How AAVRANI Turned Two-Way SMS Marketing Into a 23% Increase in GMV

With 97 percent of Americans owning a cellphone, it's clear we live in a mobile-first world. Brands that aren’t reevaluating their mobile marketing strategy are missing out on a key channel to engage and create one-to-one relationships with their customers.

For beauty and skincare brands, SMS marketing can be an extremely powerful tool, especially given the repeat nature of skin and beauty products. When SMS marketing is done right, it not only has the ability to drive repeat purchases and subscriptions through a new channel, but it ultimately can create stronger customer retention and even greater brand loyalty.

And while beauty and skincare brands today might think they’re using traditional SMS marketing strategies effectively, one-way text messaging simply misses the mark when it comes to offering a truly personalized experience for customers.

Where Traditional SMS Marketing Falls Short

Traditional SMS marketing strategies are fairly one-dimensional, forcing brands to bombard their customers with one-way, spammy marketing messages driven by coupon codes, links to their website, and little to no personalization for the customer. We know that the modern consumer is hungry for one-to-one, curated interactions with their favorite brands — and that’s where conversational commerce creates so much opportunity.

When my team at AAVRANI, an Ayurvedic beauty brand that bridges the gap between beauty and wellness by combining ancient Indian wellness rituals with modern science, wanted to explore new avenues to build deeper and more authentic relationships with our customers, we turned to Wizard, a conversational commerce platform that enables two-way text messaging between brands and their customers.

Going Beyond Spammy SMS Marketing Campaigns

With Wizard, we now offer our customers a full-service, personalized shopping experience from the palm of their hand. Complete with live, human support all via text message.

And the best part? Thanks to Wizard’s two-way text platform we uncovered an entirely new way of interacting with our customers. Whether that’s live skincare experts that provide customers with personalized product recommendations, or answering questions like “Wait, is it safe for nursing women?” or “Is it hypoallergenic?” It’s a new level of customer support and engagement that we simply weren’t able to provide with the one-way SMS model we relied on for so long.

The Results Speak for Themselves

The switch to conversational commerce was the change AAVRANI needed to create a stronger and more engaged customer base. In just six months, we achieved up to 37x return on investment and increased our gross merchandise value (GMV) by 23 percent via the SMS channel.

Furthermore, the interactive campaigns we’ve launched on Wizard’s two-way SMS platform have driven results far beyond sales metrics. We’ve been able to collect rich testimonials from our customers that we’ve leveraged across our digital marketing channels, and have created a community of AAVRANI ambassadors that share their own beauty and skincare routines and rituals.

Letting our customers connect with us on a personal level has proven to be a massive success. With Wizard’s two-way SMS platform we’ve increased repeat purchase rates and strengthened our customer loyalty with personalized recommendations. It’s validated that moving past the traditional SMS marketing model and switching to Wizard was the right decision.

Charlotte Moogan is the director of e-commerce at AAVRANI.