Aubrey’s Bead Closet has a loyal fanbase known as the “ABC family”. Learn more about how this e-commerce store uses SMS to communicate with its fans, launch new products, and drive mobile purchases.
In just three years, Aubrey's Bead Closet has built a loyal fanbase of their adjustable cord necklaces.
Aubrey’s Bead Closet was looking to break its reliance on Facebook and build a marketing channel that it could fully own.
A 400% increase in mobile traffic from its SMS campaigns and CTRs as high as 21%.
Aly Schilling and her husband Brad started Aubrey’s Bead Closet (ABC) back in 2016. She describes the highly successful handmade jewelry venture as an “accidental company”.
“I was doing some photoshoots with my daughter for clothing companies, and I was making jewelry for her to wear at them. A lot of people started asking me where to get the necklaces. From there, I started doing it on the side, mostly marketing the products on Facebook, and it just kind of exploded.”
As every marketer can attest, building a brand is a whole lot easier when you have a product that people love. On top of this, direct to consumer jewelry is a great space to be in. In 2018, online jewelry sales grew by 14.2%.
We spoke with her to learn why she started texting her customers and how she uses it to drive mobile web traffic and purchases.
Tobi Lutke knows a thing or two about e-commerce marketing. After all, he is the CEO of Shopify, the world’s most widely used e-commerce platform.
About a year ago, he tweeted out, “Email lists and website are the two only things you can own on the internet. Everything else is just rented.” We know that if Aly read Tobi’s tweet, she’d agreed––though she knows that you also own your SMS subscriber list.
Like many e-commerce entrepreneurs who turn to text marketing, Aly was frustrated with the shifting sands of existing marketing channels.
“It costs an arm and a leg to run ad campaigns on Facebook. Plus, organic visibility just isn’t there anymore. We used to sell everything on Facebook and marketed solely on Facebook. It’s no longer possible to do that.”
Seeing other brands use text marketing effectively encouraged Aly to use texting to drive traffic to a new website. She wanted ABC to become less dependant on uncontrollable algorithms to drive revenue.
“It was really scary to me that we relied so heavily on Facebook to reach people when they can change things whenever they feel like it.”
Aly luckily turned her Facebook followers into SMS subscribers before organic reach completely collapsed. She also now advertises her keyword and phone number on her website.
To incentivize people to sign-up, she offers them a discount code that people receive when they text in her keyword “necklace”. (A keyword is a word or phrase a customer can text in to subscribe to messages.)
She also started slowly, choosing wisely not to flood her customers with texts.
Aly now sends her customers between two to five texts a week, although she avoids sending texts on the weekend and never sends more than one text per day. The volume of texts and low unsubscribe rate points are impressive and point to just how highly engaged ABC’s list is.
“The exciting thing is that I haven’t seen a huge unsubscribe rate because of this.”
Aly plans marketing campaigns around product launches and seasonal promotions, applying a tried and tested formula. She does an initial push on Facebook and then sends out a text message.
She’s always happy to see her web traffic jump by 400% after sending out a text campaign.
Aly is a big fan of our pricing structure and the ability to upgrade and downgrade monthly based on business needs. She also appreciates the fact that credits rollover on a monthly basis, providing another layer of flexibility.
Aly’s built a successful e-commerce business using two core pillars: Build brilliant products and be open to change.
The former is evident in ABC’s many five-star Facebook reviews.
The latter is clear from her approach to marketing ABC. Instead of standing pat as Facebook organic reach and return-on-ad-spend declined, she looked for a solution that would put her jewelry in front of her customers and help her build new, stronger relationships.
As SimpleTexting continues to layer in more e-commerce functionality like our new mobile sign-up widget, we’re excited to work with Aubrey’s Bead Closet to increase the ROI it sees from SMS marketing.
If you’re an e-commerce retailer who wants to try text marketing, be sure to sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo today!
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