How a leading comfort technology company continues to disrupt the traditional mattress industry with unprecedented customer retention
Email subscriber list growth in 2020
Of Q4 email orders from repeat buyers
Increase in Q4 email revenue YoY
Leading comfort technology company and a disruptor to the traditional mattress industry, designing and manufacturing products to improve how people sleep, sit, and stand.
A leading comfort technology company backed by science entered the mattress industry in 2016 and has since been a disrupter to the mattress category. Their strong digital presence and direct-to-consumer model helped propel the company’s growth over five years. In 2019, they outgrew their former email service provider (ESP) and made the decision to move to Cordial. Since then, the company’s confidence in Cordial’s messaging and data platform has set them up for immediate growth and to scale their messaging programs for years to come. And despite a worldwide pandemic, the company continued to grow in 2020.
As with all retailers, this company faced major challenges in 2020 due to COVID-19. In March 2020, many of their wholesale locations closed and brick-and-mortar consumer shopping significantly slowed. The marketing team knew they would be critical in capturing new customers and growing revenue with existing customers. “When quarantine started, our wholesale business effectively shut down. The vast majority of the stores where our mattresses are sold closed. We knew we really had to pick it up on the DTC end,” said the Senior Email Marketing Manager.
In order to capture new customers, the team looked for opportunities to reach people looking to buy a new mattress. They recognized that customers in the middle of key life events have a much higher likelihood of purchasing a mattress. Using these insights, the company partnered with key industry vendors to connect with new potential customers. By providing an email opt-in on third-party vendor sites, they captured new subscribers who were likely to need a mattress as part of a move. These contacts opt in explicitly for the brand’s emails and are expecting to receive them, a practice required to keep the email program compliant and maintain stellar deliverability rates.
Once opted in, new contacts populate in the company’s data warehouse and sync with the Cordial Data Platform via API. The marketing team can then trigger a unique welcome series using Cordial’s Cross-Channel Orchestration Builder. This email acquisition strategy through third-party vendor opt-ins has been a crucial part of growing their email subscriber base.
In early 2020, the team recognized a new demand for comfort at home. Many people were setting up home offices for the first time and making investments in quality equipment. This prompted the marketing team to test a promotional email for seat cushions, the first time the product had been promoted as the only item in an email. The response was incredible.
Senior Email Marketing Manager
Seat cushions weren’t the only product extension to make their way into email campaigns. In 2020, the email marketing team started promoting pillows, sheet sets, pet beds, and more, a far cry from 2019, when mattresses were the only focus. This new marketing strategy opened up additional opportunities for upsells and repeat purchases.
The team leveraged Cordial’s real-time Audience Builder and segmentation tool to build audiences on the fly based on previous purchases. For example, they could easily send an email promotion to previous buyers of a sheet set when a newer version launched. “Cordial has increased our ability to activate data,” noted the Senior Email Marketing Manager. “The audience building is super quick and easy. With Audience Builder, I can pull up an audience count in seconds, provide how many customers would qualify for the audience, or how many are subscribed or unsubscribed to email. It’s been really helpful for us to do audience sizing on the fly.”
The new email strategy set the team up for success during an unpredictably early holiday shopping season. With Prime Day pushed to October, many retailers followed suit, releasing Black Friday deals earlier than ever before.
Before the busy holiday season, the team created a gift guide full of accessories and began email promotion on November 2. This allowed them to send a variety of offers instead of mattress-only offers for a month before Cyber Week. Having multiple promotional options also increased the volume of email sends, since they no longer needed to exclude recent mattress buyers. Instead, a contact who had recently purchased a mattress might receive the gift guide with a mattress offer at the bottom, encouraging them to share the sale with friends and family.
Client experience highlight Prior to using Cordial, the marketing team was accustomed to submitting support tickets and waiting long periods of time for responses from their ESP. Now they have direct access to a dedicated team of experts: a Client Success Manager, a Solutions Consultant, and a Deliverability Consultant. “Cordial has the best customer service of any ESP I’ve worked with and that is hands down the truth.”
Prior to using Cordial, the marketing team was accustomed to submitting support tickets and waiting long periods of time for responses from their ESP. Now they have direct access to a dedicated team of experts: a Client Success Manager, a Solutions Consultant, and a Deliverability Consultant. “Cordial has the best customer service of any ESP I’ve worked with and that is hands down the truth.”
With the help of the third-party vendor opt-ins, the company grew their email subscriber list by 238% in 2020. They broke records with their largest email send in company history — 2.7 million emails — on the day before Thanksgiving. New customer retention strategies had an incredible impact as well: revenue from repeat purchasers over Cyber Week was the highest in company history, and 70% of orders from email were from repeat buyers. Email revenue in Q4 2020 increased 263% year over year, while orders in Q4 2020 from email increased 206% year over year.
“We’ve definitely seen incredible ROI with Cordial. So much so that Cordial is now considered an operational expense instead of an advertising expense. I’d say that is the highest compliment you can give a marketing platform.” — Senior Email Marketing Manager
Despite challenges faced by many direct-to-consumer companies, this brand continued to grow in 2020. With Cordial as their cross-channel messaging platform, they are well-positioned to launch an SMS program and further expand their cross-channel marketing strategy.