How Magnetic Me Drove an 18% Lift in New Subscribers With AI Grow

Growing the list without adding to the team’s workload

Magnetic Me’s retention strategy needs to keep up with growing families.

As children grow, the products parents need can change every few months. The team needs to keep customer segments relevant as those needs shift.

With a lean team, Magnetic Me also needed to grow their subscriber base without adding more manual work.

The brand’s website sign-up experience wasn’t bringing in new subscribers as quickly as the team wanted. They set sign-up timing based largely on judgment, without a process to adapt it to each shopper.

“Two challenges shape list growth for us. First, we're a lean team, so the question is always how to grow systematically rather than manually. Second, our customer's needs change every few months as their child grows.”

— Shenhav Kimhi, CMO, Magnetic Me

Testing AI Grow against the existing sign-up experience

AI Grow is an Attentive product that helps turn website visitors into email and SMS subscribers by personalizing the sign-up experience. Magnetic Me used it to adapt when each visitor saw a sign-up form, based on shopper behavior.

For parents of young children, shopping doesn’t always follow a predictable schedule.

A sign-up unit that appears at the wrong time can interrupt the experience. Getting the timing right gives Magnetic Me an opportunity to start a longer-term relationship.

“Parents' shopping behaviors and schedules can be unpredictable, so timing is everything. AI Grow's ability to learn from each shopper and reach them at the right moment made a meaningful difference.”

— Shira Gelman Kolansky, Senior Director of Marketing, Magnetic Me

To measure the difference, the team kept a portion of site traffic on the existing sign-up experience as a control group.

AI Grow drove an 18% lift in new subscribers compared with the control group.

“The lift came in at 18% on new subscribers, and it stayed consistent across the evaluation period rather than spiking early and settling back. That consistency is what made the call easy.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

The team then rolled out AI Grow to all site traffic.

Measuring list growth alongside welcome revenue

Magnetic Me measures list growth alongside subscriber quality and revenue.

“List growth and revenue both matter to us, and we are careful not to trade one for the other.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

The team tracks net new subscribers alongside unsubscribe trends. They also measure revenue from their welcome journeys—the series of messages subscribers receive after signing up—alongside the number of people entering them.

Together, those metrics help the team understand how list growth contributes to their retention program.

“Our SMS welcome journey revenue more than doubled year over year while the list was growing. That combination is what tells us the growth is healthy rather than just large.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

Freeing up the team to focus on creative

With AI Grow adapting sign-up timing to shopper behavior, the team could spend less time setting those rules by hand.

“It took sign-up unit timing off our plate, something we'd previously set by judgment rather than evidence.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

Magnetic Me runs an ongoing testing program for their sign-up units. Every new pop-up concept goes head-to-head with the current creative, so the team can focus on what shoppers see and how they communicate the brand’s value.

The team brings their brand knowledge and customer understanding to each creative test.

“That freed us to focus on creative, where human judgment actually matters. We run a standing program where every new popup concept is tested head-to-head against our incumbent.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

Getting more insight from segmented welcome content

Higher sign-up volume also gave Magnetic Me more data to work with.

As children grow, relevant messaging depends on understanding what each customer group needs. The team needs enough subscribers in each segment to see which content is working.

Before AI Grow, several of Magnetic Me’s lifecycle branches were too small to evaluate confidently.

With more subscribers entering their welcome journeys, the team gained enough data to evaluate segmented content and understand how different customer groups respond.

“It's helped our email work too. Higher welcome volume gave us enough data to scale segmented testing and better understand what stage each family is shopping for.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

AI Grow also helped Magnetic Me collect more customer information while improving conversion rate, giving the team more insight to inform future messages.

A clear role for AI and the team

With limited time, the team had to decide which tasks to automate and where to invest their expertise.

“Be honest about which problems deserve your team's attention. Popup timing is a mechanical variable, and a human guessing at it is an expensive way to get there. Creative is the opposite: it needs taste, brand judgment, and an understanding of what a sleep-deprived parent responds to.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me

The result: more subscribers, more data to evaluate lifecycle content, and more time for the team to focus on their customers.

“We got value from AI Grow because we were clear about that split. We handed over the mechanical variable and reinvested the time into the judgment-driven one. We as a lean team win by automating the variables with findable answers and spending our people on the ones that need a point of view.”

— Hao Wang, Senior Retention Manager, Magnetic Me