How The Couture Club increased revenue by 325% and drove loyalty during Black Friday

The Couture Club brings high fashion to everyday looks. With their focus on quality at an affordable price, they’ve attracted a large customer base, which they’ve also taken extreme care to nurture into loyal brand advocates.

The Couture Club has a dedicated loyalty program, powered by Loyalty Lion—and its value to building these close-knit relationships is clear:

Our average customer spends £150 a year with us. But a customer subscribed to our loyalty program spends £350—an extra £200 a year.

Scott Shashua, Managing Director, The Couture Club

But it’s not just about having a loyalty program, it’s what Couture Club does with it that’s driving this additional revenue. 

The numbers prove that this focus on retention works: During Black Friday, The Couture Club drove 2.1 average orders from their customer base, which is 60% higher than the industry average of 1.3, according to Klaviyo’s benchmark data.

Keep reading to learn more about The Couture Club’s Black Friday strategy, plus their exciting plans to get smart with SMS during BFCM this year.

Top BFCM tactic from 2020: A website lock out

One of the ways The Couture Club ensures their customers in their loyalty program want to regularly shop with them is by creating exclusive experiences.

We password protected The Couture Club site the Thursday before Black Friday, so only loyalty members received the email with the password to shop early. We want to show appreciation for them and the fact that they spend over double what a normal customer spends.

Scott Shashua, Managing Director, The Couture Club

This technique worked on several different levels: It drove awareness about the loyalty program to anyone who tried shopping without a password, it made loyal customers feel appreciated, and it created urgency for early access customers to shop immediately.

This early access creates urgency. People know on Black Friday that the stock isn’t going to be there forever, and if they don’t sign up, they won’t get early access to it. And of course, more people signing up ultimately pays dividends for our brand.

Scott Shashua, Managing Director, The Couture Club

With this focus on loyalty customers—along with clear messaging for all customers across all of their key marketing channels—The Couture Club increased their email revenue 325% during BFCM 2020. This year, that strategy is getting even smarter.

Why The Couture Club switched to Klaviyo SMS before BFCM 2021

With marketing strategies as on-trend as their products, The Couture Club looks to SMS to complement their email marketing strategy this year. 

While they’ve already dabbled with text message marketing, their recent switch from Text Global to Klaviyo SMS opened up a world of opportunities.

Before we switched to Klaviyo, we would send a text once a month or once every six weeks, and only when we had a super strong offer. Now that we’re in Klaviyo, each SMS costs less for us to send. And we can segment the audience, so we can get way more targeted with who we send to, which also leads to better value.

Scott Shashua, Managing Director, The Couture Club

Last year, The Couture Club only sent two SMS messages to their customers: One on Black Friday, and another on Cyber Monday. They simply didn’t have the data to send more without making customers feel overwhelmed, and they had no ability to segment these sends, so they blasted them to their entire SMS list.

This year, they’ll be able to use customer data in Klaviyo to segment their texts based on people’s shopping habits, like what kind of products they’re interested in or how likely they are to purchase when there’s a discount—and, of course, whether they’re a loyalty member.

I can’t tell you how much my life’s changed since SMS has been on Klaviyo. I have all this information that I almost don’t know what to do with it all. And because SMS is such a high-converting channel, it’s going to mean a lot of revenue this Black Friday season.

Scott Shashua, Managing Director, The Couture Club

With this focus on omnichannel marketing and building long-lasting relationships, The Couture Club is sure to keep winning customer loyalty during Black Friday and beyond.