How a leading lifestyle brand easily shifted intricate data and robust integrations from a legacy ESP to Cordial.
First send
Batch emails fully ramped
Priority automations migrated
Founded in 1980, a leading lifestyle brand offering an exclusive collection of the most relevant brands and styles to a community of inspired youth.
PacSunPacSun, a leading lifestyle and apparel brand, was looking to find a new technology partner after facing instability with their previous messaging provider. With ongoing technical issues and messaging limitations, they knew a change was needed. However, with over 100 automations powering critical programs, the migration would be complex.
To migrate both their email and SMS programs, onboard successfully with a new provider, and beat the industry standard of a 90-day migration, PacSun required a strategic partnership that excelled in flexibility, agility, and speed. Strength and reliability—across any message type—are key to the success of migrating such a large retail brand’s program.
PacSun required a solution with the capability to quickly launch essential automations and messaging programs to avoid major business disruption ahead of retail’s peak season. It was clear that the right technology partner would be more than just software, but a true partnership grounded in speed, reliability, and dedication to successful outcomes.
To make the complex migration seem less daunting, Cordial collaborated with PacSun to “lift and shift” their dynamic content and message automations. Cordial’s implementation experts prioritized ramping batch programs first, enabling PacSun to send daily messages from Cordial as soon as possible.
To begin automation shifts, Cordial focused on building the most critical automations to launch, as defined in priority waves by the PacSun team. The Cordial team created segmentation dictionaries for easy audience building, new Sculpt blocks, and promotional content features. This alleviated creative production work for the PacSun team, reducing overall build and send time for their email programs and increasing time to value.
Simultaneously, intricate work began on foundational data integrations. One of the most critical integrations to address was PacSun’s customer loyalty welcome program. This behavioral data, such as rewards points earned by a customer, is extremely valuable to a large retailer. Cordial built the integration, using webhooks provided by PacSun’s loyalty partner, and saving the PacSun team thousands of dollars during the implementation process.
Jesse Isola, Director of CRM & Loyalty at PacSun
Throughout the migration, PacSun collaborated with Cordial to make strategic decisions. PacSun leveraged Cordial’s expertise and resources to tackle complex data transformations and integrations. For example, to solve for incomplete historical order data transferred during migration, Cordial used its built-in data transformation solution, Architect, to unblock segmentation based on purchase history. Architect’s powerful way of importing and normalizing data accelerates the migration timeline from months to weeks.
The agility of Cordial’s technology facilitated the rapid transition of PacSun’s email program, the seamless transition of PacSun’s customer data flows, and the ability to easily make ongoing enhancements post-launch.
With a basic messaging infrastructure, clear prioritization of their 100+ programs, and reduced creative workload, Cordial fully migrated the first wave of PacSun’s automations, totaling 43 multi-touch automations in 10 weeks. Within that time, Cordial also built and launched 77 ramp emails and 85 individual email + SMS touches.
Amy Martin, Senior Client Success Manager, Cordial
multi-channel automations migrated in 10 weeks
customer affinity automations launched in 10 weeks
In addition to the first wave of multi-channel automations, Cordial powered 21 customer affinity automations, once again using Cordial Architect. Architect’s data transformation scripts evaluate the shopping behavior and email activity of every contact and determine each customer’s category, brand, and product affinities. PacSun can then trigger complex orchestrations within Cordial, providing curated product recommendation campaigns that are customized to each individual customer.
Knowing the proven dedication of both teams, PacSun and Cordial continue to work closely together, driving results and revenue from email and SMS programs. With the core infrastructure now migrated to Cordial’s robust platform, PacSun is poised to optimize engagement with revenue-driving campaign strategies.
Amy Jerusalmi, Chief Customer Officer, Cordial
