ROI overall from their email campaigns with Yotpo — driven by their highly engaging emails, as well as significantly lower email costs than other providers. "With a longer purchase cycle for high-value items, we might spend more time nurturing customers before they come back to buy again. But even so, our monthly cost for email is less than 1% of the revenue we gain from using Yotpo Email.”

For Dein, it’s all about the experience that the Jawns on Fire brand can create, and the value that can be provided to their customers with connected SMS and email communication. “I feel like marketers say they personalize their communications strategy, but then send the same bulk email to all of their customers,” says Dein. “One of my biggest goals for 2023 is to increase my email personalization so that customers feel really special whenever they hear from us. And with Yotpo SMSBump, that’ll be so easy to do.”

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