Founded in a beachside apartment on the Gold Coast of Australia in 2010, Princess Polly, a fashion-forward clothing brand, quickly became a local favorite. By their tenth anniversary, they were a global brand with over 200 employees between two offices in Gold Coast, Australia and Los Angeles, USA. Since becoming a global brand, their growth has skyrocketed, and their primary focus has shifted to scaling internationally beyond their Aussie roots.
The brand’s rapid growth combined with their need to cater to a niche audience of primarily Gen Z consumers prompted their push for a strategic eCommerce technology that could unify the customer journey — and keep up with the fast pace they were moving.
Customer attention spans are continually decreasing, and Gen Z is easily the most distracted. For brands, this presents a challenge: how can they more creatively — and effectively — retain their customers? “We want them to think of us first when they think about fashion,” says Kim Zorn, Head of Performance, Princess Polly.
The brand knew they needed to deliver an experience — not just a product — to capture and keep their customers’ attention. Not only that, Covid-19 pressured the brand to find new ways of communicating with their customers. In a recent survey, Zendesk found that in 2020 almost 40% of millennials and Gen Zers used messaging (on social, text, or embedded in an owned channel) for the very first time to connect with a brand. It was clear that their audience was there; Princess Polly just needed to reach out.
In addition, their international presence required finding a global technology partner that would meet their needs for personalization, as well as seamlessly integrate with their existing tech stack, especially their loyalty program, to drive retention.
Launching SMS marketing — a channel with a 98% text open rate and 90% of texts read within the first 3 minutes — solved half the battle for Princess Polly. Their target Gen Z demographic grew up with SMS as a part of their daily lives; it was already proven to capture their attention. Yotpo SMS & Email solved the rest.
Yotpo SMS & Email’s global capabilities checked a crucial box for Princess Polly’s needs. “Our evaluation process for SMS centered on needing a global platform. Many platforms couldn’t do global, but we have customers all around the world, so we need a global vendor that can deliver in all markets,” says Zorn.
In addition, Yotpo SMS & Email’s powerful integrations aligned with their desire for unified technology. An already existing Yotpo Reviews & Loyalty client, Princess Polly was drawn to the ability to craft a personalized and seamless customer journey leveraging all three products. “Platform synergies are necessary to ensure everything is talking to each other. It’s a must for delivering the best customer experience”, says Zorn. Specifically, the brand wanted to capitalize on Yotpo’s synergistic platform and set up SMS and loyalty flows to trigger messages designed to bring customers back to the site and send review requests through SMS.
The icing on the cake was the level of personalization Princess Polly could achieve with Yotpo SMS & Email. By segmenting their audiences into loyalty customers, non-loyalty customers, and customers who haven’t purchased in a certain time frame, they could deliver tailored experiences to drive engagement and conversion.
