American Hat Makers | Yotpo Case Studies

Company

For nearly 50 years, American Hat Makers, a family-owned handcrafted hat business, has made it their mission to treat each and every customer like family. Offering fast delivery, a lifetime guarantee, and using the finest materials in their products, American Hat Makers work hard to be the best hat makers in America.

Every customer matters, every stitch matters. The American Hat Makers’ family puts conscious and deliberate thought into both their products and their customer experiences. In order to maintain their commitment to their customers, the family-driven business is always coming up with innovative ways to improve each online shopper’s journey.

Challenge

American Hat Makers recognized the opportunity for a new revenue channel when their email open rates and conversions weren’t achieving the desired results. The brand needed another way to drive revenue — a quicker way, one that could engage a customer before they left the website. “We needed a revenue-driving solution that could reach our customers faster than email, but wouldn’t take away from our email channel. We wanted a solution that could supplement it,” says Ori Adler, eCommerce Director, American Hat Makers.

However, devoting resources to launching and maintaining a new channel seemed like a burden for the brand. The team was already operating at full capacity, and they knew that for this channel to be successful, it was going to require some outside help to reach its full potential.

Solution

In their pursuit of this new revenue-driving channel, American Hat Makers enlisted the help of their digital marketing agency partner, CURIO, who proposed Yotpo SMS & Email as the solution to their challenges. “We always recommend the best solutions to our clients,” says Doris Neufeld, Head of Email & SMS at CURIO. An existing Yotpo Reviews and Loyalty client, Adler states, “It was a no-brainer to go with Yotpo SMS & Email. We’re committed to Yotpo for our eCommerce needs and to be able to consolidate our tech stack was pivotal.”

American Hat Makers launched their SMS channel with Yotpo SMS & Email and saw an immediate impact. Optimizing for an ongoing SMS strategy is where CURIO’s managed services with Yotpo became a game changer. Understanding the brand’s internal resources were strapped, CURIO brought their SMS expertise into the mix and teamed up with Yotpo SMS & Email to tap into the full potential of the SMS program and Yotpo’s platform as a whole. “After studying the account and seeing where the opportunity lay, we first integrated with the Yotpo suite to take full advantage of the synergies so we could collect more reviews and drive loyalty participation using SMS,” says Neufeld.

CURIO’s next focus was on message optimization to portray the authenticity and casualness of the brand and their SMS channel. “It’s a different approach to SMS copy than it is with email. We’re able to have a little more fun with it, which brings out the brand’s voice, known for being more casual and fun. With the customer it’s important to be authentic, even though text can be automated, it’s still a personal communication, just like a text from a friend,” says Neufeld.

Results

As soon as the new flows were enabled and optimized and their campaign strategy was set, results poured in. The new subscriber welcome for customers who convert from their mobile pop-up has generated 134x ROI. Their cart abandonment flow has been a key revenue driving factor, bringing in over $58k in just 90 days. Once a customer purchases, they receive the post-purchase upsell message, which has driven 144x ROI. “The relationship of spend to the return is impressive to say the least, which matters when you try to scale,” says Neufeld.

These results motivated the brand to send more campaigns than originally planned. “They’re texting you for a reason and they know it’s the channel they can get an immediate response. We weren’t afraid to push the envelope with messages between having our competitors on SMS and our customers wanting to hear from us, and the results from previous campaigns were just that good,” says Neufeld and Adler.

SMS has been immensely impactful as a conversational channel as well. “We’re able to leverage keyword responses to understand our customers. Identifying their gender through flows has allowed us to create segmented campaigns — with messages that are relevant to each shopper — to drive purchases,” says Neufeld.

American Hat Makers’ age demographic trends 55 and up, and they’ve been able to connect with them more than ever before through the Yotpo SMS & Email and Gorgias Chat integration. “Gorgias has played a key role in supporting SMS through one channel for our customer service team. It would almost be unmanageable to have to bounce between a chat platform and our SMS platform. The integration allows us to create a relationship with our customer,” says Adler.