How Postscript Plus Gave
Mad Rabbit Time Back to Expand Into Retail
Oliver Zak and Selom Agbitor are two friends with a passion for ink who saw a major gap in the tattoo aftercare and tattoo skincare market. After realizing a lot of aftercare products were filled with toxins, and few things were available for long term care, they co-founded Mad Rabbit, made from clean ingredients and responsibly sourced.
$6.8M
77%
$368k
84%
Selom Agbitor
Co-founder
“I think SMS is vital in any brand’s strategy. SMS is a core base that you can reach out to whenever you want. You’re missing out on a lot of revenue by not tapping into SMS.”
Industry
Beauty & Cosmetics
Finding the Right SMS Platform
After launching Mad Rabbit in 2019, Zak and Agbitor jumped into email marketing right away. They realized that in order to increase their revenue from SMS, they needed to find a platform that specialized in SMS. “We didn’t know much about Postscript at the time, but knew that a lot of big brands were using Attentive,” Agbitor recalled.
Mad Rabbit used Attentive as their SMS provider for a year and a half. “Our rep was great,” he said, but the Mad Rabbit team didn’t have the messaging strategy and copywriting support they needed. “We didn’t have as much active communication like we do with Postscript,” Agbitor said. “For example, I enjoy being in Slack channels with our vendors and that was lacking with Attentive.”
The Battle to Leave Attentive
In the summer of 2022, Agbitor looked into how they could save on their SMS bill. “We hoped to negotiate our pricing, but they wouldn’t budge,” he recalled. Mad Rabbit felt that in order to receive any sort of discount they needed to unreasonably extend the length of their contract so they looked into
onboarding with Postscript.
When Agbitor hopped onto a call with Attentive representatives, he recalled, “the first thing they said to me after I said I was moving [providers] was, ‘okay, we’ll have to get our lawyers involved.’”
Attentive initially denied Mad Rabbit their owned SMS subscriber list when transitioning to Postscript. “I strongly believe that the brand owns their SMS list. I am spending money on every platform to bring in customers. That’s my data that I’m paying for.”
“We got our lawyers involved, but they still said no,” Agbitor said. “Eventually, we were like this is not worth it to keep fighting and getting our legal involved– we were paying legal fees.”
Feeling helpless, they gave up on emailing back and forth with Attentive and playing an endless waiting game. “We also turned down the amount of texts we were sending until the contract ended,” Agbitor recalled. The team had to scale back their sends because they refused to give Attentive more of their business given the treatment they experienced.
Agbitor said, “What if we’re in a situation where we were really stressed about profit margins and we needed to switch vendors because that would allow us to boost our bottom line? If we were in that situation [given what happened with Attentive], it would’ve been detrimental to our business.”
A Seamless SMS Transition to Postscript
When Mad Rabbit onboarded with Postscript, Agbitor recalled the experience as being “very quick and easy." He said, "with Postscript, everything was ready to go.”
He mentioned that he was wary of transitioning originally because, “SMS has always been a top 3 revenue channel for us. I wanted to make sure there weren’t any drops in acquisition rates.” Agbitor said, “Luckily I didn’t have to worry about it because the acquisition rates seemed on par or better than they were with Attentive.”
He recalled, “Everything was prepared to make sure it went smoothly and the ramp up period definitely didn’t take long.”
Ever since Mad Rabbit migrated to Postscript, Agbitor said “I feel more in control to be able to [access my data] whenever” and they’ve been able to get back to a regular texting cadence.
An SMS Strategy for the Tattoo Table
If you’ve ever gotten a tattoo, you know it takes time for the magic to happen. What do most do with idle time? Check their phones! “My audience is always on their phone. If you’re getting tattooed, you’re on your phone.” This habit makes SMS an ideal channel for Mad Rabbit to reach their subscribers.
Mad Rabbit employed the help of Postscript Plus– Postscript’s in-house team of SMS strategists and content creators. “We’re a small team,” Agbitor said. ”It’s been extremely important to have Postscript’s team take the lead. That’s been really helpful in taking some weight off our shoulders so we can focus on other things.”
“We’ve always known [our SMS strategy] should be educational and not too promotional. Last month, we beat our revenue goals without sending out sales.” Agbitor said, “Just doing educational or anything fun does drive customers to come purchase.“
With the help of their Postscript Plus messaging strategist, Mad Rabbit has been running engagement campaigns, like trivia, an idea that was driven by their own Postscript strategist.
How Postscript Plus Gives
Mad Rabbit
Time Back
As Mad Rabbit began to enter into new territory—the retail world—time became even more valuable to their small team. With the help of Postscript Plus, their lean team has been able to hone-in their focus on their retail rollout, rather than SMS–while still providing their subscribers with a best-in-class SMS experience.
Agbitor explained that their team member running point on the retail rollout has tight deadlines from retailers. “Without us being focused on SMS, she would have time taken away from the retail rollout.” He went on, “I know that if we were still with Attentive, there would be no way she could focus on the retail rollout." Agbitor’s team at Mad Rabbit knew they could lean on Postscript Plus to help them maintain their sending cadence while “still putting out good content, good messages, and good deals for our subscribers,” Agbitor said.
Solution and results
A lean and mean team, Mad Rabbit has the opportunity to expand into retail. During that time, they’ve been able to center their focus on expansion and still earn $102,556 from SMS. By relying on their Postscript Plus strategist for support, they’ve been able to continue their expansion efforts and deliver on-brand interactive and educational messaging to subscribers– all while making a huge profit with SMS.
Note: All results are accurate as of April 13th, 2023
0.24%
+46%
$102k
Selom Agbitor
Co-founder
“We learned our lesson. Never go to a platform that doesn’t let you have access to your own data.”
Industry