How J skis sold one-third of their inventory in a single month using Postscript
J skis is an award winning skis brand designed by Jason Levinthal, handmade in limited quantities and sold direct to customers.
6,000 SMS subscribers in first month
When Taylor Bibaud, Marketing Manager of J skis, knew it was time to give SMS a try, he was just one month from his biggest product launch of the year. Ecom Growers, an agency partner he trusted, suggested Postscript and so he signed up without looking at any other competitors. And things simply snowballed from there.
“When we launched SMS on J skis last year we saw an insane amount of return from our text subscribers,” says Taylor. “We were doing double the amount of dollars we were doing from email. So at that point, we knew this was something very powerful and that if we send the right campaigns it was going to really change the way we do things.”
List growth has been key to J skis success. Within the first month they gained almost 6,000 subscribers through running a monthly giveaway, which has continued to be their main strategy for growth. The giveaways are promoted through social media with an embed form hosted on their site.
For subscribers that only opt in to email, they incentivize them to also sign up for texts by receiving extra entries for the monthly giveaway.
Using email for SMS list growth
Crushing product launch targets
In addition to the giveaway, their ski finder helps walk customers through choosing the right pair of skis. This form alone gets them almost 30 new signups every day. At just 15 months since joining Postscript, their list is now at over 25K subscribers.
When you think about peak ski season, December through March immediately come to mind. But for J ski’s, they had their biggest campaign in August.
Most of the legwork leading up to the launch came on social media with reminders about the upcoming event. They also gave customers multiple opportunities to sign up for reminders about the product launch, whether via email, text or reminder on their google calendar.
When it came time to craft the creative for the SMS campaign, they decided to take an out-of-the-box approach and send an early access password as a “mistake” to their subscribers. Some of the subscribers received it and immediately alerted their team. Others got the joke and loved it. But it was an out of the lift success.
They used deep segmentation to target different subscribers with the same message. One segment saw over 72% CTR, a stat that’s unheard of using anything but SMS. The overall product launch campaign sold 1,700 pairs of skis, wiping J skis out of one-third of their inventory.
Solution and results
SMS as a key customer service channel
Jason Levinthal, the founder of J skis, knew early on that educating consumers was going to be the best way to get them to make a big purchase online. Their CS team uses the Postscript Responses feature to respond to all customer inquiries that come in, sometimes up to 800 responses will come in after a campaign goes out, all of which the J skis’ team directly responds to.
List growth using giveaways
When J skis found a formula for list growth that worked, they stuck to it. Each month a set of limited-edition skis are sent to one lucky winner in exchange for their email or number or both. Once they capture them in their funnel, they use segmented automations to continue to market to them alongside new product launch campaigns.
150%
Growth in a single month where they sold 1,700 pairs of skis
72.3%
CTR on product launch campaign
+25K
Compliant subscribers collected in 15 months
Taylor Bibaud
Marketing Manager
J skis
“Being able to be in a Slack thread and have biweekly meetings with Zoe, our CSM, has been really helpful for me. There’s accountability and expert support when I need it.”