How Jenni Kayne & Sister Brand Oak Essentials Increased Their SMS KPIs After Switching to Attentive

Challenge

Jenni Kayne first launched SMS through Attentive in 2019. In an effort to consolidate their email and SMS platforms, they decided to move their program over to their email service provider in late 2020, thinking the change would help streamline resources. But they quickly saw that they weren’t seeing the performance they saw with Attentive. “All of our key performance indicators (KPIs) were down...most notably, our list growth,” said Hanna Lieberman, Director of Retention Marketing at Jenni Kayne.

Solution

About halfway through 2021, Jenni Kayne moved their SMS program back over to Attentive.

The ease of use of Attentive’s platform, and the support that we get from the team were a few of the reasons we switched, in addition to having better performance. And onboarding was very quick and simple.

- Hanna Lieberman, Director of Retention Marketing at Jenni Kayne

Jenni Kayne’s sister brand, Oak Essentials, which debuted in August 2021, launched their program with Attentive from the start. “The deliverability with Attentive is noticeably stronger, especially with the relationships they have with carriers,” added Tiffany Chen, Director of Retention Marketing at Oak Essentials. “That definitely helped us jumpstart our KPIs almost immediately.” 

Strategy

List growth

After Jenni Kayne migrated back to Attentive, they immediately launched sign-up units to kick their list growth back into gear. Using Attentive’s 2-in-1 sign-up units, Jenni Kayne collects both phone numbers and email addresses. They also activated non-website sign-up methods, such as Text-to-Join and a dedicated landing page, where they can direct traffic from email, social media, and more.

Oak Essentials took a similar approach, using their website, Text-to-Join, and a dedicated landing page to grow their SMS list. “Compliance is a huge factor for us,” said Chen. “Attentive has put in so much effort to make sure their platform is up to date with the changing legal landscape for SMS, which is not something I’ve seen with a lot of other platforms. They kind of just leave that to the customer to figure it out.”

Both brands’ welcome flows have driven conversion rates of over 70%. “Attentive’s welcome flows are so well tested and thought out, that we immediately started seeing conversions,” said Lieberman. 

Message sending

For Jenni Kayne, subscribers have been very engaged with campaign messages. But their most successful messages are the ones sent to their segment of reward program members—often driving CVRs of 15%+. These are their most engaged customers, and SMS has proven to be a successful channel for reaching them and driving purchases.

Jenni Kayne also uses Attentive’s geo-targeting feature to send messages based on a subscriber’s location. When they opened a new store location in SoHo, they texted subscribers who lived in the NYC area, encouraging them to stop by and check it out.

Attentive has enabled us to make SMS a really feasible channel, and one that’s easily scalable. I really value that Attentive’s team has so much know-how and always encourages us to use best practices, in terms of our sign-up units, length of our texts, and more. We see huge growth potential with Attentive.

- Hanna Lieberman, Director of Retention Marketing at Jenni Kayne

As a relatively new brand, Oak Essentials is still experimenting to see what resonates most with their SMS subscribers. They’ve created a balance between sending campaign messages with discounts and offers vs. new products and early access. Oak Essentials is also working on building out their segmentation strategy, which currently consists of past purchasers vs. subscribers who’ve never made a purchase. 

Results

Within the first three months after switching to Attentive, Jenni Kayne gained over 20,000 new SMS subscribers. And their list of subscribers remains incredibly engaged. Their campaign messages regularly drive $100K+ in revenue.

For Oak Essentials, investing in SMS paid off, too. Since they launched their channel with Attentive in August, the brand’s campaign messages see an average 25% CVR. Their automated messages have seen early success, too. Oak Essentials’ browse and cart abandonment reminders drive an average 33% CVR and 73% CVR, respectively. “We’re seeing really strong performance now,” said Chen. “SMS powered by Attentive is our highest revenue driver, based on last click.”

All around, we’ve had such a positive experience with Attentive, and we’re so glad we made the switch back. And the metrics we see on how our channel is performing really validate that we made the right decision. 

- Tiffany Chen, Director of Retention Marketing at Oak Essentials

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