Gym+Coffee increases SMS subscriptions by over 2000% ahead of Black Friday

There’s nothing you can’t do in a hoodie. At least, that’s the attitude of Gym+Coffee. This Irish brand has built up a cult following and deeply connected community across Ireland, the UK, and Australia, despite only being founded in 2017.

In the years since, Gym+Coffee’s product line has expanded beyond the brand’s trademark world-class hoodies. Now, their wide range of athleisure clothing is designed to help customers live richer lives, both as ambitious individuals and as part of a global clothing community.

Learn how Gym+Coffee uses Klaviyo integrations and multichannel to prepare for Black Friday

Challenge

As Gym+Coffee transitioned from plucky startup to multinational brand, they quickly outgrew Mailchimp. In fact, after less than a year using the platform, the Gym+Coffee team knew they needed a better solution.

They wanted a tool suite that could grow and adapt in line with their increasingly sophisticated marketing efforts—or the crucial Black Friday period, and year-round.

“We needed smarter segmentation as we grew into new territories,” says Ashlee Byrne, Gym+Coffee’s senior ecommerce & CRM executive. “Around 60% of our annual revenue comes in Q4 due to Black Friday, so it’s essential that the right messaging finds the right people at the right moment.”

Since its founding, Gym+Coffee has built a dedicated customer base through events, loyalty programs, and VIP clubs—all of which need support through a marketing platform with smart integrations, clear analytics, and ease of use. 

“We needed a platform that could scale but also had a simple UI,” explains Byrne.

Solution

To create the omnichannel, segmented customer journeys they need to drive brand loyalty, the Gym+Coffee team turned to Klaviyo for email and mobile push.

A major factor in the platform switch was Klaviyo’s library of 350+ integration partners. The opportunity to centralise and activate data from their whole technology stack made Klaviyo the perfect partner to support their ambitious growth plans.

As a result, Gym+Coffee uses a diverse range of Klaviyo integrations. With a strong focus on community-building, Gym+Coffee runs plenty of events, linking Eventbrite to their Shopify store so they can personalise and target emails based on ticket purchase activity.

Gym+Coffee also uses Klaviyo’s Typeform integration to collect post-purchase preference data and feedback, to ensure the team is constantly adapting to customer inputs. All of this data is visualised through the Fivetran integration, which serves as the reporting function for the entire business across platforms. This includes pulling in data from Klaviyo, and gives Byrne and her team clear oversight for monitoring and reporting.

This holistic approach means Gym+Coffee can unify and activate their customer data in Klaviyo, continually optimising and personalising their storefront, email, SMS, and push notifications. Between January and October 2024, they saw a 28.3% increase in conversions from Klaviyo flows—putting them in a great spot for Black Friday 2024.

Strategy

Gym+Coffee uses their purpose-built tech stack to grow their community of fans and capitalise on customer excitement ahead of Black Friday 2024.

Power major holiday revenue with automations: Klaviyo flows are a top Black Friday performer for Gym+Coffee. In the last 6 months, and in the direct lead up to Black Friday, their abandoned cart and abandoned checkout flows have respectively earned 5.5% and 7.8% increases in unique clicks compared to the same time period in 2023.

Build omnichannel excitement around winterwear: the team also runs cohesive, omnichannel campaigns to build hype for Gym+Coffee’s winter releases. “In October, we run campaigns that sell our legendary gift boxes, which contain bundles of new kit,” she explains. “They’re on for a short period of time, with mobile push and email messaging promoting urgency and exclusivity.”

Promote Black Friday offers on customers’ preferred devices: Through its mobile app’s push notifications, Gym+Coffee also runs daily urgency tactics to keep the offering fresh over the selling period. It’s a strategy that drove a 571.3% rise in mobile push revenue compared to the previous year.

Gym+Coffee also uses SMS to build relationships with their community, with a 2,006% increase in SMS subscribers in 2024 compared to the previous year. The team primarily uses the channel for points redemption and reminders. 

Retain an influx of new customers from Black Friday: The more Gym+Coffee has grown with Klaviyo, the more targeted and ambitious the brand’s messaging has become—particularly for their most loyal segments. After the launch of a two-tier loyalty program in August 2023, customers in the highest membership tier now receive highly targeted messages with exclusive perks like free shipping and early offers.

“The loyalty program has really helped us improve retention beyond big sales like Black Friday,” Byrne explains. “We have some customers with over 100 orders, so we want to ensure the brand can create unique experiences to keep those die-hard fans coming back.”