How Anastasia Beverly Hills Uses Text Messaging to Drive Online Revenue, With 42x+ ROI

Challenge

ABH needed a new direct way to reach its customers with updates like product launches, deals, product restocks, seasonal offers, and more. ABH was also looking for new ways to grow its list of text messaging subscribers by leveraging its massive social following, specifically on Instagram, where the brand has over 20M followers.

Solution

Partner with Attentive to communicate directly with ABH customers using text messaging. Create a new, top-performing revenue channel that drives both customer acquisition and retention. “Getting started with Attentive was so easy—it took less than a day to implement,” Vivian Weng, SVP of Digital and E-Commerce at ABH, shares. “My recommendation for anyone who’s on the fence—just try it! There is very little downside to testing and seeing how well this channel works for your audience and brand.”

Our core demographic centers around a younger and hyper-engaged makeup consumer who prefers to shop on their mobile device. So for us, implementing SMS marketing through Attentive was a perfect fit.
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– Vivian Weng, SVP of Digital and E-Commerce, Anastasia Beverly Hills

Strategy

ABH drives text messaging opt-ins on its mobile site using Attentive’s seamless “two-tap” sign-up solution. When a new subscriber signs up for the brand’s mobile messaging program, they receive an automated series of welcome messages, including a coupon for 15% off.

ABH also uses Attentive’s Instagram Stories sign-up feature to seamlessly reach its dedicated Instagram followers, and turn them into text messaging subscribers. The brand offers these subscribers the same 15% offer as those who convert via ABH’s mobile site.

Some of the ways ABH uses its text messaging channel include sending subscribers one-time marketing messages, like limited-time offers, product restock alerts, and seasonal deals. “Text messaging is a great channel for timely offers like these because we know our subscribers will see the offer more immediately than if we were to send via email,” said Weng.

ABH also uses its text messaging channel to help recover otherwise lost revenue by sending triggered messages, such as abandoned cart reminders. When a customer leaves the brand’s website before purchasing the items in their cart, ABH sends a helpful text message reminding the shopper to complete their checkout. This text message includes the name of the product, a call to action to complete the purchase before the item is gone, and a link directly back to the subscriber’s online shopping cart.

This type of a message is so effective because once you set up the rules and the messages, it automatically sends based on a customer’s behavior on our site—meaning no extra effort on our end.
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– Vivian Weng, SVP of Digital and E-Commerce, Anastasia Beverly Hills

Results

So far, ABH’s text messaging program with Attentive has delivered an overall ROI of 42x—from a combination of one-time marketing messages and triggered messages. This value is spread across the entire customer journey, with welcome messages seeing an average 87.5% click-through rate. “We’ve been really excited about how successful this channel has been,” said Weng.

Over a nine-month period, ABH has grown its subscribers by over 250% using Attentive’s various sign-up methods, like “two-tap” and Instagram Stories sign-up.

To further scale its channel, ABH plans to focus on segmenting some of its messages, which will allow the brand to continue to connect with its audience and personalize text messages even further. ABH also plans on conducting more A/B tests on triggered messages to understand what type of messages resonate most with its subscribers. “What we’ve found is that during times where there’s a lot of marketing going on, such as email marketing and paid marketing—like during the holidays, for example—text is a really great channel to cut through the noise,” Weng said.