Achieving SMS and Email Success with Attentive
For DTC brands, connecting with customers and keeping them engaged is non-negotiable. Today’s ecommerce shoppers want brands that know how to reach them instantly and make every message feel personal. That’s why SMS and email have been essential tools for sparking engagement, building loyalty, and driving sales forward.
Attentive, a leader in personalized SMS and email marketing, offers DTC brands a platform built specifically to make the most of these direct communication channels. Whether it’s automation, compliance, or smooth integrations, Attentive has it covered, giving brands what they need to send the right message at just the right moment. The result? Stronger relationships, higher engagement, and a real impact on the bottom line.
The Power of Integrated SMS and Email Strategies for DTC Brands
Using SMS and email channels together creates a smooth, cohesive experience, meeting customers where they spend their time. Studies show that brands integrating SMS and email can double their ROI compared to single-channel strategies, as each brings unique strengths: SMS grabs attention instantly, while email dives deeper with visuals and storytelling.
This dual approach doesn’t just nurture loyalty—it also delivers impressive metrics. SMS open rates average around 98%, while email offers space for in-depth product content, boosting engagement and repeat purchases.
Loyal customers, after all, are invaluable; they’re more likely to buy again and add real value over time.
But, of course, there are challenges. Compliance with regulations like TCPA means managing opt-ins carefully, while over-messaging risks subscriber fatigue.
Attentive helps brands avoid these pitfalls with built-in compliance, frequency management, and advanced segmentation, so you can focus on creating meaningful, effective campaigns.
Why Choose Attentive?
Attentive is purpose-built to help DTC brands create meaningful, data-driven connections with customers. With advanced segmentation, interactive tools, AI-powered automation, and seamless integrations, Attentive is a complete solution for brands looking to optimize their SMS and email strategies.
Advanced Segmentation and Personalization
Attentive’s segmentation tools are designed for precision. Brands can create hyper-targeted groups based on customer behavior, demographics, purchase history, and more.
Every message feels relevant and personalized, which means customers are more likely to engage.
For example, a DTC clothing brand could use Attentive to target customers who recently bought winter gear with a special offer on matching accessories. This kind of tailored messaging makes a difference, enhancing engagement and driving sales.
And here’s the best part: Attentive lets you adjust these segments in real time. So, if a customer suddenly shows interest in a new category, you can react instantly, keeping your messages as relevant as possible.
Personalization is the name of the game here, and Attentive makes it simple to create content that truly resonates, driving more engagement and action.
AI-Driven Automation and Predictive Analytics
Attentive AI takes over repetitive tasks, optimizing campaign timing, messaging, and segmentation based on predictive insights.
The platform helps brands anticipate customer needs and identify opportunities to re-engage at-risk customers, driving loyalty and return on investment.
Attentive’s automation isn’t just convenient—it’s effective. With reported returns of up to 78x ROI, this AI-driven approach is a productivity booster that delivers real results.
Interactive Two-Way Journeys™
Attentive’s Two-Way Journeys go beyond traditional messaging by creating dynamic, two-way conversations that capture customer preferences in real time. Brands can set up questions or prompts where subscribers respond with keywords or numbers, which then trigger personalized follow-up messages, product recommendations, or offers.
For instance, a new subscriber might be asked about their product interests, and based on their responses, Attentive can segment them for future campaigns. This conversational approach not only engages customers but also builds valuable data on preferences, helping brands further tailor future communications.
Compliance Safeguards
Compliance can be tricky, especially in an era of evolving privacy laws. Attentive takes the hassle out of it with built-in features that manage opt-ins and track consent.
For brands expanding globally, Attentive’s compliance features mean they can scale with confidence, knowing that they’re adhering to regulations without sacrificing engagement.
Attentive helps brands stay out of legal hot water, making it easy to build a compliant, trustworthy subscriber list.
Seamless Integrations with Major Platforms
Attentive integrates smoothly with platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Klaviyo, meaning you can easily connect it to your existing tech stack and sync customer data, streamline workflows, and automate processes.
This integration brings everything together, syncing customer data and simplifying workflows.
If a customer abandons their cart, Attentive’s Shopify integration can automatically trigger a reminder SMS, making it easier for you to recover lost sales without lifting a finger.
But integration isn’t just about convenience; it’s about creating a more efficient and effective marketing operation. With Attentive, brands can manage SMS and email campaigns in sync with their other marketing efforts, all from one place. This reduces manual work, saves time, and ensures consistency.
Take Attentive’s integration with Klaviyo, for instance. It allows you to access customer data from past email interactions to inform your SMS strategies.
When you know what resonated in one channel, you can adapt that insight to the other, ensuring your customers receive coherent, relevant messages. That kind of coordination leads to higher engagement, smoother workflows, and ultimately, better results.
Maximizing Engagement Through Timing and Frequency
Attentive’s customer journey analytics provide insights on when to send messages for maximum impact, whether it’s a flash sale reminder or a loyalty reward notification.
Research by Attentive reveals that SMS messages perform best at 12 pm and 8 pm, hitting customers during lunch breaks or evening downtime for maximum engagement. For emails, the optimal times are early morning (5–6 am) and late night (10–11 pm), catching subscribers as they start or end their day.
Attentive’s data-driven insights help brands schedule messages to reach customers at these peak engagement times, maximizing the chances of conversion.
But it’s not just about timing—frequency matters, too. Send too many messages, and you’ll risk overwhelming your audience.
With frequency controls, brands can ensure they engage customers without overwhelming them, achieving consistently high open and response rates.
The result? Consistently high open and response rates without the dreaded unsubscribe.
Enhanced ROI Through Coordinated SMS and Email Campaigns
One of Attentive’s standout features is the ability to seamlessly combine SMS and email in a coordinated, omnichannel approach. When brands use both channels together, they create a unified experience that sticks with customers and maximizes ROI.
In fact, brands that integrate SMS and email campaigns see up to twice the return on investment compared to single-channel campaigns.
Imagine a DTC fashion brand is launching a new collection. They kick off with a teaser email that tells the story of the new line, and then follow up with an SMS when the products go live.
The email gives customers all the details, while the SMS serves as a timely reminder that drives them to the site. It’s a one-two punch that keeps the brand top-of-mind without overwhelming customers on one channel, resulting in higher engagement and sales.
Testing and Optimization with Data Insights
What works for one audience might not work for another. That’s why testing is crucial, and Attentive’s platform makes A/B testing easy, allowing brands to experiment with message content, timing, and calls to action.
Real-time insights enable continuous refinement, helping brands align messaging with customer preferences and improve performance across all campaigns.
Experiment with different elements—maybe try a short, direct SMS against a longer, story-driven one—to see which drives higher conversions.
Attentive provides real-time feedback, so you don’t have to wait to see what’s working. It’s a constant loop of learning and optimizing, where you take each insight and use it to fine-tune future campaigns.
With regular testing, you’re not just guessing what resonates; you’re building a strategy that’s data-backed and dynamic.
How Attentive Drives Growth for DTC Brands
Want proof that Attentive delivers? Just look at some of their success stories.
GUESS
Through Attentive’s suite of tools, GUESS has engaged Canadian shoppers with localized, personalized messages—leading to impressive outcomes like $12 million in revenue and a 30x ROI in Canada alone.
Attentive’s advanced features, like segmentation by language preference, Two-Way Journeys for interactive messaging, and built-in compliance with Canadian regulations, showcase its commitment to driving measurable results.
The Vitamin Shoppe
Another example is The Vitamin Shoppe, which shifted from mass messaging to a personalized SMS strategy using Attentive. This approach allowed them to prioritize high-quality engagement over sheer volume, resulting in a 28x ROI and a 32% conversion rate on personalized customer journeys.
By leveraging Attentive’s segmentation and Two-Way Journeys, The Vitamin Shoppe has been able to create targeted experiences based on each subscriber’s shopping preferences, loyalty tier, and purchase behaviors—building connections that go beyond the transactional and driving impressive loyalty and retention.
Claire’s
Claire’s transformed its SMS channel into a major global revenue driver by partnering with Attentive. With targeted, personalized messaging strategies, Claire’s achieved standout results, including a 17x ROI in the U.S. and a 149% increase in SMS subscribers.
Through features like geo-targeting, segmentation based on customer loyalty, and tailored regional compliance, Claire’s reached parents of their young shoppers across the U.S., UK, France, and Ireland.
Attentive’s robust support and compliance tools also enabled Claire’s to expand internationally with ease. The results speak for themselves: a 32% click-through rate in European markets, 10x ROI in the UK, and a steady increase in engagement across all regions.
Getting Started with Attentive
So, you’re ready to add Attentive to your tech stack? Here’s a quick look at what getting started entails—from onboarding to launching those first campaigns.
Step 1: Set Up Your Attentive Account
After signing up, you’ll receive an email to create a password and finalize your account. From there, complete your company profile with details like your brand name, website, and links to your privacy policy and terms of service—essential for compliance with SMS regulations.
You’ll also need your logo, brand colors, and fonts to keep your messaging on-brand from the start.
Step 2: Connect Your Tools
Attentive integrates seamlessly with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and email service providers (ESPs) like Klaviyo.
Simply select your tools in the setup to enable data sync and automate workflows. Attentive’s App Marketplace provides a range of additional integrations to customize your marketing stack further.
Step 3: Personalize Your Brand Kit
Next, build a consistent look by setting up your Brand Kit. Upload your logo, select brand colors, and input any custom fonts. This ensures that all communications feel cohesive and professional, enhancing brand recognition with each message.
Step 4: Review Your Initial Offer
To get started with lead generation, set up a default offer, like a discount code, that will be sent to new subscribers. Ensure this code is active in your ecommerce platform, as it will serve as an incentive for people signing up for your SMS list.
Step 5: Create a Welcome Journey
Attentive makes it easy to start nurturing your SMS subscribers with an automated welcome journey. Using a pre-built template, you can customize messages that greet new subscribers and even nudge those who haven’t made a purchase within 24 hours.
This journey is key to building early engagement and setting the tone for ongoing customer interactions.
Step 6: Activate Sign-Up Units
Finally, set up your sign-up units—full-screen pop-ups on mobile and desktop—to attract new subscribers. Customize the appearance, timing, and display rules, then connect these units to your welcome journey and initial offer.
With Attentive’s integration to your ecommerce platform, these sign-ups will be ready to capture leads as soon as they’re live.
Ready to Go!
Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re ready to launch campaigns, monitor performance, and engage customers with personalized, data-driven SMS marketing.
Elevating Customer Connections in a Competitive Market
In the crowded world of DTC ecommerce, generic outreach and blanket campaigns are no longer enough to captivate customers. Attentive offers a strategic toolkit for crafting impactful, data-driven connections that go far beyond traditional engagement.
By focusing on dynamic personalization, intelligent timing, and meaningful, two-way interactions, Attentive enables brands to transform each customer touchpoint into a memorable experience that speaks directly to individual preferences and needs.
The brands leveraging Attentive aren’t just sending messages; they’re building customer journeys that convert initial interest into long-term loyalty. Through AI-driven insights, advanced segmentation, and interactive messaging, Attentive helps brands shape experiences that resonate on a personal level, making customers feel understood and valued.
This kind of engagement isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a critical differentiator in a saturated market, where consumers are quick to favor brands that prioritize relevancy and respect their time.
As the DTC ecommerce continues to evolve, brands need to consider not only whether to adopt advanced tools like Attentive but how creatively they can use these tools to stand out.
For brands ready to elevate their customer engagement strategy, exploring Attentive’s platform can open new doors to sustainable growth and a loyal customer base that extends beyond the transaction. Now is the time to discover how Attentive can help your brand build the connections that matter.
About the Author: As the Director, Marketing at adQuadrant, Nick Grant leverages more than 20 years of experience working across a variety of tech verticals. Nick grew up in California and earned his BS in Business with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. After college, he relocated to Seattle to pursue his passion for startups, where he worked at various dot-coms before co-founding a successful visual strategy agency in 2010. Now back in California, Nick spends his time hiking around San Luis Obispo County with his wife and son, honing his talent as a concert photographer, and perfecting his handstand skills.
