How Slate & Tell Drove 17x+ ROI Within Three Months of Switching to Attentive

Challenge

Before switching to Attentive, Slate & Tell was running SMS with their email marketing provider. While they enjoyed the convenience of having both channels under one roof, the brand was limited by the vendor’s SMS functionality. The brand did not have access to effective list growth tools with their previous vendor and were primarily sending triggered messages, such as cart abandonment. They saw the value of SMS, but they realized that they needed a partner who could help them grow their list faster, and allow them to send targeted campaign and triggered messages to their existing subscribers.  

Solution

Slate & Tell migrated their SMS program over to Attentive in July 2021. Their dedicated Client Strategy Manager helped get their two-tap sign-up units up and running to quickly grow their list of subscribers. 

Attentive’s two-tap sign-up definitely sold me. When I saw the two-tap sign-up, that was it. I was ready. It’s a great feature—very simple. No one wants to type in their phone number on mobile when you could just tap the button to subscribe.

- Isaac Gad, CEO and Founder of Slate & Tell

Their Client Strategy Manager also helped launch triggered journeys, such as browse and cart abandonment, to help automatically drive revenue. “We were really excited about the journeys, so we could follow up with subscribers who had browsed our site, but hadn’t made a purchase yet,” added Gad.

Strategy

Slate & Tell kicked off their SMS program with a free trial. They immediately received training and education, in addition to their scheduled calls with a dedicated Client Strategy Manager. 

Over the past year, Slate & Tell has worked to improve their customer retention strategy. For their SMS channel, they decided to focus on acquisition as the primary goal. 

Attentive is going to help us convert borderline shoppers who haven’t made a purchase yet. Text messaging has been a great channel for us. Most people are not opening their emails anymore.

- Isaac Gad, CEO and Founder of Slate & Tell 

Having already seen success with customer acquisition, they now plan to build out a customer retention strategy using Two Way Journeys™ and Attentive Concierge™. These features help them provide personalized responses to their SMS subscribers, powered by both real people and AI. “Sending conversational texts will help us move toward using SMS for customer retention. They’ll really feel the full customer experience,” added Gad. Slate & Tell is also looking to add transactional text messages to the mix, so their subscribers are always updated on the status of their orders.

When sending campaign messages, Slate & Tell regularly takes advantage of Attentive’s targeting capabilities, such as dynamic segmentation that automatically updates in real time. They’ve created a number of segments—including subscribers who have clicked on a specific product category, such as moissanite—which enables them to send highly relevant messages.

They’re also using A/B testing to understand what kind of messages and content their subscribers want to receive. For example, they texted subscribers a product-specific text, with some receiving a user-generated review of their Twine Personalized Ring Stack, while others received a review of their Twine Personalized Halo Engagement Ring Stack. 

With Attentive’s “auto-winner” for A/B tests, Slate & Tell ensured that the majority of their subscribers received the winning message, helping the brand optimize for revenue. Other A/B tests include offering different discounts, highlighting different products from the same category, and more.

To help drive even more revenue, Slate & Tell has activated triggered messages, including cart and browse abandonment reminders, and post-purchase texts that help nurture the subscriber after they’ve clicked buy. Attentive’s platform makes it as easy as possible to launch a variety of message types with pre-built templates, so Slate & Tell was able to set them live with just a few clicks.

Results

Since launching Attentive’s sign-up units, their subscriber list has grown by 10K (over the 14K list they migrated to Attentive).

Within just three months, Slate & Tell generated over $225K in revenue, helping them achieve a 17x return on investment. “We know it’s working. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what marketing is actually working these days. But with Attentive’s dashboard and the reports we can pull, we see where the conversion came from,” says Gad.

The brand has also realized their opportunities with SMS beyond growing their list, including having more personalized targeting capabilities, and being able to send two-way conversations that engage and nurture subscribers while creating more revenue for the brand.