Pet supply brand Sir Dogwood is a small business with aggressive goals: to become a household name and to make the pet industry more inclusive. To grow the brand, Founder Chaz Olajide had to wear many hats, and was limited by a lack of time and resources. That’s why we were thrilled to have selected Sir Dogwood as one of the first brands for Yotpo Grow. (Update: Yotpo Grow is now Yotpo RX!) Read on to learn about their journey!
Sir Dogwood’s mission
Sir Dogwood’s mission of inclusivity involves supporting women and BIPOC-led brands, amplifying their voices, and increasing their visibility. To support this mission, the brand offers a globally sourced selection of dog wear, toys, and accessories thoughtfully curated from the most unique designers from around the world. And their love of animals is reflected not just in their products, but in their charitable activities as well, as a portion of their monthly sales are donated to a non-profit working to end pet homelessness.
The brand was selected for the first class of Yotpo Grow, an incubator program designed to support small, Black-owned brands with free access to all of our products, a customer success team, and dedicated training — all designed to accelerate eCommerce growth. Some of the brand’s goals for Yotpo Grow included laying a foundation to scale up and become more of a lifestyle brand, and expanding their marketing channels to include SMS and loyalty.
Sir Dogwood x Yotpo Grow: before and after
Before Yotpo Grow, founder Chaz Olajide was limited in what she was able to do to promote the business. “It was just email,” Chaz says of her prior marketing efforts. “I hadn’t hired my two part-time staffers yet, so it was just me and all I had the bandwidth for was to push out an eblast once a month.”
With Yotpo Grow, Sir Dogwood was able to add Yotpo’s entire suite of products including Reviews and Visual UGC, SMS & Email, and most recently, Loyalty to their marketing mix, along with a dedicated team of experts to help implement solutions, provide guidance every step of the way, and help with strategy.
4 ways Yotpo Grow helped Sir Dogwood increase retention and ROI
1. Working with a team of experts
One of the biggest benefits of Yotpo Grow for Sir Dogwood is having a team at Yotpo to guide her in using Yotpo products, creating and executing marketing strategies, and offering advice and support.
“Being part of Yotpo Grow and having access to this think-tank level group of people that have been able to help me with the challenges I face has been really phenomenal,” says Chaz. “As such a small business owner, it’s been great to have a group of experts in their field dedicated to me, listening when I have challenges, and coming up with solutions to problems I didn’t even know I had.”
2. Using visual UGC to build social proof
As an image-based brand, it’s important for Sir Dogwood to express their identity in visual ways. By displaying customer photos in both reviews and in a shoppable Instagram gallery on their site, they’ve been able to add an additional layer of social proof by showing real people using their products IRL.
“People love sharing those images of dogs, so giving them another outlet to share — I think that just helps to keep my community engaged,” says Chaz.
Through Yotpo Grow, Sir Dogwood saw a 53% review request email open rate.
3. Conquering BFCM with SMS marketing
SMS has been a game-changer for Sir Dogwood. In past years, the brand has done one promotion for Cyber Week, but in 2021, on the advice of the Yotpo Grow team, they ran separate SMS campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday for the first time. The result? Sir Dogwood’s best November ever.
“SMS has been huge for me,” Chaz says. “I’ve seen great ROI with the SMS campaigns I’ve run. I was kind of intimidated by SMS at first, and now it’s so easy to just get campaigns out. And I love how easy it is to see, okay, a campaign just went out, and I’m seeing that traffic. I love being able to get that data quickly to see what’s working and what’s not. And my unsubscribe rate has been really, really low for the entire time I’ve been using SMS.”
By adding SMS to their marketing channels, Sir Dogwood has seen 47x ROI.
4. Growing revenue with a loyalty program
Sir Dogwood launched their loyalty program, Crown Club, through Yotpo Grow. The program offers members points for purchases, social follows, celebrating your pet’s Gotcha Day, and more. Members can also refer friends and family for points plus a discount for the person referred.
“I had not thought about loyalty before getting into Yotpo Grow,” says Chaz. “That was a completely new idea for me. If I didn’t have the Yotpo Grow connection, that’s something that I would not have bitten off — I would’ve just kicked that can down the road until I had somebody else to help me with it.”
Though the Crown Club is still young, the results so far have been impressive, with $263 of added revenue per customer with loyalty.
What’s next for Sir Dogwood and Yotpo Grow
The Yotpo Grow program has been extended for Sir Dogwood and the other members of the first class. Sir Dogwood has three big goals for the year ahead:
- Scheduling more SMS campaigns around seasonal events
- Scaling the loyalty program
- Creating more video content to engage shoppers
Sir Dogwood is a Yotpo Grow success story, and we look forward to working with the brand to help them better engage their customers, grow retention, and boost sales.
