How Yankee Candle Returned to Attentive and Grew SMS From 8% to 17% of DTC Revenue

From volume-based sending to precision marketing

Yankee Candle’s CRM team manages a wide customer lifecycle across email, SMS, and print, spanning acquisition, retention, reactivation, loyalty, and seasonal campaign moments.

As the brand’s marketing strategy evolved, the team saw an opportunity to move beyond broad-based messaging. The goal was no longer simply scaling sends. It was making every send more intentional, more timely, and more connected to what each customer was doing.

“Our priorities have shifted from volume-based marketing to precision and efficiency. Historically, it was about scaling our sends. Now, it’s about smarter segmentation, personalization, and optimizing the customer journey.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

That mindset became the foundation for Yankee Candle’s next stage of SMS growth, where every campaign, journey, and segment had to work harder across the customer lifecycle.

Why Yankee Candle returned to Attentive

Yankee Candle had been using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but returned to Attentive when SMS started becoming a more critical revenue driver for the brand.

The team needed a platform that could support the next stage of the program: faster execution, stronger acquisition, more advanced personalization, and AI-driven optimization.

“We returned to Attentive because we saw a clear opportunity to elevate our SMS program, especially around speed and scalability, and of course, AI-driven capabilities as well.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

With Attentive, the team could move quickly without sacrificing strategy. SMS attributed revenue increased 211% YoY in Q1 2026, while Yankee Candle’s subscriber list grew 59% from October 2024 through April 2026.

Even as the program scaled, engagement stayed healthy. Monthly send volume grew approximately 37% in Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025, while sends per subscriber held steady at 8 to 9.

Faster iteration for a seasonal brand

Yankee Candle’s calendar is built around moments that change quickly: product launches, holiday promotions, Candle Day, Semi-Annual Sale, loyalty offers, and seasonal site flips.

That pace requires a platform the team can actually move in. With Attentive, Yankee Candle can test segments, launch campaigns, refresh creative, and adjust quickly as the business changes.

“The platform itself is super intuitive. We’re able to test into segments, launch campaigns, and iterate very quickly, which is really important for the brand right now.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

That speed gives the team more room to make each SMS moment feel specific. A fall fragrance launch, a holiday gifting push, a Candle Day promotion, and a Semi-Annual Sale do not need to follow the same playbook. Each can have its own creative treatment, audience strategy, and follow-up motion.

Turning seasonal traffic into subscribers with AI Grow

For Yankee Candle, list growth is closely tied to what is happening across the brand at that moment.

The team uses AI Grow to refresh signup units around product launches, holidays, and site flips, updating imagery and creative so the signup experience matches what shoppers are already seeing onsite.

“We do update our popups basically each time we have our site flip that matches our different product launches or holidays.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

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That flexibility helped Yankee Candle turn more seasonal traffic into reachable subscribers across both SMS and Email. The first AI Grow deployment drove a 52% combined SMS and Email subscriber lift, including a 47% lift in SMS subscribers and 56% lift in Email subscribers.

In the most recent steady-state experiment, AI Grow drove a 17% incremental SMS subscriber lift, 15% incremental Email subscriber lift, and 20% Welcome conversion lift across SMS and Email.

Once AI Grow reached full deployment, acquisition continued improving. In November 2025, Yankee Candle drove 98% YoY signup growth against 74% YoY impression growth, showing that the team was converting site traffic into subscribers more efficiently.

Using SMS to reach customers when they’re ready to convert

Yankee Candle sees SMS as a high-intent channel within a broader customer journey. Email continues to drive scale, while SMS adds urgency and helps the team act quickly when shoppers are showing stronger signs of intent.

“Email continues to drive scale for us, while SMS drives urgency and conversion as part of a broader multi-touch strategy.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

That became especially important during BFCM. The team coordinated segmentation across email, SMS, paid media, and other channels to make sure customers received the right offer in the channel where they were most likely to act.
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“We coordinated segmentation across all of our channels to make sure we were reaching the right customers with the right offer at the right time, and especially in the right channel. That’s one of the biggest reasons why SMS performed really well, because we were able to put something in front of our customers when they were ready to convert.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

That strategy helped Yankee Candle increase Holiday 2025 SMS attributed revenue by 211% YoY compared to Holiday 2024.

The “last pop” retargeting strategy

One of Yankee Candle’s strongest SMS motions is high-intent retargeting.

During peak periods, the team uses SMS to reengage shoppers who clicked but did not convert. They layer in recency and other criteria, then use SMS as the final nudge when the customer has already shown purchase intent.

“During peak periods, we’ve really leveraged the retargeting functionality to reengage our customers who clicked but didn’t convert. We overlay different recency points and other criteria, and it’s really helped improve overall conversion and revenue over time. We kind of use that as the last pop for a campaign run.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

Identity AI strengthened that motion by resolving more high-intent shoppers into triggered journeys. Across Product View and Add to Cart triggers, Identity AI drove a 14% revenue lift on augmented abandon journey sends, with Browse Abandon driving a 20% revenue lift.
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When low opt-outs become a signal of relevance

Yankee Candle’s journey strategy is built around moments that already matter to customers: joining the list, abandoning a cart, celebrating a birthday, shopping a sale, or engaging with the rewards program.

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The team recently launched a journey for shoppers who visited a sale page. Within the first few weeks, the journey was already showing strong click-throughs with virtually no unsubscribes.

That matters because low opt-outs are more than a health metric. They signal that the message is reaching the right audience at the right moment.

“We literally just launched it, and it’s doing really well. The click-throughs were high and there was virtually no unsubs. So that just goes to show how relevant and timely those journeys are.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

The broader journey program reflects that same focus on relevance. Yankee Candle’s flagship Welcome message drove a 78.68% CTR across 1.1M sends, while automated journeys generate roughly half of total SMS program revenue using only about 3% of total send volume.

Loyalty messaging that turns SMS into a membership driver

Yankee Candle also uses SMS to support its rewards strategy.

The team segments by rewards status and tier, including “Lovers” and “Fans,” then looks at how each audience responds to different offers. For rewards members, that means tailoring messages based on tier and offer performance.

For non-rewards members, the team uses SMS to make the value of joining clear in the message itself.

“We tailor the messaging to non-rewards members saying, ‘Here’s the offer, but you’re not a member, sign up today.’ And we’re able to segment that pretty quickly. We’re also able to track how many people became members over time through the SMS channel.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

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That gives the team a practical way to use SMS for more than a single purchase. It also becomes a channel for growing loyalty participation and learning which offers move each audience.

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‍AI-powered decisioning across acquisition, expansion, recovery, and timing

Yankee Candle’s AI strategy works because each piece supports a specific part of the customer journey.

AI Grow helps the team convert more seasonal site traffic into SMS and Email subscribers. Audiences AI helps the team expand campaign reach to subscribers who are more likely to convert, while suppressing lower-intent audiences to reduce wasted sends. Identity AI helps recover more browse and cart intent through triggered journeys. Send Time AI helps the team test when subscribers are most likely to engage.

This is the strategy behind the toolset: grow the reachable audience, identify the right customers, recover more intent, and keep optimizing the timing.

For a team managing a high volume of campaigns across channels, Audiences AI helped make decisions faster across timing, targeting, and testing.

“It’s been super valuable, especially in how we optimize our messaging with timing, targeting, and testing. Ultimately, it helps us make smarter decisions faster, which is critical for a brand like ours managing a high volume of campaigns across channels.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

Across the AI Pro suite, Yankee Candle drove a 12% aggregate incremental revenue lift on top of an already-scaling SMS program. Audiences AI Inclusions drove a 34% revenue lift on expansion audiences, while Audiences AI Exclusions suppressed 4.5M low-intent sends across 109 campaigns. Enhanced Attentive Tag also helped identify more first-time visitors and route them into Welcome journeys, driving 4% incremental list growth across both SMS and Email.

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A partnership built for speed and support

The technology mattered, but the partnership behind it mattered too.

From onboarding through ongoing optimization, Yankee Candle found value in Attentive’s responsiveness, collaboration, and proactive support. As SMS became a larger revenue driver for the brand, that support helped the team keep moving quickly and continue improving the program.

“It’s been a great partnership from onboarding until now, especially in terms of responsiveness and collaboration. The Attentive teams have been super proactive in helping us optimize our program and quickly address any issues or challenges.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

What marketers can learn from Yankee Candle’s SMS strategy

For Yankee Candle, the biggest lesson was clear: channels perform best when they work together.

Email, SMS, print, and paid media each have a role to play. The opportunity comes from coordinating those touchpoints so each message feels more relevant to the customer and better aligned to where they are in the journey.

“The biggest gains come from how channels really work together. Investing in personalization early doesn’t have to be super complex to be effective, but it does make a significant impact on engagement and performance.”
- Deepthy Marunninal, Sr. Manager, CRM, Yankee Candle

That approach helped SMS grow from 8% of total DTC revenue to approximately 15% to 17% since Yankee Candle returned to Attentive in late 2024.

For Yankee Candle, the transformation came from changing the role of SMS. It became a faster, more precise channel for acting on customer intent, powered by stronger acquisition, smarter segmentation, high-intent retargeting, and AI-driven optimization.

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