How Rex Specs uses Postscript and Conversational SMS to drive 100x ROI
Rex Specs sells performance-driven gear for the active dog, including their best-selling dog goggles that protect against UV rays and other elements.
Taking a chance on SMS marketing
When Erica Aarons joined Rex Specs as their Senior Digital Marketing Manager, she had never used SMS marketing before. While she was excited about the potential of a new channel, other members of her team were a bit more hesitant. “Are we going to create more work for customer support?” and “why are we funneling existing customers to different channels?” were some of the questions that came up.
Today, those initial hesitations around SMS are long gone: Rex Specs is averaging over 100x ROI every month on their SMS program using Postscript.
Customer education and support over SMS
Erica’s first goal with using SMS was to facilitate customer education. “We have a customer service heavy product and we get a lot of emails and phone calls from customers asking how to use our dog goggles. So I thought how can we automate that? What if you got a text after receiving your package that taught you how to use them?”
With that in mind, Erica built an automation flow for the keyword TRAIN. She included the keyword in their SMS Welcome Series and product packaging. When customers reply with “TRAIN”, they trigger a series of 5 texts over 10 days with step-by-step instructions on how to train their dog to use the Rex Specs goggles. She was able to repurpose existing training videos into the automation.
Erica Aarons
Senior Digital Marketing Manager
“When our product works for their dog, they end up buying more goggles for their friends or collecting more colors. It creates a great customer experience, which has always been really important to our company.”
Industry
Fitness & Outdoors
Two-way conversations with customers
Erica uses Postscript’s Responses feature to manage two-way conversations with customers. “Lots of people reply to our texts with a photo of their dog wearing the goggles to ask about sizing. I manage this myself a couple of times per day. It only takes a few minutes and our customers really appreciate getting help or an instructional video on their phone, while they’re trying to use the goggles. If it’s a more complicated question, I can pass it along to our support team.”
Using Segmentation to Maximize ROI
One of the principles that Postscript preaches is using segmentation as much as possible to send targeted messages and maximize ROI. Rex Specs’s Bark Week campaign is a perfect example of using this strategy.
“This summer, we have a big campaign going on called Bark Week with new goggle color and other product drops. At the beginning of the campaign, we sent out an email telling people to opt-in to SMS for VIP notifications for Bark Week. We also utilized our customer support team: when customers asked when a certain color would come back in stock, the support team would give them a link to signup to our SMS list using a specific keyword for that color. This is how we were able to further segment our list. So when we launched the targeted Bark Week campaigns, we were seeing insane CTRs and EPMs.”
Yazberry Bark Week Campaign
Thanks to the promotion leading up to the Bark Week campaign and using segmentation to create wait lists for the different product colors, this simple SMS campaign had amazing results:
64.8% CTR
11.2% Conversion Rate
$8.40 EPM
Keys to Success
In addition to focusing on customer education and campaign segmentation, Erica pointed to four key things that have paid dividends in their SMS program:
Keeping their list clean: “My goal with subscribers has always been to either convert or unsubscribe to keep our list clean and engaged.” This strategy of having a small, high-quality list means that Rex Specs is seeing tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each month from SMS with only 5000 engaged subscribers.
Infusing their brand voice over SMS: You can see in all of their automations, campaigns, and two-way conversations that their brand voice is a mixture of badass and fun. There’s no mistaking a text from Rex Specs with any other brand.
Building a Welcome Flow with multiple paths: The Welcome Flow is an important opportunity to engage new subscribers. Erica includes multiple Keywords in the first welcome message to send subscribers down additional flows. “We’re excited about continuing to build our Welcome Flow to give people multiple paths based on whether they’re an existing customer or not and what they’re looking for.”
Working with a dedicated Postscript CSM: “Working with Ellie, our dedicated CSM at Postscript, has been amazing. Not only has she given us great strategy tips and best practices, but she forced me to think more strategically about how we can have multiple segments with targeted campaigns and build more automations around the customer journey. When Ellie isn’t available, the chat support team is equally as helpful. Postscript truly is customer first and I feel well taken care of.”
Erica Aarons
Senior Digital Marketing Manager
"Postscript has helped us elevate our customer experience. We don’t just use SMS to send campaigns and make sales, but also to educate customers about training and educate people who haven’t converted about why their dog needs our product."
Industry