Our Place's Secret Ingredient for Customer Retention and How NOT to Send a Text

Welcome to The Retention Newsie by The Email Marketers.

Every week we bring you the best case studies, strategies, and tips around keeping more customers, turning them into raving fans, and increasing revenue.

Up this week:

• 🍳 Our Place’s Genius SMS Strategy

• 📱 Avoiding SMS Pitfalls

• 📊 The golden age of loyalty programs, common email missteps, & more!

Reading time: 4.5 minutes

Our Place's Secret Ingredient for Customer Retention? A Dash of SMS

When Shiza Shahid immigrated to America to study at Stanford, she found herself far from her family and culture. To stay connected, she turned to cooking.

"I still remember walking into my first kitchenware store in America," Shahid recalls. "I was overwhelmed by the amount of clutter – avocado slicers, cherry pitters, and 20-piece knife sets – so much stuff I didn't need and didn't have room for."

This experience sparked the idea for Our Place, the DTC cookware brand Shahid co-founded in 2019. Their mission was clear: build better, multifunctional products that eliminate waste.

The brand took the internet by storm with its Always Pan®, an all-in-one non-stick pan designed to streamline cooking. It earned rave reviews and waitlists over 30,000 people long.

But for Our Place, it's not just about the cookware. "We want to encourage people to gather around a table more often and host their friends and family—that's our mission," says Belinda Chung, Senior Manager of Lifecycle Marketing.

To bring this mission to life, Our Place has cooked up a winning customer retention strategy, with SMS marketing as the not-so-secret ingredient.

Our Place's SMS program has seen huge growth in the past year. "It's a powerful retention channel for us to keep our customers coming back, but it also helps us bring in new customers," Chung explains.

Within their broader strategy, SMS acts as a complement to email. "If someone doesn't respond to an email, we can reach out to them via text, or vice versa," says Chung. "They play off each other's strengths."

The automation side of their SMS program consistently drives results month after month. Our Place can easily target hyper-engaged customers with abandonment journeys or welcome messages to new subscribers.

Conversational SMS campaigns also provide valuable insights about their audience. "They're a great outlet for our subscribers to respond to our messages and get more information before they convert. But they also help us uncover any potential concerns or hiccups that may prevent someone from making a purchase," Chung notes.

As Our Place continues to grow, expanding its product line and retail presence, SMS remains central to its retention efforts. Chung's advice for others getting started with SMS?

"Continuously test. Even if you've already tested something, test it again, because as the market fluctuates and your subscriber list grows, different things might resonate with your audience at different times."

• Complement Other Channels: Use SMS to enhance and support your other marketing efforts, like email, rather than replace them.

• Automate for Efficiency: Set up triggered SMS journeys, like welcome series or abandonment messages, to engage customers at key moments without manual effort.

• Converse and Learn: Utilize conversational SMS campaigns to gain valuable insights into your customers' needs, concerns, and preferences.

• Test, Test, and Retest: Continuously experiment with your SMS strategies, even ones you've tried before, as your audience and market evolve over time.

• Make It Mission-Driven: Our Place's SMS program succeeds because it ties back to its core mission of bringing people together. Ensure your SMS efforts align with your brand's deeper purpose.

Even Big Brands Fumble SMS Basics

Even major brands with huge marketing budgets struggle to get SMS marketing right.

Melanie Balke, the founder of The Email Marketers, recently churned off of Stuart Weitzman's SMS list in under a week. Her experience highlights common mistakes that even established brands make.

So how can you avoid the same pitfalls in your own SMS marketing?

Be Engaging: Text messages are short, so make every element count. Including images of your product can be the difference between a click and an unsubscribe.

Remember Readability: Your texts should read like a friendly, informative message, not a jumble of marketing jargon. Craft clear, informative copy in a conversational tone.

Mind Your Frequency: Respect your subscribers' time and attention. Texting too often is a surefire way to drive unsubscribes.

Experience Your Own Campaigns: Make sure key decision-makers in your company are subscribed to your SMS marketing. Experiencing your strategy firsthand can reveal issues you might otherwise miss.

Follow the Data: These are good rules of thumb, but every audience is unique. Run A/B tests, track your metrics, and let the data guide your strategy.

• How McDonald’s plans to grow its loyalty program by 100 million active users in the next three years.

• Avoid these email marketing missteps that can land you in "email jail."

• A detailed breakdown of how to turn customers into brand advocates.

• We are in a golden age of retail loyalty programs.

We help 8-& 9-figure e-commerce brands increase revenue and build strong customer relationships through retention marketing: Email, SMS, direct mail, subscriptions, memberships, loyalty programs, and more.