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How United By Blue Drives 40% MoM SMS Subscriber Growth

  • Industry
    Industry
    Fashion & Accessories
  • Platform
    Platform
    Shopify Plus
  • Challenge
    Challenge
    Grow a subscriber list from scratch and use existing tech stack to send personalized messages
  • Solution
    Solution
    Partner with Yotpo to scale subscribers, drive revenue, and leverage two-way chat functionality
  • Results
    Results
    1k+ subscribers on day of launch, 40% MoM average subscriber growth, 22% CVR on cart abandonment flows
unitedbyblue.com
United By Blue is seeing over 80x ROI by engaging their customers at exactly the right time with personalized SMS flows.

Company

United By Blue is so much more than your average retail business. Wanting to combat the severity of ocean pollution, the sustainability-focused brand not only sells clothing and accessories made from recycled materials, but they’ve also made it their mission to remove one pound of trash from oceans and waterways with every product purchased since 2010. With the help of community cleanups, volunteers, and more, United By Blue has successfully removed over 3 million pounds of trash.

However, the past year has shifted the way United By Blue has been able to operate. Forced to put a pause on community cleanups and in-person events, the brand has had to change the way they communicate with their customers. Their community wanted to stay engaged, but United By Blue needed a scalable way to be able to drive those immediate, personal connections in a time when they couldn’t engage their shoppers in person. SMS was the perfect fit.

Customers expect texts from us now. They’re not going to reply to a marketing email, but they will interact with an SMS message. They feel our brand voice in a more immediate and engaging way.
Kristina Garcia
Kristina Garcia
eCommerce Manager, United By Blue
80x
ROI
on triggered SMS flows

Challenge

United By Blue was in search of an SMS platform that could expand beyond basic marketing capabilities and do more than just send texts. They sought out a platform that could meet their customers at every step in their journey, from opting in to engaging in conversations with the brand. This meant they’d need to segment by customer data to more personally target each shopper depending on their stage of the buyer journey, like whether or not they’d purchased or if they were a VIP customer. This level of personalization was essential for the brand to ensure they were launching a channel that made conversations easy and engaging, so customers could get in touch on their own terms.

On a hunt to connect with customers on a deeper level, the brand needed a solution that could accomplish their two main goals. First, they needed to be able to grow a subscriber list from scratch in a short amount of time. Second, they needed to be able to create simple yet effective messaging that would drive customer engagement.

Solution

To bring their SMS vision to life, United by Blue looked to SMSBump By Yotpo. Having experienced a positive onboarding journey with both Yotpo Reviews & Loyalty solutions, it was a no brainer to get started with Yotpo’s SMS solution as well.

“We knew there was a high amount of care and dedicated help and support at Yotpo, and that really showed with SMS,” says Melissa Tilley, Customer Experience Manager, United By Blue. The brand worked closely with their Customer Success Manager (CSM) to launch their subscriber collection tools: an opt-in at checkout, an on-site pop-up, and a dedicated landing page — the more tools, the better.

To solidify an incentive that was sure to grow their list, United by Blue added an extra kicker: a raffle entry for a $200 gift card. “Our CSM shared best practices for subscriber collection, and when it came to our gift card initiative execution, he helped us track and capture the raffle list,” said Tilley. “Onboarding was really seamless and worked out with the timing we planned to launch.”

United By Blue started small with SMS marketing — they simply took a good look at their email strategy and identified what could work well for SMS. In addition, SMSBump By Yotpo’s deep synergy with Shopify enabled the brand to customize their automated flows based on purchase behavior, and the integration with their help desk software, Gorgias, powered their automated two-way conversations.

SMS and email are two separate channels that complement each other. One doesn’t replace the other just because they serve different means. We look at email as the news story and SMS as the news bulletin, the headline.
Kristina Garcia
Kristina Garcia
eCommerce Manager, United By Blue
22%
Conversion rate
on cart abandonment flows

Results

Their SMS launch strategy was simple, but effective. United By Blue announced their new SMS channel via email, and the CTA drove customers to a dedicated landing page to opt-in. With this strategy, United By Blue collected over 1,000 subscribers on the first day of launch. 

Maintaining that strategy, along with two additional subscriber collection opportunities, the brand has seen over 40% MoM growth in their subscribers in the first 6 months. Upon opting in, customers receive a welcome flow that’s personalized based on whether or not they’ve purchased before, and since launch, that welcome flow has seen a 23x ROI. The immediate subscriber growth empowered the brand to enable an abandoned cart flow, which saw a 22.6% conversion rate and brought in over $50k in revenue.  

In addition, the brand also received overwhelmingly positive feedback. “We get excited text messages back,” says Tilley. “We’ve also had a ton of customers reach out with general questions, like if we’ll be restocking certain products, or the date of the next sale, or even questions about their order status.” The two-way conversation capability has provided deep customer insights and empowered the brand to expand their strategy. In the future, United by Blue plans to further expand their SMS strategy with loyalty flows. 

Advice
Once you get started with the channel and see you will continue to have growth in other channels simultaneously proves you can continue to invest in SMS. We started small and saw immediate return, so we layered on cart abandonment. Just getting started, even with a small budget, can yield results.
Kristina Garcia
eCommerce Manager, United By Blue

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