AI has changed how the best marketing programs operate. Here's what that looks like when it's working.

Today's shoppers are harder to reach than ever, and the cost of a poorly timed or irrelevant message is real. Most shoppers (80%) say they’re likely to ignore brands that send irrelevant messages, and 64% want brand messaging more tailored to their needs, preferences, and style. Yet 73% are more likely to purchase when the message is relevant to what they actually need.

That's exactly what Attentive AI is built for. The platform gives brands a suite of tools designed to work across every stage of the subscriber lifecycle, from identifying and capturing the right people to ensuring each message reaches them at the right moment with content tailored to their behavior. And underlying all of it are AI agents that work continuously in the background, scanning for site visitors, adjusting audience eligibility, and optimizing timing, so the program keeps getting smarter between campaigns, not just during them.

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The Attentive AI toolkit

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Attentive AI is built around four core products. Here’s how each one works:

• AI Essentials handles content creation. It instantly generates high-performing, on-brand SMS and email copy, and can automatically build retargeting campaigns, reducing the time it takes to produce messages that resonate.
  
  
• AI Grow captures more high-quality subscribers by personalizing when sign-up units appear to individual visitors. Rather than a fixed pop-up, AI tracks each shopper’s behavior and delivers the opt-in prompt at the moment they’re most likely to subscribe.
  
  
• AI Pro is a suite of tools that enhance messaging performance across campaigns. It includes:
  
  
  • Identity AI, which identifies site visitors beyond their browser cookie window, enabling re-targeting of subscribers who would otherwise go unrecognized
    
    
  • Audiences AI, which automatically adjusts campaign send lists based on predicted purchase behavior, adding high-intent shoppers and removing those unlikely to convert
    
    
  • Send Time AI, which optimizes message delivery timing down to the individual subscriber level based on each person’s historical engagement patterns
    
    
  • Brand Voice AI, which ensures every AI-generated message stays consistent with a brand’s tone, style, and standards across campaigns
    
    
• AI Journeys automatically tailors triggered messages in real time across the full customer lifecycle, individualizing timing and content around the products and categories each subscriber has shown interest in, and surfacing relevant offers at the moments most likely to convert.

With the help of AI agents, numerous brands see measurable lifts across revenue, CVR, CTR, and ROI as a result, without adding headcount or hours to get there. Here are five examples of brands doing it.

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5 brands driving real results with Attentive AI

1. Little Sleepies identified and targeted 43% more site visitors with Identity AI

Little Sleepies is a children's apparel brand known for cozy prints and sensitive-skin-friendly fabrics. By 2023, they had grown their SMS list to over 500,000 subscribers, but sending the same messages to their entire audience was becoming inefficient, risking disengagement and leaving revenue on the table.

To move from broad messaging to personalized, behavior-based journeys, Little Sleepies deployed Attentive AI Pro. Identity AI gave the team the ability to recognize and re-target more of their existing site visitors in real time, closing the gap between browse and purchase. Audiences AI helped them build smarter campaign segments for product launches, expanding reach to high-intent shoppers while excluding those unlikely to convert. And Send Time AI optimized delivery timing for each subscriber individually.

The shift from full-list sends to AI-driven segmentation paid off immediately. In promoting their “Play” line, the AI-augmented segment accounted for 85% of total campaign revenue.

More results:

• 43% more site visitors identified and re-targeted with Identity AI
• 31% increase in journey revenue
• 27% boost in campaign revenue
• 6% lift in engagement with Send Time AI

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With Identity AI, we're identifying more people. Over the last 30 days, we've identified 43% more visitors so we were able to send 43% more messages which is fantastic. It also enables us to re-target them right away versus waiting for them to come back and take another action that would allow us to identify them.
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— Christine Taylor, Senior Retention Marketing Manager at Little Sleepies

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2. Saatva grew abandonment reach by 22% with Identity AI, driving up to 2,619x retargeting ROI

Saatva is a luxury sleep brand offering premium mattresses, furniture, and bedding. With a longer consideration cycle than most ecommerce categories, their program is built around reaching high-intent shoppers at exactly the right moment, without overwhelming subscribers or degrading list quality.

The core challenge was visibility. A meaningful portion of Saatva’s highest-intent site visitors were falling out of abandonment targeting once their browser cookie expired. Standard SMS programs had no way to recognize or re-engage those subscribers. Identity AI changed that, recognizing returning shoppers beyond their cookie window and expanding abandonment journey reach by 22%.

That incremental reach made a measurable difference during the moments that mattered most. On Cyber Monday, Identity AI-powered retargeting messages hit up to 20% CTR. On Black Friday, those same messages drove 4.9% CVR and 2,619x ROI. The broader program, built on precise acquisition and tight cadence alignment, delivered 328x total SMS program ROI.

Results:

• 328x total SMS program ROI
• 69% welcome conversion lift
• 5,040x welcome journey ROI
• 8,294x add-to-cart journey ROI
• 22% lift in abandonment sends from Identity AI
• Up to 20% CTR on Cyber Monday retargeting messages
• 4.9% CVR and 2,619x ROI on Black Friday retargeting messages

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Our goal as a marketing team is to embrace AI in a way that helps the brand. The biggest impact has been efficiency. A lot of it is set-it-and-forget-it, which makes it easier to scale, stay consistent, and get smarter over time.
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— Anna Boettcher, Marketing Manager, Email & Retention at Saatva

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3. ILIA Beauty achieved 280% purchase lift using AI Journeys and a VIP-first SMS strategy

ILIA Beauty is a clean beauty brand known for makeup that improves skin health and a philosophy of intentional product development. Their lifecycle strategy is built to guide customers from first purchase through replenishment, shade changes, and loyalty-driven repeat purchase, and their SMS program reflects that same care and precision.

As their program scaled, the ILIA team needed to grow personalization without defaulting to broad sends. A VIP-first strategy shaped how they structured and prioritized their subscriber base, while AI Journeys handled the harder problem: personalizing triggered messages at scale based on each subscriber’s real-time activity and buying intent rather than rules a marketer had to define in advance.

Brand voice was non-negotiable, which meant AI Journeys had to prove itself on ILIA’s terms before earning a larger role in the program. It did. AI agents now work continuously on each subscriber’s behavioral signals, responding to browsing activity and purchase intent in real time so the program keeps delivering relevance between campaigns without manual intervention. Identity AI adds incremental revenue lift on top through smarter abandonment journey targeting.

Results:

• 280% median purchase lift with AI Journeys 
• 49% lift in clicks 
• 13-14% weekly revenue lift from Identity AI abandonment journeys 
• 31x total program ROI 
• 225x automated journeys ROI 
• 364x welcome journey ROI 

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AI Journeys was a huge unlock—it was initially nerve-wracking because of brand voice control, but it was quickly validated by performance. AI Journeys helped drive substantial year-over-year performance, rein in full-file sending, tighten campaign segmentation, and let journeys carry more of the workload.
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— Alexandra Salai, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at ILIA Beauty

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4. goodr built a 55x ROI SMS program by pairing always-on journeys with AI-powered targeting

goodr is a sunglasses brand built on bold personality, accessible pricing, and a distinct voice that runs through every touchpoint. As its customer base grew, the team needed a lifecycle foundation that could scale with it without losing the clarity and personality that defines the brand.

The brand built its SMS program around two operating motions: promotional velocity for product launches and retail moments, and lifecycle consistency through always-on automated journeys. Audiences AI became central to giving the team a way to stay disciplined during limited drops—keeping their core segmentation intact and using AI to surface additional high-intent shoppers without broad blasting.

Results:

• 55x total SMS program ROI
• 137x total journeys ROI
• 91% CVR and 441x ROI on the welcome journey
• 59% total journeys CVR
• 69% CTR on campaign messages
• 27% send lift from Audiences AI inclusions
• 33% lift in same-day revenue from Audiences AI

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We can literally watch site traffic spike the second an SMS goes out. On Black Friday, I said it in our Slack channel: SMS hit us like a fire truck. It went from steady to a huge spike.
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— Phil Herbert, Email and SMS Lead at goodr

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5. Steve Madden drove 26% revenue growth by turning SMS into a retention engine

Steve Madden is a global footwear and accessories brand with an audience spanning the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. With a customer base that often browses several times before buying, the brand needed a way to stay relevant between sessions and build lasting relationships that extended well beyond the first purchase.

The team built its program around behavioral precision and smart acquisition timing, with triggered journeys responding to real-time shopper actions across the funnel. Attentive AI gave that foundation a performance layer. AI Grow replaced one-size-fits-all sign-up pop-ups with personalized timing, capturing subscribers at the moments they were most likely to engage. Identity AI expanded abandonment journey reach beyond the standard cookie window, and Audiences AI automatically surfaced high-intent subscribers for campaigns.

Results:

• 20x total program ROI
• 26% overall revenue increase with AI Pro
• 36% uplift in subscriber growth with AI Grow
• 34% increase in welcome journey revenue
• 25% revenue lift from Identity AI-powered abandonment journeys
• 112%+ revenue increase from Audiences AI-identified subscribers
• 38% of SMS subscribers have made 2+ purchases

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There’s a lot of noise during big campaign periods. MMS helps us highlight what’s unique about our offering and cut through.
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— Jamie Kouktzelas, Marketing Manager at Steve Madden

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What the best programs have in common

Across five very different brands, the same pattern holds. Strong results come from knowing who you're talking to, reaching them at the right moment, and letting smart automation handle the consistency between campaigns.

AI works when it's grounded in precision: more relevant subscribers identified, smarter segments built, messages timed to when a shopper is most ready to act. And it works best when agentic AI is running in the background between campaigns too, continuously recognizing visitors, refining audiences, and learning from every interaction so the program compounds value on its own.

Attentive AI makes that possible for any brand ready to build a program that gets smarter every day.

Ready to see what it looks like for your program? Learn more about Attentive AI and get a demo.