Three Ships Beauty Gets 2X Earnings Per Message with Postscript
Three Ships Beauty is a Canada-based DTC skincare company. Their 100% natural, vegan, and certified cruelty-free skincare products are available online and in-store. Recently, they expanded to the U.S. by partnering with Whole Foods and Target.
Three Ships Beauty launches SMS program with Postscript
Three Ships Beauty started connecting with email agencies in December 2020 as they were expanding their marketing and communications. One of the agencies suggested exploring SMS as a channel and using Postscript to help automate communications. As head of growth and DTC at Three Ships Beauty, Lillie Sun was intrigued.
“I looked into Postscript, ended up on Fantastic Texts, and was blown away. I never knew brands could text customers in so many different ways,” she said. “Our business is very suitable for SMS: skincare is a highly informative and intimate industry.”
Working with a dedicated CSM
If used carefully and strategically, Lillie knew SMS would be an effective channel for connecting with customers. She decided to go with Postscript. Within a week, everything was set up and live. Having a dedicated Customer Success Manager is one of the main reasons she chose Postscript:
“As a fast-growing brand, we don't have anyone dedicated to SMS. I'm the one fully responsible for this channel, but I can only dedicate a couple of hours a week (max) to it, which means having an account executive who can help me prioritize tasks and solve problems is really important.”
Lillie Sun, Head of Growth and DTC
"If done well, SMS can have a strong impact on your community. Postscript is a great platform because it's easy to use and the team is incredible at helping you get things running."
Industry
Beauty & Cosmetics
Solution and results
Now, only a couple of months into their SMS program, Three Ships Beauty is seeing impressive results. After A/B testing their SMS abandoned cart flows, they went from $4.62 Earnings Per Message (EPM) to $8.71 EPM, almost doubling the number.
Here are 3 strategies that have led to Three Ships Beauty’s success with SMS:
Using customer feedback. Lillie’s goal with SMS is to share messages at the right time and place based on what customers want to see. That means asking for feedback and making adjustments whenever possible. She explains: “My approach has always been to test, take feedback, implement changes, and test again until it's the best version. I have our customer experience manager give me feedback on the responses in Postscript so I can know how customers are responding.”
Sending fewer messages. Listening to customers also means paying attention to response rates and adjusting messages as needed. Even with a 32% conversion rate, Lillie knew there was room for improvement with their abandoned cart flows. “We realized abandoned cart messages needed to be straight to the point and only provide relevant content—reminding them four times is not only going to make them NOT want to complete the purchase but probably unsubscribe,” she said. By cutting reminders down by half, conversion rates increased from 32% to 47.6%.
Testing until something sticks. When it comes to SMS, Lillie knew she couldn’t be afraid of experimenting or going back to the drawing board when messages weren’t performing well. In fact, for abandoned cart messages, she went through three separate versions before landing on one. The first test included four longer form messages, the second snuck in some humor and media, and the third was short and to the point. By testing different messages until customers started responding, CTR increased from 18.5% to 22.3%.
22.3%
Click through rate on abandoned cart
47.6%
Conversion rate on abandoned cart
$8.75
Earnings per message on abandoned cart
Lillie Sun, Head of Growth and DTC
"You're not going to get it perfect right off the bat, but as long as you're listening to your customers and implementing their feedback to make better changes, it'll pay off!"
Industry
Beauty & Cosmetics