How Estella Bartlett Found the Missing Link in Their Lifecycle Marketing

Building a high-performing lifecycle program with a lean team

Like most growing ecommerce brands, Estella Bartlett was juggling a lot of competing priorities at once. The small ecommerce team was responsible for driving revenue growth, managing the customer experience, and overseeing lifecycle marketing across channels.

"As a lean ecommerce team, we need every tool to pull its weight. Simplicity matters too. Having email and SMS in one place helps us spend less time managing platforms and more time focusing on growth." - Van Lau, Head of Ecommerce, Estella Bartlett

The team knew customer retention and owned-channel revenue represented a significant opportunity, but they needed tools they could trust to help them get there.

While email remained an important part of their marketing strategy, the team had limited confidence in their existing provider's customer data and segmentation capabilities. That lack of trust made it difficult to fully embrace personalization and automation.

At the same time, they were seeing more and more brands—including their competitors—invest in SMS, and wanted to explore how the channel could support their customer engagement strategy.

‍

Turning separate channels into one powerful strategy

Estella Bartlett first launched with Attentive SMS, viewing it as an opportunity to test a growing channel and connect with customers in a more direct way. The results they saw quickly challenged some of the team's assumptions. Rather than competing with email, SMS gave the team another way to reach customers at key moments throughout the shopping journey.

“What surprised us most was how well email and SMS worked together. We were concerned they might compete with each other, but instead they became complementary channels that helped us create a stronger customer experience." - Van Lau, Head of Ecommerce, Estella Bartlett

‍

As the SMS program continued to outperform expectations, Estella Bartlett began looking for ways to create a more connected customer experience across their channels. At the time, the team was considering other email providers, but ultimately decided to move email into Attentive as well.

Bringing both channels together gave them a single place to manage customer communications, build their subscriber lists, and create more coordinated customer journeys.

‍

Turning email into a precision channel 

Since August 2024, email-driven revenue is up 2.34×, powered by sharper segmentation and more targeted messaging as the team's confidence in their data has grown.

That confidence shows up as a willingness to keep testing rather than settle on one approach. The team continually experiments with how they frame the welcome journey's offer—most recently running an A/B test on two different ways of presenting the discount in its opening email—to identify which messaging resonates most with their customer base. The results were clear: one version reached 11.8% CTR, the other 10.2%. That habit of testing, rather than any single number, is what keeps the journey improving over time.

That same instinct—tailoring messaging to the moment—extends to triggered flows at points of highest intent. The cart abandonment journey, live since July 2026, splits its follow-up by channel so email and SMS each play to their strengths. On the email side, a three-message sequence escalates from a gentle nudge (11.6% CTR) to urgency around the expiring cart (6.9%) to a free-delivery offer that performs best of all (14.7%). Sale-specific journeys push even higher—the Early Access Welcome email, live for only a few days before the sale opens to non-subscribers, has reached a 38.4% CTR.

‍

Making every message relevant with better segmentation

With both email and SMS running together in Attentive, the team could build more targeted segments based on how customers were actually engaging with the brand.

During Black Friday, they built audiences of shoppers who had engaged with previous campaigns but hadn't yet made a purchase. More tailored offers helped them re-engage high-intent customers and create a more relevant experience than broad, one-size-fits-all messaging.

Rather than approaching email and SMS in the same way, Estella Bartlett uses each channel for what it does best—email to build engagement and keep customers informed, and SMS to create timely touchpoints that encourage action. By understanding the strengths of each channel, the team created a balanced communication strategy that feels genuinely relevant to customers. 

‍

Making smarter decisions with AI

As they continued to refine their lifecycle strategy, Estella Bartlett also incorporated Attentive AI Pro into their program.

For a lean ecommerce team working with a limited marketing budget, AI Pro helps simplify decisions that would otherwise require constant manual optimization. They use AI-powered audience optimization to identify high-intent shoppers who are most likely to engage, while automatically suppressing lower-intent audiences to help improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary sends.

Estella Bartlett also uses AI-powered send-time optimization to ensure messages reach customers when they're most likely to open and engage, rather than sending every campaign at the same time. Since implementing AI Pro, the brand has seen a 7.2% revenue lift and a 4.2% increase in subscriber acquisition, with Audience AI driving revenue lifts of up to 32.1% on optimized campaigns. Together, these capabilities help the team improve performance while keeping their lifecycle program efficient and easy to manage.

‍

Driving measurable results

Since launching with Attentive, Estella Bartlett has built a high-performing lifecycle marketing program that continues to deliver measurable business impact across email and SMS.

29x program ROI

For Van and her team, success ultimately comes down to one thing: revenue. Over the past year, Estella Bartlett's lifecycle program has delivered a 29x return on investment, demonstrating the value of investing in personalized customer engagement across owned channels.

2.3× revenue uplift with Attentive

Attentive has become a key driver of Estella Bartlett's direct-to-consumer growth strategy, helping the brand achieve 134% attributable revenue growth in its first year on the platform. By bringing email and SMS together, the team has been able to create more coordinated customer journeys that consistently drive revenue.

224% SMS subscriber growth

Growing a high-quality subscriber base was a key priority from the beginning. With Attentive's sign-up units, Estella Bartlett grew its SMS subscriber base by 224% in its first year, expanding its owned audience and creating more opportunities to engage shoppers with personalized campaigns, lifecycle journeys, and timely promotions.

‍

Looking ahead

As Estella Bartlett continues to grow its direct-to-consumer business, the team is laser focused on building stronger relationships with existing customers.

While promotions remain an important part of the strategy, Van sees the biggest opportunity in creating a greater sense of community around the brand and giving customers more reasons to stay engaged over time. With email and SMS working together in Attentive, the team has a stronger foundation for delivering more personalized customer experiences and continuing to grow revenue through owned channels.

"Revenue growth is important, but we're also focused on building stronger customer relationships. We want customers to stay engaged with the brand because they feel connected to it, not just because there's a promotion." - Van Lau, Head of Ecommerce, Estella Bartlett

‍