🎧 This episode of the DTC pod was #winning with Director of Retention at Win Brands Group, Sophie Baer.
Win is a shared services platform that specializes in buying and building category-defining brands like QALO, Homesick, Gravity, and Love Your Melon. Every brand that joins Win becomes part of a ready-made community and instantly benefits from decades of expertise and pooled resources, shared operational costs, and economies of scale. ⚖️
Tune in to the pod to learn what automations you need for retention, how to drive more second purchases, and why you NEED an SMS program today.
The Takeaways 👇
📱 Don’t fall victim to SMS FOMO:
“Trust me, SMS is where you need to be. If you don’t have an SMS program now, today is the day…it’s an incredible channel to unlock growth.”
Sophie’s top tips for maximizing your SMS success:
- Make it valuable. Give early access to sales, products, or exclusive offers.
- Make it fun and personable. Ask customers to share photos or their favorite movie.
- Treat the channel with respect. You’re in a personal space–in someone’s texts, right next to a convo with their mom.
“[SMS is] not always about sales. It’s an opportunity to have a conversation with your customers and not push the product, and that’s ultimately going to build your brand loyalty and engagement.”
🤖 Automations and ruthless list hygiene:
Sophie is a self-proclaimed Automation Overlord™️ and believes automations should come before campaigns.
“If [the customer] is in an automation, that’s where they [belong]. Don’t necessarily send them a campaign… [because] nine times out of ten, you’ve already honed those flows, so that’s where [the customer is] supposed to be.”
However, they make exceptions for one-off campaigns during big sales like Black Friday or significant product launches… but they’re rare.
And if customers don’t engage with those flows or campaigns, Sophie takes a “super ruthless” approach to list hygiene. 💪
“I used to work at an ESP company…I have a very clear understanding that you only message people that are actually engaging with your brand, and you’re not going to make money from people that don’t want to hear from you. It’s as simple as that.”
💰 What Sophie would do with an extra $50K:
She would devote part of the funds to research and product development to help her brands build out a larger assortment of products. The rest would go to tech tools to help them better follow and guide the customer journey.
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