How The Oodie’s SMS List Building Strategy Brought in $1,000,000 in 30 days
The Oodie is a direct-to-consumer brand that sells soft, snuggly “wearable blankets.” What’s a wearable blanket? Well, picture a humongous hoodie that falls all the way down to your knees. The company was founded by David Fogarty in 2018 and it’s one of ten brands in the Davie Group, which together have a valuation of $200 million.
Website:
theoodie.comFounded:
2018
Industry:
Fashion
$1MExtra revenue in 30 days from SMS
81,000New email subscribers
15,000New SMS subscribers
Meet The Oodie
The Oodie sells the warmest, most scrumptious, and utterly buttery piece of clothing you will ever own. The company based in Australia but has a network of warehouses located around the world for global shipping.
Demand for The Oodies skyrocketed as Covid lockdowns caused consumers to search for more comfortable home attire, which resulted in more sales and more web traffic.
Challenges
The Oodie team wanted to take full advantage of their increased web traffic, but they realized that many first-time visitors abandoned the store without buying anything.
Opening a line of communication with this segment of visitors is one of the key aspects to running a successful ecommerce business.
To improve their lead generation, they turned to Jason K Williamson—a Shopify email and SMS marketing expert, and the founder of the E2 Agency.
Solution: Make email subscription your Trojan horse
Jason’s advice revolved around using popups to rapidly grow the number of subscribers.
But he wasn’t talking about using a typical welcome popup that politely asks for a visitor’s email address. No, he had something a bit more advanced in mind.
Let’s take a look at the multi-step popup Jason and The Oodie came up with.
Step 1: Spark interest with a good deal
The first page of the popup might not seem particularly groundbreaking. It is beautifully designed, with the cut-out image of a model offering a hug and $25 off in exchange for an email address.
The follow-up is where it gets interesting. Everyone who entered their email address and clicked the “Reveal My Code” button was moved along to the next step.
Step 2: Sweeten the deal and ask for a phone number
The goal of the popup’s second page was to convince consumers to subscribe to the SMS list in addition to the email list.
It offered users a choice: they could receive their code via email or as a text message.
They used persuasive, engaging copy to make the case that being on their SMS list would result in a better shopping experience.
Presenting the SMS option as the entryway into the “The Oodie SMS Club” gives it an air of exclusivity. They also highlighted the fact that the user would receive their code directly to their smartphone, emphasizing convenience. No need to sift through emails to find their discount!
The email signup portion of the popup was a “hook” that led to this pitch. Visitors who made it this far had already demonstrated a good mindset, making it more likely that they would be willing to subscribe to the “even better” SMS list.
Visitors who clicked on the “Text me my code!” button saw a third page, which asked for their phone number.
But wait, why collect phone numbers?
Simply put, because SMS marketing is much more effective than email marketing. A variety of statistics back this up:
- SMS messages have a 98% open rate, compared to emails’ 20% open rate.
- Links in SMS messages have a 19% click-through rate, almost 10x better than the 2% click-through rate for email links.
- 50% of US consumers make direct purchases after being sent an SMS branded text, discount coupon, or QR code.
Data gleaned from The Oodie’s campaign confirms these stats.
They earned an average of $43.09 for every SMS they sent, while the average earning from an email was $6.43.
It’s clear that an SMS subscriber is much more valuable than an email subscriber.
But then why collect email addresses in the first place?
Well, email is a great way to nurture leads in the long term. But marketers like Jason have also figured out that people are more likely to hand over their phone number if they’ve already given you their email.
Emails can get you through the gate, like a Trojan horse.
Step 3: The thank you page
A warm thank you page is a necessary final step to any lead generation campaign:
Step 4: The text
Once they opted in, users received a welcome message: “Welcome to the club! Click below to activate your $25 savings. Expires in 72 hours.”
Now let’s look at some of the technical details to see how Jason and The Oodie pulled off this campaign using OptiMonk’s features.
Under the hood
Precise targeting is one of the most important keys to running a successful popup campaign. You only want your messages to appear to users who find them relevant…otherwise, people will get annoyed.
The Oodie’s campaign was designed for first-time visitors who didn’t make a purchase (or were not in the process of buying something):
The popup would appear to visitors just once. And it would only appear to those who had spent more than 30 seconds on the site and showed exit intent, or scrolled through 60% of the page they were on.
After someone converted, the contact information gathered was sent to The Oodie’s email and SMS marketing platforms automatically (they use Klaviyo for the former and Postscript for the latter).
Results
Check out the results Jason helped The Oodie achieve in just one month with this popup campaign:
1. 81,000 new email subscribers
2. 15,000 new SMS subscribers (meaning that about 19% of email subscribers also subscribed to the SMS list)
3. Their welcome email earned $690,089 (on average, $6.43 per email)
4. Their welcome SMS message earned $626,254 (on average, $43.09 per SMS)
5. They gained $1,023,993 total revenue from all new SMS subscribers
Advice from Jason K Williamson
“OptiMonk has a beautiful UI. The way that I can create these incredible stunning popups that are really on brand, but also powerful and effective, leaves me with literally no other choice. On top of that, there are some incredible rules, really powerful behavioral triggers that really make my popups stand out in front of any others.”
Jason K WilliamsonFounder of E2 Agency 
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