‍Challenge

Knowing their audience is primarily made up of shoppers who embody the “downtown New York girl,” Rebecca Minkoff needed a new way to engage their millennial audience. The brand noticed that more and more of their site traffic was coming from mobile. 

“Last year, over 80% of our site traffic came from mobile,” said Sona Martirosian, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing at Rebecca Minkoff. “Our customer is on her phone at all times, and it’s how she browses our site.”

After hearing about how well SMS was performing for other brands, Rebecca Minkoff decided it was time to invest in personalized text messaging.

Solution

Rebecca Minkoff partnered with Attentive to launch a performance marketing channel that would drive revenue and bring mobile shoppers back to their Shopify-powered website. “When we were evaluating providers, we kept hearing that Attentive was the most robust platform in the industry,” said Martirosian. “We consistently heard from other brands who were seeing results with Attentive, and that industry validation helped us make our decision.”

The brand created an SMS strategy that complemented their successful email marketing program. 

“We see strong performance across our triggered email initiatives, so it was important for us to have an SMS provider that would empower us to recreate that success with triggered text messaging,” explained Martirosian. 

The ease of integrating our SMS program with Shopify played a big part in our decision to partner with Attentive. We have a very small internal team, so anytime we add a new channel, it has to be plug-and-play. We found that with Attentive––it took less than 10 minutes to set up our Shopify integration.

- Sona Martirosian, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing, Rebecca Minkoff

Strategy

Rebecca Minkoff uses Attentive’s 2-in-1 sign-up units on their mobile and desktop website to drive email and SMS sign-ups simultaneously. Mobile shoppers are able to seamlessly sign-up using Attentive’s “two-tap” technology, which allows users to simply tap the sign-up unit to load a pre-populated text message, and then they tap “send” to opt in. “We want to immediately engage our shoppers as soon as they come to our site and initiate a conversation,” said Martirosian. “On our other digital channels—like email or Instagram—shoppers have to seek us out. With SMS, we meet them where they are.” Rebecca Minkoff’s strategy has paid off. Their mobile sign-up unit consistently ranks as their top source of new subscribers. 

The brand also leverages Attentive’s integration with Shopify to drive opt-ins. Subscribers are able to sign up for texts as they checkout, helping Rebecca Minkoff convert high-intent shoppers into SMS subscribers.

Rebecca Minkoff automatically engages SMS subscribers throughout the customer journey with triggered messages. As soon as a subscriber signs up for texts, Rebecca Minkoff welcomes them to their SMS program. The brand includes a contact card to personalize subscribers’ experience. Subscribers can click through on a customized link that will automatically apply their welcome offer. If a shopper doesn’t make a purchase within 24 hours of signing up for texts, Rebecca Minkoff sends a helpful nudge reminding them of their offer code. 

Triggered messages also help Rebecca Minkoff bring high-intent browsers back to their website. The brand engages shoppers who have left items in their online shopping cart with an abandoned cart reminder. Rebecca Minkoff tailors each message with the name of the item, along with an image, to immediately remind the subscriber of what they left behind.  

Our triggered text messages have driven our highest engagement. On average, 75% of our revenue comes from our welcome series and abandoned cart messages. 

- Sona Martirosian, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing, Rebecca Minkoff

Rebecca Minkoff treats their SMS subscribers like VIPs, letting them know about new products and sharing secret offers. Balancing promotional and non-promotional messages helps them nurture brand loyalists. “We don’t want our SMS subscribers to wait to make a purchase until there’s a sale,” said Martirosian. “Because SMS is a new channel that allows us to reach a new audience, our goal is to nurture customers. We reward our SMS subscribers with a secret code, which builds loyalty—they’re getting the VIP treatment.”

Out of all of our channels, personalized text messaging has driven our highest conversion rates almost every month. Our subscribers want to hear about new products and offers via text messaging. SMS marketing is especially powerful during promotional periods—reaching shoppers exactly where they are drives a ton of revenue.

- Sona Martirosian, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing, Rebecca Minkoff

Integrating their Attentive-powered SMS program with Shopify empowers Rebecca Minkoff to build hyper-targeted segments. Targeting users based on their text messaging engagement and shopping behaviors helps the brand optimize their campaign message ROI. 

Using Attentive’s A/B testing functionality, the brand tested engagement and conversion rates across three segments: shoppers who purchased or clicked on a text, and viewed or added an item to their cart, at least once in a 90-day, 120-day, or 150-day period. “It was a process of trial and error,” said Martirosian. “We learned that our hero segment was shoppers who clicked and viewed or added an item to their online shopping cart in a 150-day period.”

Results

Rebecca Minkoff’s investment in personalized text messaging has generated over $8 million in revenue so far. The brand has achieved an 80x+ ROI on their overall SMS marketing program.

Within a month of launching their program with Attentive, Rebecca Minkoff surpassed the quarterly subscriber growth goal they set, driving over 25,000 sign-ups. “We were surprised—and impressed—that our audience began signing up for texts immediately,” said Martirosian. “It really speaks to how much our audience wanted to engage with us on this channel. We couldn’t have been more excited.” The brand has maintained a strong subscriber growth rate, scaling their list 98.7% year-over-year.  

These subscribers are incredibly engaged from the get-go. Rebecca Minkoff’s welcome series drives a 49.2% CVR. The brand’s triggered abandoned cart reminder helps Rebecca Minkoff recover otherwise lost revenue, achieving a 44.9% CVR.

As for the future, Rebecca Minkoff is excited to continue to unlock the potential of their text messaging program. “There is so much we’re excited to try,” said Martirosian. “Enabling our email and SMS programs to talk to each other is a major part of our marketing strategy.”

The biggest win we’ve achieved with Attentive by far is driving an incredibly high conversion rate. Our SMS marketing conversion rate is twice as high as our next highest-performing channel, and our triggered SMS messages perform much better than our triggered email series. When you invest in text messaging, you’re investing in a channel that has an incredibly strong return on investment with minimal effort.

- Sona Martirosian, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing, Rebecca Minkoff

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