Attentive’s partnership with The Email Experience—a leading retention marketing agency—has been a driving force behind client success. Here’s how they’ve done it.

We had a chance to sit down with Jason Donapel, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of The Email Experience, to share his thoughts on the benefits of consolidating SMS and email marketing with Attentive. 

Jason outlined the major benefits he’s seen with consolidation, including unified data insights, enhanced targeting and personalization, increased reach and multi-channel engagement, and better efficiency and ROI. 

From navigating sensitive migration discussions to maximizing client performance, Jason’s expertise offers a roadmap for agencies on the value this switch can bring to their clients. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion. 

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How did you initiate conversations with your clients about switching email providers? 

Discussing platform migration with clients can be sensitive, so I approach it by making the conversation exploratory. I focus on specific underperforming areas, like cart or browse abandonment, and explain how Attentive can improve these issues more efficiently than their current platform. By highlighting the quick and effective solutions, the conversation shifts to the potential benefits and upside for the client, rather than the migration itself.

Check out our Email Migration Guide which includes pre and post-migration checklists!

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​​If you have an Attentive SMS client who’s nervous about exploring Attentive Email, how would you approach that client about getting past those hesitations? 

​​I have 45 minutes of material about how Attentive lets me do what I am best at, better. I go in and build out the entire customer journey for them, showing them every touch point I want to hit and how the platform will allow me to do that. Every brand and every client that you're speaking with has already built a certain amount of momentum for their brand. So you just have to find where your place is, where you can add the most value right now, and then power it with Attentive. 

You have to ask yourself, what are you doing better than any other agency? And you need to understand exactly how Attentive allows you to do that better. If you put those two things together, ‌conversations happen very, very easily. When I talk to clients, I emphasize my focus on sending as many messages as possible while also increasing the value of each one. Attentive’s capabilities allow me to do this so effectively that I could talk about it for 45 minutes straight. That's how you get a migration. 

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How did the migration process go for you, and what steps did you and the Attentive team take to ensure a smooth transition?

Through migrating nearly 20 accounts to Attentive, we've discovered the importance of collaborating closely with the Attentive customer success team. The first step is to identify the client's biggest pain points. Once we pinpoint these issues, we work with Attentive to develop a strategic plan to address them. Each migration is customized to the client's specific needs—taking into account different platforms, use cases, and integrations—so by focusing on the first big win and collaborating with the team throughout the entire process, we ensure a smooth and effective transition.

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What impact did the switch have on your clients' program performance?

The first thing we notice is deliveries go up, and that's a big point of emphasis for me in my agency. Attentive's user identification system boosts these numbers immediately, giving us an early win. We then roll out journeys like abandoned cart and welcome messages, and then lean into list growth modules, on-site pop-ups, and ensure advanced segmentation properties are set up correctly. Attentive's user interface is simple, straightforward, and sleek, yet you can customize it as much as you’d like, which is a big differentiator for us and helps us gather even more wins for clients. 

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What specific benefits have you seen with Attentive Email in these areas that stand out?

Attentive Signal helps us identify more cart abandoners or browse abandoners, etc., sometimes up to 20% more, which is a significant win right from the start. Before I start split testing or adjusting content, my client is already getting that win thanks to Attentive helping to automatically power more journeys and more automations. 

Attentive's deliverability service is a white-glove solution that we can offer to our clients without needing an in-house team. Deliverability is handled seamlessly, allowing my agency to focus on strategy and content, while our clients enjoy the improved outcomes that come from simply using the platform.

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What are the benefits that you see/have your clients seen with consolidating their SMS & Email program on Attentive?

Operationally, it’s a big win for your team. Business owners don’t have much time to spend on an email and SMS strategy, yet it's one of the highest ROI actions that can be taken. If you can only dedicate an hour a week to your program, something as simple as a second login can affect 20% of your output for retention that week. 

It also becomes a block to pass data back and forth between platforms. For example, my team uses two-way messages a lot in our welcome series and in our abandonment series. With email and SMS in one platform, we can take answers from two-way and immediately have it impact the next email a user gets.​​

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Can you share any case studies or success stories from clients who have seen significant improvements after switching to Attentive?

​​We migrated a men's health brand from another platform, and as we were reinstalling all the automated journeys, we found a $70,000 mistake in their welcome series. By taking it apart and putting it back together on Attentive using the visual journey builder, we could see that, pre-migration, 30% of users weren't hitting the specific journey they were supposed to. This is a common win we see during migrations, and it immediately makes a big difference for our clients.

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What excites you about the future of marketing with Attentive?

Pre-Attentive, one of the biggest problems I would face as a business owner was being limited by what a platform could or couldn't do. I used to be a “no” person, and now I'm able to ‌push the envelope even further thanks to Attentive’s capabilities.

Once I get a client onto Attentive, I know I can bring any of their ideas to life. And if I break it, the Attentive team will fix it for me, which happens pretty often. 

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Interested in discovering the power of Attentive Email and exploring the benefits of platform orchestration? Schedule a demo.