Stop, collaborate and listen

...and how SMS messaging is all about timing

Author

Jesse Clemmens
June 20, 2024

Welcome to HiTide’s weekly newsletter, packed with our latest product updates, tips, case studies, and SMS marketing news for DTC.

Shipping to your inbox straight from New York and written by yours truly, Jesse from HiTide.

This week:

  • 👯‍♂️ Making brand collabs even better

  • 💬 How Serpenti grew their SMS list by 10% in 7 days

  • 🔗 Quick Links: Peach Slice’s text message-based hotline; how to take advantage of an SMS list.

Let’s dive in!

⚡️New in HiTide:

Ok it’s not totally new…. BUT definitely underutilized so I wanted to call this campaign type out.

We’ve seen more and more brands adopt this strategy.

Did you know that you can collect emails from multi-brand collab posts?

🎵 Stop, collaborate and listen 🎵

……ok so here’s how it works:

  1. Set up a HiTide Email collection campaign.

  2. Post your content. You must be the Collab post “owner” and invite the other brand(s) to the post. If the other brand(s) invite you, DM automation won’t work. The post owner has full control to Private Reply (DM) to comments. ✨ even if the user is coming from another brands feed. ✨ Crazy cool right?

  3. From there, once the post is live and people start commenting to enter, your IG account will automatically send the DM based on the assigned comment or DM trigger and collect email addresses:

HiTide makes it easy to add value to your brand collabs!

  1. After the campaign, all brands will receive their own HiTide login where they can find a CSV file with the collected emails. OR, even better - they can connect Klaviyo to HiTide and we will sync the emails directly into their welcome flow. Once synced, they will be able to measure revenue coming from those emails, at no cost.

If you are pitching your fellow brands on Collabs, you should definitely tell them that you can collect emails from the post, not just grow followers + engagement. Easy win.

By the way, this all works for influencer Collabs too. Imagine the possibilities!

Want to chat about Collabs? Just hit reply and let’s set up time.

Serpenti Apparel, an LA-based Italian heritage brand, specializes in vintage-inspired fashion, producing small-batch, made-to-order styles.

While Serpenti had a sizable SMS list with good retention and conversion, acquiring new SMS subscribers proved challenging. Relying on traditional pop-up banners with discounts, they sought a less transactional approach to achieve faster growth.

The Strategies

Serpenti leveraged HiTide to launch an Instagram giveaway campaign, supported by a Meta Click-To-Message ad targeting engaged followers. Participants were encouraged to comment with a “🐍” emoji to engage, triggering an automated DM sequence that invited participants to subscribe to Serpenti’s SMS list to enter the giveaway.

This strategy not only capitalized on their existing engaged Instagram audience but also introduced a conversational way to convert followers into subscribers.

The Results

An impressive 74% of giveaway participants converted to Serpenti's Postscript SMS list, with 78% being net new subscribers. Over the 7-day campaign, Serpenti grew their SMS list by over 10%.

Subscribers were acquired at an effective cost of $0.94 for the organic post and $2.09 overall, not including the offset from downstream revenue. In the following weeks, orders from HiTide-acquired subscribers averaged 150% of Serpenti's typical AOV.

"HiTide's automation capabilities deserve special praise and saved me countless hours that would have been spent manually sending messages to my followers."

Go check out Serpenti and sign up for SMS while you’re there!

Skincare brand Peach Slices is using SMS in a way I haven’t seen before.

They set up a text based hotline to provide customers with a direct line to their “SOS Skincare Squad” for personalized advice and exclusive deals.

Love how this is positioned: as direct access to the team. Honestly kind-of brilliant! I’m sure it does well for them.

The article didn't share exactly how this strategy performed, but it's good to see brands exploring different ways to use the medium, especially for bidirectional communication.

I am seeing more and more brands replicating their “quiz” experiences in text. Seems like a great way to give that personalized touch. And to build zero-party data while you’re at it! Peachy.

One of the best things about SMS is how quickly a message can go from your sending platform to being right in front of your customer’s eyes.

This tweet from Jimmy at Sendlane does a great job breaking down a few ways e-com brands should take advantage of this uniquely powerful aspect of the channel.

Until next time!

-Jesse