Learn how to do more with SMS by tapping into your Salesforce data.

A brand's products used to be one of the biggest factors in consumers' purchasing decisions. But now, everything around the product is proving to be a crucial influence, too—with 86% of consumers saying the experience a company provides is just as important as its products or services.

Keeping customer needs and expectations at the center of everything you do is key. But creating and delivering personalized experiences is challenging when customer data is stuck in silos across different platforms.

Attentive’s integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud allows brands to sync their product, customer, and historical data from Salesforce with Attentive. Not only does the integration give brands a unified customer view, but it also lets you send individualized text messages, including triggered journeys like low inventory and back-in-stock.

Greg Gsell, VP of Product Marketing at Attentive, sat down with Jenna Flateman Posner, Chief Digital Officer at SNIPES—and experts from Salesforce and Fenom Digital—to talk about how the global sneaker and streetwear retailer is expanding their SMS marketing strategy with our Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration.

Watch the whole conversation here, and keep reading for the highlights (timestamps included).

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13:00: Centering SMS in the customer universe

When SNIPES discovered that most of their revenue comes from mobile devices, it was a no-brainer to add SMS to their tech stack—and put mobile at the center of their customer universe. The brand launched their SMS channel with Attentive in 2021, and immediately saw the impact. “SMS is absolutely our fastest growing outbound communication channel with over 19x ROI,” says Posner.

SNIPES is one of Europe’s largest sneaker providers, and their customers know exactly what they want and when they want it. The brand focuses on making sure the products they promote align with their customer’s individual preferences and purchasing behaviors (e.g., the colors, sizes, and styles they’re interested in). 

Since their products sell out quickly and are a hot commodity, SMS has become the most effective channel to keep their customers up to date and engaged, and get them to convert before certain items are gone. One of the brand’s most popular strategies involves sending their subscribers text messages for exclusive access to new product releases, so they don’t miss out.

SNIPES saw great success during their first year with SMS, nearly doubling their subscriber base. For the brand, the ability to integrate Attentive with Salesforce Commerce Cloud is an exciting opportunity to drive even more impact by tapping into their customer and product data.

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15:21: Reducing friction to drive more revenue

If you've ever shopped online, chances are you've experienced finding an item you want to buy, only to discover that your size or preferred color is no longer available.

Erin Dorshorst, Commerce Cloud Product Marketing Director at Salesforce, recalls trying to repeatedly buy a specific pair of jeans that were sold out every time. If the brand had sent a reminder when those jeans were back in stock, Dorshorst would have bought them immediately.

With our Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration, brands can alert shoppers via SMS when an item they've been searching for is available again—and SNIPES does exactly that. 

When a customer visits their website looking for a specific shoe and discovers it's sold out, Posner wants to make sure they don't lose interest by proactively keeping them in the loop. Many of SNIPES’ products are hot releases with limited quantities, so the ability to get someone to come back when their size is restocked is a huge opportunity to recover otherwise lost revenue and drive long-term loyalty.

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21:02: Did someone say DJ Khaled?

With over 600+ stores worldwide, SNIPES has historically focused their SMS strategy on acquisition. But as they expand into the US market, opening 300+ stores across the country, it’s important for them to build brand awareness with their audience.

One particularly successful campaign featured ‌celebrity DJ Khaled, who helped promote a "text-to-win" contest giving people the chance to win a signed pair of Jordan 4s by opting into SMS. The campaign was effective at driving subscriber growth. But it also provided SNIPES with the insight that offering sign-up incentives helps drive LTV. 

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19:55: From one-size-fits-all to targeted text messages

The days of ‌batch and blast are long gone for SNIPES. Now that they’ve built a strong subscriber base and trust with their audience, the brand is using segmentation to engage their customers more creatively.

Posner points out that a key part of this is making sure they don’t overwhelm their customers with too many reminders. While triggered cart abandonment messages have worked well for them in the past, they're able to trigger more specific and relevant notifications by combining behavioral and product data.

As one example, with the Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration, SNIPES can track the unit count of a specific product a customer has in their cart. If inventory drops below a certain threshold, it triggers a low inventory message, letting the customer know the item is about to sell out and creating a sense of urgency for them to shop.

“The integration gives us another very contextualized, honest, and proactive way of pinging that abandoned cart customer again, which we believe is going to drive some very serious incremental ROI,” says Posner.

Let’s face it—if you’re looking for a certain pair of shoes (Jordan 4s, anyone?), and you know your size is about to sell out, that extra nudge via text can be the difference between completing your purchase and missing out on the opportunity to get them.

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27:40: Getting started with Attentive and Salesforce Commerce Cloud

If Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Attentive are already part of your marketing tech stack, here are some tips from Katie Spence, Director of Marketing Cloud at Fenom Digital, to help you get started:

• ‍Decide on your strategy. How will implementing this integration impact your business and bottom line? Understand what the user experience is going to look like, your messaging cadence, and the key touchpoints in your customer journey.‍
• Review and organize your data. ​​How are you collecting first-party data? What insights do you have about your customers? How can you use those insights to enrich and scale your SMS campaigns and journeys?‍
• Make the integration part of your orchestration. Understand how integrating Attentive and Salesforce affects your other channels. Think about how to coordinate between email and SMS, and create a content calendar to make sure the channels aren’t overlapping, but rather, complementing each other.

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It’s time to start powering your SMS program with your e-commerce data to create new personalized experiences. Attentive’s integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help take your marketing strategy to the next level.

Want to know more? Watch the full conversation with SNIPES to learn how the brand is putting the integration into action.