“When the customer finally picks something that they like, they've gone through kind of a headache of a journey,” said Cael Schwartz, head of growth at clothing brand Mugsy, at The Lead Summit in New York City. “Adding a couple of curated options for them is kind of refreshing.”
Instead of viewing post-purchase outreach as friction in the consumer journey, the clothing brand sees it as an opportunity to help consumers navigate choice through personalized recommendations.
Here’s how earplug brand Loop, sleep supplement brand Moonbrew, and Mugsy are increasing their ROI by strengthening existing consumer relationships while reaching new audiences.
Securing consumer attention
Moonbrew found value in the post-purchase space by pairing exclusive products with timed deals. Through this, the brand was able to deliver a stronger ROI, said VP of marketing Ronak Patel.
“Our product team is working on launching six ancillary products related to sleep over the next two months to find ways to improve that bottom line number once [we] acquire the customer,” he said. “It’s been great incrementality.”
Consumers are most likely to buy when there’s a sale (50%) or they’re actively looking to buy (48%), per a January Attentive survey. Marketers can be certain their audience is in shopping mode when they’re already in the checkout line.
Since 90% of Mugsy’s sales come from jeans, said Schwartz, using ad spend to promote other products isn’t profitable. Instead, the brand leverages post-purchase pages for product discovery.
“If we can put belts in the postpaid checkout experience, it’s an Average Order Value lift and an accessory that goes along with your jeans,” he said. “It’s a way for customers to get more items from us without needing to see a paid ad for it.”
Leaning into new audiencesFor Loop, broadening its ear plugs' use cases beyond nightlife was key to its growth, said co-founder Maarten Bodewes. The brand saw a surge of popularity after posts from moms on TikTok, who use the earplugs to manage noise and overstimulation when parenting.
“Sometimes you try a bunch of different things, you optimize your luck, and all of a sudden you see that someone posts and it goes viral,” Bodewes said. “We just tried to create as good of a product as possible for nightlife, and make it stylish.”
Loop has recognized the role of partnerships in building brand recognition—such as the McLaren F1 Team partnership, which brought in a new demographic.
“We had way more of a male audience coming to our website because the brand association is very different,” Bodewes said. “You’re tapping into new audiences, and they also give more authority to your brand."
Embracing D2C experimentation
Over half (52.6%) of consumers notice personalized product recommendations from AI shopping features when shopping online, according to a February Omnisend survey. For Mugsy, personalization is core to the post-purchase experience, and using data to experiment with product recommendations is key, said Schwartz.
“If you're a blue jeans buyer, you're more likely to buy a pair of whitewash than you are to buy a pair of olive jeans,” he said, emphasizing the value of actioning this data to create the right recommendations. “We’ve been able to play with that and really optimize the post-purchase experience.”
After pivoting to D2C in 2020, Loop was able to lean into the experimentation that led to its growth, said Bodewes.
“The benefit of D2C is that when something works, you can also scale it really fast,” he said. “If a certain landing page has good conversion, you can do it 10 times the next week. If you want to do that in retail, it of course takes a lot longer.”
While the retail space lacks that level of nimbleness, Bodewes is focused on bringing this experimental approach to the space—which includes paying close attention to in-store product placement and messaging.