Mastering the Art of Conversational Commerce: Spoonflower’s Secret to 22x ROI

We're gonna talk about mastering the art of conversational commerce, which is so top of mind I think for everybody. And to do that, we're going to look at how the importance of messaging channels in building those one to one connections at scale that we've been discussing throughout the day. And to do that, I'm delighted to be joined by representatives from both spoonflower and attentive who are going to talk about, spoonflower's journey with SMS. As well as attentive concierge, and how that's driven a 22x ROI. It's sitting on the screen, and I'm gonna call your attention to it, because I think as marketers, that's something that's always going to catch our attention. That's something that's exciting and creative, but that's also having that business impact that we're, that we're looking to drive. Our, the discussion is going to be hosted, by three distinguished, panelists today. We're delighted to be joined by Sue Poso from Spoonflower. She's the director of email marketing there. If you have been unfortunate enough not to yet encounter Spoonflower, I encourage you to go find them. However, they are a leading custom fabric and wallpaper brand and do some wonderfully creative things that is inspiring to all of us. As marketers. Susan's gonna be joined by two representatives from attentive, Yahiri Rodriguez, and Jess Wells, both of whom are client strategy managers, and attentive. And I'm gonna talk to you a bit about, strategies that can enhance the overall customer journey and how, brands can actually work with conversation commerce, and SMS to drive their programs. So I'd like to welcome all three of you. We're excited to hear the story, and ham things over to you. You hear me to kick things off. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for mastering the art of conversational commerce, spoonflower sequit, to twenty two x ROI. My name is Yahiri, and I'm a senior client strategy manager with Attentive. I'm super excited for today's session because I'm joined by one of my favorite clients, spoonflower. Before I introduce Susan, let me start with a little bit about attentive. People choose attentive for three reasons. Number one, performance. We perform better than anyone else. And on average, customers who migrate their SMS program too attentive, see their performance double. Number two, we are trusted and reliable. We work with over eight thousand amazing brands coach, c b two, Urban Outfitters, Rebecca Minkoff, Steve Madden, and spoonflower, of course. Lastly, support. We are dedicated to help you run your SMS program with the help of SMS experts like me and Jess. Now you might think you already know everything there is to know about SMS. But we're going to take that to the next level today. I'm excited to share the virtual stage with Sue Poso from spoonflower will be sharing her experience with attentive concierge. If you're not familiar with attentive concierge, I'll put it this Have you ever wished that you could text a brand and ask where is my order? While with attentive concierge, you can. And there's no better expert to talk concierge than one of our very own concierge CSMs, Jess Wells. Jess, I'll pass the mic to you. Awesome. Thanks. You hear me, and hi, everyone. My name is Jess, and I am a concier CSM here at and I manage the strategy for concierge with Vierry and Sues for spoonflower and many other brands using the concierge program alongside a tenant. While you hear he manages the ins and outs of the overarching SMS strategy for spoonflower, I head up all things years related to really ensure that our Concierge strategies align overall with the SMS strategy. We're drawing positive engagement in conversations with the spoonflower customers. And in turn, we're able to drive more sales by being able to answer questions super quickly and organically via the SMS channel. In addition to that, I'm also here to make sure that engineers' agents are acting as a true extension of the spoonflower brands. So now that we've introduced the team over here at Atteniv, I'd love to go ahead and introduce everyone to Sue Pazo, Director of Email marketing at spoonflower. Stews, would you mind introducing yourself and telling us all a little bit more about spoonflower? Yes. Thanks, Jess. The spoonflower is the place to go for anyone enthusiastic about expressing yourself through unique design. Over the last fifteen years, spoonflower has revolutionized custom textiles for the home offering now the largest print on demand marketplace designs on wallpaper. Bedding, table linens, pillows, fabric, and more. If you've ever seen an alien abduction twall design, that's from spoonflower. And if you've never seen an alien abduction twelve pattern, you should check out spinflower dot com right after this conversation. It's a real fan favorite. I've been with the company for over seven years now, and I have a lot of wallpaper and fabric in my house. Prior to that, I headed up email and social media at Georgetown University and and premium apparel brand, Peter Malar. So what else should you know about me? I'm a big fan of authentic marketing personalization, and all things Ted Lasso. I love Ted Lasso. My Wednesday nights will never be the same now that over. But yeah, every time I go to your site, I feel like I I feel like I wanna redecorate a different room in my house. There really is There are so many unique designs to choose from. Now let's take a step back back in twenty twenty one when spoonflower began their journey with SMS. What challenges did you hope SMS could help you solve for? So we saw SMS more as an opportunity to grow the connections and conversion rates that we have with our community in email and on social media. But we also wanted to add more segment into our messaging, spoonflower, we have a complicated product line. Everything is custom made to order, and we have over one million designs on twenty plus fabrics, four types of wallpaper and many home decor items, it gets complicated. Our fast vast product assortment and varied segmentation of artists, makers, interior designers, and customers can lead to a lot of indecision on the site. So we've often heard from customers they wish they could call in with questions, and we don't have a phone line available right now in our customer service team. We want to aid in their decision making and ultimately the conversion process. Right? So while we have the best customer service team available via email and on-site chat, I saw SMS as the ability to have an extension of our customer team since this channel is such a natural community application tool for almost every demographic. I mean, even my grandpa who is turning a hundred next month still sends me texts. Yeah. I think you've done a great job at leaving an educational messages into your strategy to help your subscribers, both young and old. Discover your vast product selection. Now, can you tell us about how your SMS strategy has evolved over time? So in the beginning, I was very apprehensive about sending more than one text per week to our community because it is such a personal channel, even though you showed me data to support its efficacy. Yes. And as you know, we men sending at least eight campaigns per month to your full subscriber base. And I know that seemed daunting in twenty twenty one, but look at you now. Yeah. We started to slow to ramp up, but now we're sending messages two to three times a week. I often segment those message is to reach audiences depending on their preferences. So, for example, if they select they like wallpaper, we can send them wallpaper pains. If they select fabric or home decor, we can also kind of customize those campaigns as well to match the content of the promotion in. And we haven't seen our unsubscribe rates change over time. So we know it's sustainable, and our revenue continues to ramp up as well. So that always bonus points with your leadership team. Yes. And I absolutely love to hear that. And, you know, surprise surprise, subscribers really want to hear from the brands that they love. That's why they sign up for email and texts. Okay, Sue. So shifting our focus a little bit, why did you decide to partner with attentive? This might seem off top big, but hear me out. In the second season of Downs Navby, there's a scene with Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham played by Maggie Smith Everyone loves her. She's on the phone for presumably the first time trying to reach someone. And she asked the operator Is this an instrument of communication or torture in her perfect English accent? And that's always stuck with me when I think about the SMS channel overall. Yeah. I absolutely hate sitting on hold for twenty minutes screaming agent or talk to person on the phone. So this is my dream true agreed, right? So when we're using a very personal channel for marketing, it's our duty to deliver the best experience to the customer. We considered using a couple other text platforms, but ultimately I chose attentive because because it paired easily with the Marsis. And your patented two tapped opt in was a way we can ensure that we have the highest level of compliance with our customer's data, which we all know is so important. And plus I have a small team. So the hands on support that you all offer weekly made it possible for me to run email and a Marsis and SMS inattentive seamlessly and efficiently. Yes. We are a small but mighty team, but I absolutely love our weekly Thursday work where we all work together and talk through fun and creative ways to engage with subscribers. I think it's really special that we're able to make subscribers smile or laugh via text. While also delivering the best experience and, of course, driving revenue. Yeah. Hopping in here. I couldn't agree with you both more. Our Day workshops are always so productive, which is great. But so with these points in mind that Susan Eheri just mentioned, we really knew that Spoonflower would be a great fit for attentive concierge. When we launched attentive concierge, it was really created with customers in mind. We know that in today's world, everyone is shopping online more than ever before, but we're really missing out on that. Personal experience you may get when you actually walk into a retail and get to talk with an associate. They're able to help you as you're browsing. And ultimately, you feel a lot more confident about that purchase with their help. So with concierge, we gave brands the ability to really create and foster those relationships through the SMS channel. So, Susan, I'd love to hear your take on the value of conversational marketing and how you're using conversational commerce to under and what your customers really want? Yeah, I remember when you two told me about this new tool with concierge, and I signed up for the beta that same day. I love the idea of conversational commerce, and I think it's the future of marketing, while I would love to enable our internal team members to answer every question in every channel, we simply cannot scale up our customer service team at Boomflower just for SMS based on current volumes, although I think they're gonna be amazing, including, as we move forward in the future years. But we also have seasonal spikes, which also creates a bit more thrash on our customer service team. So what I love about this program is I like to say it feeds two birds with one scone for me. It's effective. It's cost efficient, and it's highly personalized. For sure. We definitely challenge a lot And some of you in the audience, audience might be thinking now, like, internal support teams are really the only people that actually know all the answers to the questions that our customers may ask. But the awesome thing is with concierge, we're able to actually ensure that our agents are, again, trained to act as a true extension of your brand and your great customer support teams you already have internally today. You're able to actually customize the brand voice in tone settings so that our agents can match how you're currently talking to customers, and the agents are also, able to fully vet your brand essentially before we go live and intake any and all resources you may have, whether it be on-site, or, any additional, you know, resources you might wanna provide such as templates you're using and, customer support today that you're already responding to customers with. FAQs, you name it. We're able to kind of ingest that and build off of it. We know that communicating with customers is definitely not a one size fits all, so we wanted to make sure to build the concierge program with flexibility in mind. So with that, Sue's, I'd love to kinda chat a little bit more about the results you've achieved with SMS overall and attendance concierge. Years. We've had such great success. We've seen an average return of seventeen to one with a overall, which is really exciting. And with attentive concierge specifically, we see an even more increased return of twenty two to one. And a thirty eight percent lift in average order value. Attentive concierge is able to resolve nearly ninety seven percent of our inquiries, which takes hours upon hours off of our customer service team every month, which is very appreciated. And if there's ever a question that the concierge agents can't resolve. They pass it over via Zendesk with an urgent flag to our customer service team and they get the answer and they can pass it back to the customer in text so the customer never has to end the conversation or change channels. Concierge agents are able to troubleshoot some of our most frequently asked questions, such as those about promo codes which helps shorten the past to conversion, which we would all love to do. Definitely. We love hearing these results. And definitely love to hear that our agents are able to take off some of that load from your support teams internally. I will also say that our concierge agents are often some of the first to hear feedback from your customers. Like you mentioned, around any promo code issues that might be happening or maybe even overarching site issues that might be happening during crucial sales times, for example, Black Friday cyber Monday. Thankfully, Susan and the spoonflower team did not have any of these major issues come up. Especially last year. But, a few of my clients definitely did, and I will say their teams were so, so thankful when we were able to bring these choose to their attention super quickly since we're really on the front lines kind of communicating with their customers via the SMS channel. Yes. Yes. One more thing on that note I wanted to add. We've even been able to create more of a VIP peer variance with concierge because we can add in our upcoming promotional calendar and assign a date when the agents can start promoting those sales. So, for example, if a customer texts back during a conversation saying that they love a design, but they're going to wait for the next fabric sale, an agent can give them a heads up that a fabric sale is starting next week, which makes the customer feel really special like an insider And we know we're probably gonna get that sale next week. Yeah. Definitely. That's a really good call out. I think having the ability to really enable our agents to share those upcoming promotional details ahead of time definitely helps even further on that true VIP experience that you're cultivating the best channel and also increase version rates, which I think another kind of, you know, metric to call out here is that, the success you guys are seeing with version rate lifts. When customers are actually engaging with concierge, they're getting their questions answered, and then they're converting, we see a really large lift at almost three hundred percent for spoonflower customers, specifically. And they're, they're converting at a much higher rate as opposed to those users that do not engage with concierge. So that is a huge lift, and I'm I'm so happy to see that that's standing strong with how long you've been live with concierge. So really great there. And I would say, you know, this lowers in rate that we really just goes to show that really do have questions they need answered before they're ready to pull the trigger on purchasing their next favorite wallpaper, for example, that's going to be that focal point of their home. And without concierge there to answer those, there likely would be a significant amount of revenue left on the evil, you know, without, without answering those questions. Yes. Yes. The numbers are great. And I, I love jumping in and watching some of these exchanges. It does feel such a personal touch. Yeah. Definitely. So one other question I wanted to ask was just regarding how you've developed a unique perspective and voice for SMS. And does that shift shift with the different types of messages you may be sending? For example, you know, promotional campaigns, product launches, or even just overall inform informational messaging. Springflower is really a belief driven brand. So for us, commerce comes primarily through community. Internally, our brand marketing team is very aligned on how we communicate to our customers across all of our channels. And externally, we're really focused on keeping a tone that is polished yet whimsical and inspirational yet approachable. And one way we do that in SMS is by avoiding trendy acronyms. I mean, I might date myself, but like, we don't include TTY or we don't have copy in all caps very often, which doesn't feel like an authentic way to connect with our customers who range broadly in age. And the voice doesn't shift between our Marsis emails and a ten of SMS because I really want this channel to feel like the conversation can keep going from receiving a promotional email to a promotional text to having a exchange with the concierge agent. One thing we created in SMS exclusively that I love is a persona named Leah, who I will use to sign tax sometimes in campaigns to add that more personal touch. And you can see an example of this. Customers have really responded well to that. She's become sort of a legend, and customers will address their questions to her by name. One way to ensure the voice is aligned between our campaigns and concierge is to use the concierge tone section which allows you to provide specific guidance for the agents. For example, I like to add words or phrases to the block lists such as no problem or no worries which are more casual than I would want us to use in our marketing copy. And attentive's agents have done an excellent job staying on brand for our tone. It really does feel like an extension of our team. Jess, are there any other tips that I'm missing on that one? Yeah. I think those are all really great tips. The only other last one I would mention, is regarding, you know, in addition to updating the tone settings, like you mentioned, you're also able to give that live feedback on any message a concierge agent is sending in response to your customer's questions. And this can all be done directly right there in the attentive UI. And this feedback is sent straight to our senior QA agents team who actually, go in and adjust your brand templates, your brand voice, and even add, company notes based on the feedback that they're receiving on any of those conversations. And, Susan, you do a great job of continuously giving this feedback. Even though you've been live with concierge for quite a while now, it's super helpful that you're you're still giving that feedback in there as this really helps, you know, enable our agents to evolve alongside your brand seamlessly and really stay up to date on on all the things needed to communicate with your customers properly. Oh, thanks, Jess. Yeah. That's a great tip. I I use that quite a bit as you mentioned. Alright. I am back with our final question. Sus, aside from continuing to leverage attentive concierge. What do you see as the biggest untapped opportunity for SMS as well as your business moving forward? Oh, okay. I think that attentive AI offers some really interesting opportunities for spoonflower and other brands too, just AI in general. But marketers, we all wanna achieve the best results. And a ten of AI can not only do some data crunching for us, but it can also provide suggestions, which makes it easy for us to optimize our marketing from the targeting to the content and even our conversational strategy. I'm an English major, and I love copywriting. So this is unfathomable for me to even say, but it can sometimes feel a little redundant and mundane to write succinct promotional copy. So I've used Atteniv's AI copy assistant as a supplemental, supplementary tool to workshop an idea sometimes when I'm feeling a little stuck. Yeah. I mean, I think subscribers would be really surprised about how long some campaigns to write. I love that attentive AI provides us with best practice copy. Yeah. It's a really smart tool. I've seen how it can integrate the content and style of our campaigns. I'm not ready to rely on it full stop, but time saving tools that help me beat my writer's block sometimes really welcome, and I have seen it introduce some new marketing techniques. So that's my favorite tool right now. Love that. Thank you for sharing. Jess, what about you? What's your favorite attentive feature right now? Yeah. I would say my favorite feature that's kind of on the docket right now is the attentive concierge AI program that our product team is working on right now. So this is gonna be powered, by AI powered replies. So honestly, is really kind of the next generation of conversational com commerce that we're embracing here at attentive. And the way it's gonna work is basically our unique learning engine that's currently powering our concierge live agents today. Is going to be able to understand spoon flowers or any other brands' voice, voice standards, and the intent of each subscriber question that comes through. So long story short, essentially, we're able to utilize all of the data from those previous conversations that we've been having with your customers to really be able to deliver an even more personalized, relevant response But while also maintaining that real human feel, that's gonna be even more scalable than what we're doing today with years. So we're really super excited about that one. Wow. The future is now. I'm intrigued definitely let me know when that's launched and you know, I just wanna say working with attentive and Marsis, you all always have our brand and customer's best interests at heart. I just love our collective team, and I'm really thankful to be here. Awesome. Yeah. We we love our team too. And, I think that pretty much wraps up what we have for today. I just wanted to quickly say thanks to a Martitas for hosting us. And for everyone joining today. And thank you, of course, Sue, for joining us. It's always so much fun to chat with you. Oh, thanks so much for having me. This has been just as fun as our weekly calls. Agreed. And to everyone attending, if you're interested in learning more about attentive or attentive concierge, please feel free to scan the QR code you see on the screen here to learn more. And also, of course, if you're interested in checking out spoonflower's great products, I personally have my eye on some new cute summer throw pillows for my back porch. Feel free to check out spoonflower dot com. Thank you all so much. I think that was that was a really inspiring way to wrap up our day and to talk about a very different way of communicating with customers. And if anybody was, was confused about the impact of truly taking conversation with customers to a different channel. I think you've demonstrated that it's something to embrace and the power of what it can do. So thank you all very, very much, and for sharing your time and your story. And I think that, there are definitely things for all of us to inspire. And, and to come back. There were some questions that came in, from the audience since we just have a second. And, Sue, one of them is specifically for you, and I'll let you, if, if you'd prefer to take it offline later, that's fine. One of them was, on the ROI figures that you talked about, wondering where that was coming from. I was wondering where that was coming from. Was it based on the attempted, view through, click through, or Google Analytics attribution? So those are based on Google Analytics attribution over the last six months. So that's pretty recent for us data. Wonderful. Thank you very much. And I'm sure, shem Maria, who asked that questions appreciating our ability to come back immediately. Right. I think on that note, we're getting, we're getting towards the end of our day. Any other questions that come through, we'll make sure we try to get back to people, or we'll swing them past you guys for some additional, feedback. As always, if you all have specific questions for to hear you, Susan. Here are some contact details, on LinkedIn that you can use to reach out to them. My thanks again for your thoughts and contributions and for inspiring us with what you And for students for inspiring us, not just with spoon flowers, wallpaper and fabrics, but with your really creative approach to with your customers. I think we all learned a lot. Thank you again for that and your time.