How Poplight Drove 274% SMS Revenue Growth and 247% Email Revenue Lift by Unifying Channels with Attentive

The Challenge

As they scaled their renter-friendly lighting business, Poplight faced critical challenges with their fragmented marketing technology stack. Running email through Klaviyo and SMS through Postscript created significant operational inefficiencies that limited their growth potential.

The brand faced three core challenges:

1. Disconnected customer journeys: With email and SMS managed in separate platforms, the team struggled to see the complete customer journey, making it difficult to make quick, data-driven decisions and pivot their strategy effectively.
2. Attribution accuracy issues: Different software platforms calibrated attribution differently, which muddied impressions, conversion data, and overall performance metrics. Getting a true read on channel effectiveness and ROI was nearly impossible. 
3. Inefficient campaign management: Two platforms meant twice the work—and inconsistent messaging, siloed data, and missed opportunities to create cohesive cross-channel experiences.

For a highly efficient program like Poplight's, these limitations were holding back their ability to scale and optimize their most promising marketing channels.

The Solution

Poplight partnered with Nomadd, a leading ecommerce marketing agency, to migrate both email and SMS to Attentive's unified platform. This consolidation gave the team access to Attentive's advanced tagging capabilities—and the ability to create truly cohesive, bundled email and SMS customer journeys.

The migration strategy focused on three key pillars:

1. Platform consolidation

With both channels on Attentive, attribution misalignment disappeared—and for the first time, the team had  a single source of truth for customer data and performance metrics.

2. Journey rebuilding

The team completely rebuilt all customer journeys in Attentive from the ground up, implementing new CTR/CVR-friendly templates, designed to maximize engagement and boost conversions.

3. Strategic optimization

Every element was refined for performance—from branded, cost-efficient SMS messaging to proper server warming and a new sending cadence optimized for Poplight's audience.

"We built Poplight on the idea that things should just work — no unnecessary complexity, no tools that create more problems than they solve. Attentive finally gave our email and SMS programs that same feeling. The growth we saw was incredible, but honestly the biggest win was just being able to make faster, smarter decisions with data we could actually trust."
— Rose Matthes, Co-Founder, Poplight

The Strategy

Unified email and SMS journey mapping

With both channels in one platform, Nomadd built integrated customer journeys that aligned timing, messaging, and targeting across email and SMS. This allowed Poplight to:

• Coordinate welcome series across both channels for maximum impact
• Create seamless handoffs between email and SMS based on engagement
• Implement consistent brand voice and creative across all touchpoints
• Optimize send times and frequency holistically rather than in silos

“We started by rebuilding all of the journeys in Attentive—introducing new templates optimized for CTR and CVR, refining the SMS program to better reflect the brand while improving cost efficiency, warming the servers, and rolling out a new messaging cadence.”
— Liz Krupka, Founder, Nomadd Marketing

Leveraging Attentive's AI-powered tools

The team deployed multiple AI-driven solutions to maximize efficiency and performance:

AI Winback (45 Days)

Automatically identifies and re-engages customers who haven't purchased in 45 days with personalized messaging designed to bring them back.

Audiences AI

Dynamically creates and updates audience segments based on real-time behavior, purchase patterns, and engagement signals, and delivers AI-optimized sign-up experiences that adapt to each visitor to drive high-quality subscriber growth.

Send Time AI

Automatically determines the optimal send time for each individual subscriber to maximize open rates and engagement.

Advanced segmentation, optimized templates, and deliverability

To maximize performance after the migration, the team implemented advanced segmentation, redesigned high-performing templates, and followed a strategic deliverability plan. 

Attentive’s tagging capabilities made it possible to build highly targeted audience segments based on browsing behavior, purchase history, engagement patterns, and custom attributes. Nomadd then optimized email and SMS templates with clear CTAs, strong product imagery, and a streamlined path to purchase—while keeping branding consistent and designs mobile-friendly. Finally, a strategic server warming process gradually increased sending volume, monitored engagement signals, and maintained strong list hygiene to protect deliverability across both channels.

Results

The results spoke for themselves: email and SMS had become Poplight's most cost-effective marketing channels.

Key Success Factors

The results were driven by three critical improvements:

1. Clear attribution: Moving to a single platform eliminated discrepancies and gave the team accurate, reliable performance data
2. Increased volume: Email and SMS send volume scaled strategically without sacrificing quality.
3. Aligned customer journey: Cohesive cross-channel experiences that moved customers more effectively through the funnel

After migrating email and SMS to Attentive, Poplight quickly saw measurable improvements across their retention program. With both channels on a single platform, the team gained clearer attribution, better visibility into performance, and the ability to coordinate messaging across the full customer journey.

Within six months of the migration, Poplight saw significant gains across campaigns and lifecycle journeys.

Email campaigns generated strong revenue and conversion growth while the team increased sending volume.

• 247% increase in revenue
• 238% increase in conversions
• 51% increase in revenue per message 
• 208% increase in conversion rate 
• 129% increase in send volume

SMS performance improved across every key revenue metric.

• 274% increase in revenue 
• 298% increase in conversions
• 143% increase in revenue per message
•  171% increase in conversion rate
• 20% increase in click rate
• 53% increase in send volume

These gains were driven by more precise segmentation, improved messaging templates, and optimized send timing.

Automated journeys also delivered strong performance improvements.

• 175% increase in journey revenue 
• 189% increase in journey conversions
• 84% increase in revenue per message increased 
• 94% increase in conversion rate
• 49% increase in send volume 

The improvements extended beyond campaign performance. As the program matured, retention became a significantly larger driver of overall revenue.

• Retention revenue increased from 16% to 55% of total revenue
• Subscriber list growth increased 17% year-over-year

"As a small, growing business we don't have the luxury of a massive marketing team - every tool we use has to really pull its weight. Attentive gave us the visibility and automation we needed to scale our email and SMS in a way that felt smart, not just bigger. Watching retention go from 16% to 55% of our total revenue in six months told us everything we needed to know."
— Rose Matthes, Co-Founder, Poplight

Looking Ahead

Poplight is focused on scaling performance in 2026 through deeper use of Attentive’s AI capabilities. By tapping into predictive modeling, automation, and enhanced segmentation, the team is delivering more personalized customer experiences while optimizing journeys to increase lifetime value and reduce acquisition costs. And with more of Attentive's features still to explore, the growth is just getting started.