‍Challenge

By May 2021, Thrive Market had already been working with another SMS marketing vendor, but wanted a platform that was more self-serve and flexible.

“There was very little ability for us as marketers to do the things that we wanted to do on our own—without help from a developer,” said Lindsay McGovern, Senior Director of CRM and Lifecycle for Thrive Market. “Our team likes to do things quickly, without having to rely on anyone else. We were unable to do many of the things that we wanted to do with our previous vendor.”

Solution

With Attentive, Thrive Market found an SMS vendor that offered the ability to better connect workflows, saving their team resources and time.

Take Attentive’s integration with Zendesk, which Thrive Market wanted to set up for months with their previous vendor. Due to Thrive Market’s developer-dependent setup, the integration request “sat there for months and never got done,” McGovern said.

Setting up Attentive’s Zendesk integration literally took 30 seconds. That was amazing.

- Lindsay McGovern, Senior Director of CRM and Lifecycle for Thrive Market

Beyond wanting to move quickly within their SMS platform, Thrive Market also wanted a strategic partnership and hands-on support from a vendor. With Attentive, that was quickly solved.

“We're used to having a hands-on CSM with our other tools, and with our previous vendor, that was non-existent,” McGovern said. “We really liked that Attentive gave great support, and it really felt like a partnership. That was a big selling point for us.”

Strategy

Sign-up units, welcome, and campaign messages

Thrive Market uses Attentive’s “two-tap” sign-up technology on their website to drive SMS opt-ins. Since their brand is membership-based, they prompt shoppers to sign up by giving them a peek into future offers and discounts. They also use Attentive’s custom attributes to message subscribers by name.

Making their messages sound human has been at the forefront of Thrive Market’s Attentive-powered SMS program, which was developed to emphasize a personalized touch—with a sign-off from Julianna, a Thrive Market team member. After a series of tests with this type of personalization, they haven’t looked back.

We had a hypothesis that speaking more like a helpful friend rather than just a promotional marketing message could increase engagement. So we tested it and found that it was significantly higher-converting and had higher engagement when it was sent from a person. We use that strategy throughout most of our messages now.

- Lindsay McGovern, Senior Director of CRM and Lifecycle for Thrive Market

Thrive Market has also launched browse abandonment and Text-to-Join campaign messages. Continuing with a personalized signature, they’ve seen great results: their campaign messages have seen an average conversion rate of 11.4%, and only a 0.5% opt-out rate. They also implemented dedicated landing pages via Attentive to drive SMS opt-ins, which they drive to from email and social.

Persona-based segmentation

With their SMS program up and running, Thrive Market took advantage of Attentive’s segmentation capabilities. Since they’re a subscription-based business, most of their subscribers are already paying members, and their segments—all 134 of them—are split among this group. Thrive Market often segments paying subscribers by website and browsing behavior, as well as product affinity and preferences, which are collected via quizzes sent to new subscribers. McGovern refers to their strategy as a “persona-based” approach.

“If we're sending a free gift with a purchase of a Paleo product, we’ll target people that just have an interest in Paleo items and send it to them,” she said. “This way, we’re less likely to get opt-outs from the people who are less interested in Paleo products.”

For non-members who opt into their SMS and email programs, Thrive Market focuses on nurturing them with incentives to encourage conversion, such as first order incentives.

Zendesk integration for customer support

With Attentive’s Zendesk integration, Thrive Market’s customer support team is able to directly answer customers' text message responses. This lets them track their conversation log with subscribers in real-time, which has been “a huge win,” McGovern said. Things like customer questions over website issues or confusion with coupons are easily accessible and addressable.

“We used to send messages out and just not know what happened,” she said. “And now, we've seen people respond to things and then we’ve taken action based on that.”

Results

Since migrating their text message program to Attentive less than a year ago, Thrive Market has seen tremendous growth. They initially set a SMS revenue goal for their first year, which they hit by August. Then they set a stretch SMS revenue goal, which they surpassed by the end of 2021—only after about 7 months of using Attentive. 

Overall, Thrive Market has boosted their SMS subscriber base 97%, increased their year-over-year SMS-driven revenue by 900%, and exceeded their original 2021 SMS-driven revenue goal by 50%. They also ended 2021 on a high note by achieving 42x+ ROI between July and December.

But just because Thrive Market has been successful doesn’t mean they’re complacent. They don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon, McGovern said. Moving forward, they plan on using SMS to capture higher-funnel prospects, create more “Enter to Win” campaigns and Journeys, and much more.

We always know there's an opportunity to expand, and we're always looking for the next cool thing to try—and this year will be about that. What’s new with the channel? What can we adopt? What can we be best in class at? We want to be on the front line of whatever the next thing is in the best interest for our member experience.

- Lindsay McGovern, Senior Director of CRM and Lifecycle for Thrive Market