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Website
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VerticalActivewear
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EcommerceShopify
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Arctic Cool Customer Story
4.16% increase
in Review Rate
4,606 extra
Reviews (in 5 months)
Do you feel uncomfortable when a workout makes you sweat and overheat? Arctic Cool presents an innovative solution: activewear made with HydroFreeze X technology. As you begin to sweat, the brand’s high-tech fabric wicks moisture from your body and disperses it to keep you cool as effectively as any fan or air conditioner. Though a young brand, Arctic Cool has quickly made a name for itself as a leader in cutting-edge clothing that does more than make its wearers look good.
Arctic Cool migrated from WooCommerce to Shopify in 2019. The brand understood the importance of reviews and UGC from the beginning, but Shopify’s native reviews app didn’t include the ability to solicit testimonials or host rich content. Arctic Cool sought a solution that would allow it to do both as well as integrate a loyalty program. After discovering Okendo, the brand decided it was the platform most suited for its needs and now uses it to incentivize customer reviews, distribute rewards, and collect zero-party data to facilitate exceptionally personalized marketing campaigns.
Enhancing Personalization with a Marketing Tool Suite
Arctic Cool never underestimated the power of social proof because it sells highly technical products. It’s not just any clothing brand that consumers come across every day; its unique garments come with promises, and shoppers want evidence that those promises come true.
The brand also understood that reviews are an excellent source of zero-party data, which it was adamant about collecting. The more data, the more accurately Arctic Cool could personalize its marketing and customer communications. However, data from reviews customers left at their leisure wasn’t enough — for zero party data to work, Arctic Cool needed to solicit reviews; and for that, it needed a platform that integrates with Klaviyo.
“We strive for acutely personalized communication with our customers, which requires segmenting our audience based on details we wouldn’t ordinarily know about them,” says David Bilow, Director of Ecommerce Sales at Arctic Cool. “It’s possible to assume some things from geographical data, purchase history, and other analytics, but that’s difficult when you factor in different shopper behavior, like buying gifts. However, integrating both product and customer attributes from reviews with customer profiles in Klaviyo enables us to automate uniquely personalized email flows, adding another dynamic element we can customize content for.”
Arctic Cool specifically wanted to measure Attributes like overall performance, comfort, and sizing. Feedback in these categories provides the brand with insight into how shoppers feel about its products and helps it tailor email and SMS communication amongst different kinds of customers. The brand also wanted to offer rewards points through these channels in exchange for testimonials that include UGC. To make this happen, Arctic Cool needed a social proof platform that included a suite of tools, not just a reviews provider.
“An integrated tech stack is paramount. It enables everything to feed off one another and brings it all together. For instance, incorporating RREs as part of our loyalty program drives and incentivizes initial reviews when, ordinarily, we wouldn’t see that level of traction. Now, we have even more customer data and communication touchpoints, and our messages can be more action-based instead of sales-driven,” says David.
Okendo featured every integration Arctic Cool desired to bring the kind of united marketing-loyalty-review system it envisioned to fruition: Klaviyo, LoyaltyLion, Shoelace, and even Google Shopping. With all of these tools in place, Arctic Cool has access to extensive sources of zero-party data it can use to optimize its customer engagement.
Tailoring Marketing & Communications with Zero-Party Data
Besides steering product development and assuring shoppers that HydroFreeze X technology works, Arctic Cool uses zero-party data to influence its customer communications. Every customer has different intentions, expectations, and questions, so zero-party data allows the brand to segment its audience based on attributes and adjust its messages accordingly.
“Personalized communication with customers becomes increasingly critical as we grow. Our product lines were narrower in our infancy, which required fewer distinct messages. Now that our offerings have evolved (along with their use cases), they require more accurately tailored communications and tones of voice in pre and post-purchase engagement,” David explains. “For example, if there’s an overarching theme of extreme comfort in the reviews section, that becomes a selling point. We might have been talking too much about the technical aspect, so consumer feedback lets us know what we should emphasize more.”
Additionally, Arctic Cool uses zero-party data from reviews to reduce missed revenue from cart abandonment and exchange costs. The brand uses Okendo’s Shoelace integration to surface reviews in cart abandonment emails and SMS messages, encouraging customers to rethink their decisions not to buy. David notes that Arctic Cool appreciates how the brand can personalize said emails and SMS messages based on an individual customer’s actions onsite instead of relying on generalized communication that is less likely to convert.
Plus, customer testimonials answer shopper questions better than any brand could answer on its own. Shoppers can read sizing details on product pages easily, but they want to know how that information applies to them in practice. David elaborates:
“Customer reviews take our fit and size guides to the next level. We can say one thing, but shoppers want to know how those sizes fit on their respective body types, how comfortable the garments are on their figures, and how well our technology functions. Our audience has a space to become a community that gladly shares evidence-based testimonials.”
Thanks to zero-party data preventing customers from making purchases they regret (such as incorrect sizes or clothing they misread the details of), Arctic Cool boasts a lower than industry average exchange rate, thus saving money on return shipping costs.
With Okendo’s review widget displayed onsite and connected to Klaviyo, LoyaltyLion, and more, Arctic Cool sports a higher-than-average review rate of 4.16% with over 4,600 testimonials (many of which include UGC) collected in only five months.
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