How AllSaints Built a Global, On-Brand Growth Engine with Attentive

Why AllSaints chose Attentive

For AllSaints, the move to Attentive was about more than adding another marketing platform. 

Compliance was a major factor from the start. 

With strict legal standards internally, the brand needed a partner that could support growth while giving the team confidence that the program was built on a strong compliance foundation

Just as importantly, it needed a platform that could help the team build a smarter, more responsive lifecycle program from that foundation. 

“Compliance was a major reason we made the move. Our legal standards are high, so having a partner that takes that as seriously as we do gave us real confidence from the start.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

That confidence carried through implementation. The migration felt seamless, and the Attentive team stood out for being responsive, flexible, and easy to work with throughout the process. 

A more agile program from day one

Once the program was live, AllSaints felt the difference immediately. 

Previously, sign-up units lived in Salesforce, which limited how much control the CRM team had over the experience. 

With Attentive, the team could own those units directly, make updates more easily, and move faster when priorities changed. That gave AllSaints more direct control over how shoppers were brought into the program and how those relationships could develop across SMS and email from the start.

That shift showed up in day-to-day execution, too. 

The platform made campaign creation simple enough that additional internal stakeholders could jump in and build SMS campaigns during Black Friday while the team was moving quickly. That usability helped AllSaints respond faster without sacrificing coordination, which mattered during peak periods when timing and relevance had an outsized impact on performance.

“The difference was immediate. Having direct access to our sign-up units and being able to build and send quickly gave the team a level of ownership and agility we did not have before.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

The result was a program the team could actively shape, from on-site capture to campaign execution to the rollout of new journeys.

A premium brand wanted the first touchpoint to feel native

For AllSaints, list growth was never going to be a plug-and-play exercise. 

The brand was highly intentional about visual identity and wanted SMS and email, especially sign-up units, to feel fully native to the site. That mattered not only from a design standpoint, but also because the brand wanted the first interaction to set the tone for a more cohesive customer relationship across channels.

The team came into the build with detailed design requirements, and Attentive worked closely with them to bring that vision to life. Through custom CSS and bespoke builds, AllSaints created sign-up units that matched the look and feel of the site while still benefiting from Attentive best practices.

“At AllSaints, design is everything, so we needed the sign-up experience to feel completely native to the brand. Attentive gave us the flexibility to build something that genuinely looked and felt like us.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints
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That flexibility extended beyond the initial build. Attentive also helped AllSaints create a custom display rule for the bubble sign-up unit, excluding PDPs so it appeared only where the brand wanted it.

The team also launched a native newsletter landing page on the AllSaints site, embedding the Attentive experience directly into an owned destination. 

Together, those decisions helped the brand capture subscribers in a way that felt consistent, intentional, and ready to support more personalized messaging later on.

From broad sends to high-intent targeting

Before Attentive, the brand described its approach as broader and less targeted.

After launch, segmentation quickly became one of the clearest signs that the program had become more sophisticated.

Rather than sending to everyone and watching unsubscribe risk rise, the team could target shoppers more intentionally based on engagement and behavior. In other words, shopper signals became more actionable, which made it easier to respond with messaging that felt relevant instead of generic.

That shift helped improve relevance and efficiency across the program, especially in the US, where performance was particularly strong when the right audiences were targeted.

Campaign results reflected that change, with messages seeing up to 24% CTR and 33% CVR. For AllSaints, stronger targeting was not simply about sending less broadly. It was about using behavior and intent to make each touchpoint more useful.
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“Once we started segmenting properly, the lift was obvious. We were reaching the right customers with the right message, and the engagement followed.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

Journeys became the program’s biggest revenue driver

While campaign targeting helped elevate performance, automated journeys became the biggest revenue engine in the program. 

AllSaints relies heavily on out-of-the-box flows as a foundation and uses UTM campaign parameters from Segment to understand which journey types perform best. Low inventory and price drop journeys have been especially effective, helping the brand reach shoppers at high-intent moments with messaging that feels timely and useful. That reflects a broader shift in the program, from broad outreach to messaging triggered by what shoppers are actually doing.

The welcome journey has been an even bigger standout.

For SMS, it became one of the strongest parts of the program, driven by thoughtful buildout, reminder messages, and a richer value exchange. Subscribers receive a staggered offer, 15% off for SMS versus 10% for email, reflecting the distinct role each channel plays within the broader customer relationship. 

Rather than treating SMS and email as separate streams, AllSaints built them to complement one another, with each channel reinforcing the overall experience in a different way.

The results were exceptional:

• 955x ROI from the welcome journey
• 58% CVR from the welcome journey
• 358x ROI from the cart abandonment journey
• 60% CVR from the cart abandonment journey

“The welcome journey has been a real standout for us. It was thoughtfully built, the value exchange is clear, and customers are responding because it feels intentional.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

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Together, those results reinforced the value of pairing strong incentives with thoughtful timing, stronger shopper recognition, and journey design built around intent.

Launching just before Black Friday proved the value fast

Launching an SMS program just before Black Friday could have felt risky. For AllSaints, it became a defining moment. 

The program went live shortly before peak season, and even with a relatively small audience at the time, the team saw immediate results. That early performance helped demonstrate the value of SMS internally and created momentum for the channel early in its lifecycle.

“Launching right before Black Friday felt bold, but seeing results so quickly helped show the business exactly what SMS could do.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

Just as importantly, the launch gave the brand an early proof point that a more coordinated, behavior-driven program could perform under pressure.
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SMS built for a mobile-first, global customer base

SMS made strategic sense for AllSaints because the brand’s audience is overwhelmingly mobile-first. About 80% of shoppers come through mobile, compared with 20% on desktop, making SMS a natural fit for how customers already browse and buy. 

But for AllSaints, SMS works best as part of a broader lifecycle strategy, where different channels can support different moments in the customer journey instead of operating in isolation.

At the same time, the brand’s CRM strategy extends far beyond a single market. AllSaints manages messaging across the UK, US, EU, and international markets, so localization is central to how the team communicates. That includes tailoring campaigns around moments like spring break and festival season, and using dynamic email content to reflect different climates and regional conditions across markets. 

This is where the channel mix becomes more powerful: SMS can drive immediacy, while email helps the brand adapt richer content and creative by market, all within one connected program.

That global strategy also demands responsive execution. When UK trade softened, AllSaints quickly shifted plans and turned around new-arrivals comms in about a day and a half. The same responsiveness applies to cultural moments, too. One of the brand’s best-performing UK womenswear emails came together in roughly an hour and a half after the team spotted a relevant product moment and moved quickly to activate it. The ability to react that quickly becomes even more valuable when channels and customer signals are working together rather than separately. 

Why SMS works for a premium brand

One of the clearest takeaways from the AllSaints story is that SMS can work powerfully for premium brands when it is approached thoughtfully. 

For the team, the channel works because it is personal.

Customers are choosing to share their mobile number, which signals a deeper level of intent and creates an opportunity to build a more relevant, high-value experience. That intent becomes even more useful when the brand can recognize those shoppers, learn from their behavior, and follow through with messaging that feels timely across the lifecycle. 

“With SMS, customers are giving you something personal. If they are sharing their mobile number, they want to hear from you, so the key is to make that communication feel relevant and worth it.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

That perspective has been especially meaningful in the UK, where SMS subscribers tend to be particularly valuable customers for the brand. Internally, the audience feels less like a broad subscriber file and more like a loyalty-driven group with stronger spend and deeper engagement. In that sense, the channel is not just another place to send messages. It is a higher-intent audience the brand can nurture with greater precision. 

“In the UK especially, the customers who opt into SMS are incredibly valuable to us. It feels less like a broad subscriber list and more like a loyalty audience.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

Looking ahead

As the program continues to mature, AllSaints is refining its priorities. 

While acquisition was a major focus previously, the team is now placing greater emphasis on nurturing and retaining the customers it already has. That means more testing, smarter lifecycle decisions, and a continued focus on audience quality over raw volume. In practice, that next phase is less about simply adding more messages and more about continuing to use customer signals to make each interaction more relevant across the relationship.

“We have become much more focused on nurturing and retaining the customers we already have. That is where we see the biggest opportunity now, to keep testing and get smarter over time.”
- Louisa Maloney, Global CRM Manager, AllSaints

With a stronger data foundation, more agile execution, and a program that feels true to the brand, AllSaints is well positioned to keep building a lifecycle strategy that balances premium brand expression with strong performance.