How one sports equipment manufacturer used adaptive lifecycle messaging to increase email revenue by 760 percent.

Summary

To consistently offer its customers an authentic and personalized online shopping experience, SKLZ relies on Cordial. By automating personalized lifecycle and triggered messaging, Cordial helps SKLZ engage and retain users while cross-promoting relevant products.

Company Overview

SKLZ is a sports equipment manufacturer which helps prepare athletes for their sport of choice. The company offers a variety of training products and programs designed to increase skill and performance, both on and off the field. SKLZ products are world-renowned for cutting-edge technology and are available at major sporting goods retailers, specialty retailers, and at SKLZ.com.

Average order value increased by 59%.

Key Takeaways

• Email transactions increased by 485%.
• Email revenue grew by 760% year-over-year.

The Problem

SKLZ sells its sporting equipment at a variety of popular brick-and-mortar stores throughout the U.S. Recently, its two largest retail distribution channels—Sports Authority and Sports Chalet—filed for bankruptcy, forcing SKLZ to reevaluate its selling strategy and increase its dependence on eCommerce.

To sell effectively online, SKLZ relied heavily on out-of-the-box messaging capabilities of its website platform, but were only able to send batch-and-blast promotional emails and set up rudimentary, automated message streams. This made personalized communication nearly impossible. SKLZ experimented with basic segmentation, but relied solely on the preferential inputs of its users, which are often incomplete or incorrect.

The segmentation model breaks if a user says they are interested in soccer, but all they search for is basketball or golf.

SKLZ knew that the success of its business depended on creating a personalized lifecycle messaging program designed to drive inbound traffic and nurture users through the purchase process. The only way to do this was to find an email platform that could leverage their data, segment customers based on real-time behavior, and provide them with the ability to send personalized messages at scale.

The Solution

Cordial approached this problem with a holistic strategy that began on the SKLZ website. Using Cordial’s REST-based API and Javascript listeners, SKLZ was able to collect behavioral and usage data from its customers. Up until this point, SKLZ only knew what its customers told them during profile creation, which consisted of basic interests and preferences—severely limiting the amount of information available to the SKLZ Marketing Team.

Cordial empowered SKLZ to begin cultivating a much deeper understanding of how its customers were interacting with its website. For example, SKLZ is now able to visualize which product categories are most popular among highly specific audience segments, and whether or not users were actually interested in what they indicated during signup. Furthermore, SKLZ could now leverage this data to have a more relevant and authentic dialogue with users. For a company betting big on eCommerce, this information proved to be invaluable.

Within 30 days of signing up with Cordial, SKLZ migrated all transactional and promotional messaging to the Cordial platform and were able to easily create a number of triggered lifecycle messages based on browse and search behavior.

Cordial provided a holistic view of the customer:

1. Viewed basketball category
2. Clicked on a product
3. Purchased product one week later

Each of these messages was unique to the recipient, displaying images, text, products, and promotions based on real-time customer data, truly allowing SKLZ to deliver 1:1 personalization at scale. In addition, SKLZ was also able to better cross-promote its product offerings, growing key channels that had experienced difficulty gaining traction in the past.

By Switching to Cordial:

• Within 30 days of signing up with Cordial, SKLZ migrated all transactional and promotional messaging to the Cordial platform.
• SKLZ easily created a number of triggered lifecycle messages based on browse and search behavior.
• SKLZ was able to deliver true 1:1 personalization at scale.

Average order value increased by 59%.

The Results

• Email transactions increased by 485%.
• Email revenue grew by 760% year-over-year.

Cordial worked with the SKLZ marketing team to:

• Understand users: Leverage Cordial’s API and Javascript listeners to gain a clearer understanding of how customers were using the website.
• Promote purchases: Implement a “welcome email series” to promote purchase in the critical days following signup.
• Create triggered messages: Implement adaptive, browse-based triggered messages to cross-promote key products and channels.
• Track every interaction: Quickly create detailed customer segments using Cordial’s Integrated Audience-Builder.
• Engage & retain customers: Create an automated “win back” messaging program to engage and retain customers.