Kudd.ly increases its placed order rate 84% by swapping discounts for smarter and cosier relationships

Founded in Edinburgh, which is known for its less than ideal weather, Kudd.ly keeps people comfy and cosy with high-quality blankets, bedding, and slippers.

Yet the brand’s commitment to style and usability means Kudd.ly’s 300,000 customers can enjoy their products during every season—not just in the depths of winter.

Learn how Kudd.ly uses Klaviyo flows and segmentation to become more than a seasonal discount brand 

Challenge

When Kudd.ly was bought by The Mothership, a company that acquires and builds promising D2C brands, it was clear that a more targeted marketing strategy was in order.

“Kudd.ly’s flows were constantly offering discounts through lots of emails. And while this was driving the majority of revenue, it didn’t provide the best long-term customer experience,” explains Abby Ratnasothy, senior retention manager at The Mothership.

Kudd.ly’s reliance on discounting—and the perceived seasonality of its products—was harming its ability to make repeat sales. People would often purchase an item for winter, then unsubscribe.

The brand needed a way to inspire customers to buy because they loved the products year-round, rather than being purely driven by incentives.

Solution

With The Mothership’s guidance, Kudd.ly has ramped up how effectively it uses Klaviyo. This includes monitoring what items are often bought together, and what items people buy after their first purchase, helping to improve Kudd.ly’s understanding of when and how to reach out.

“New customers usually want our hoodies and weighted blankets, but we also sell wellness products like pillowcases, diffusers, and cooling blankets,” Ratnasothy says. “If someone wants a weighted blanket, it’s usually because they’re trying to sleep better. So our silk pillowcases and bamboo bedding sheets also make sense for them.”

To create customer journeys that take things like product preferences into account, Kudd.ly has built 10 core segments. “With Klaviyo, we can get really deep into the customer data,” Ratnasothy explains. “For example, we can track what product categories people view, and then we can build flows to encourage those one-time buyers into repeat customers.”

With these targeted customer experiences, Kudd.ly has steadily grown its segment of repeat purchasers (2 purchases or more) to include 98,421 members in 6 months.

Strategy

With The Mothership team’s expertise, Kudd.ly now uses Klaviyo to engage and convert one-time buyers into repeat purchasers throughout the year. To do this, Kudd.ly sends post-purchase flows that educate customers on complementary but lesser-known products that are available through bundles and multi-packs.

With the foundations in place to deliver more targeted and compelling content instead of blasting their whole list with discounts, Kudd.ly has gotten creative about engaging customers year-round.

For example, Kudd.ly has an exclusive Facebook group for VIP customers. Members get access to new products and the chance to try out as-yet unreleased products, earning more testimonials and user-generated content for the site.

“We can feed the customer purchasing data from Klaviyo into the Meta integration so we’re not paying for customers we’ve already acquired, or are already in our database. When new visitors come through ads they’re at the end of the funnel—I work closely with the acquisition team to ensure there’s a smooth journey from those ads to emails that lead to a purchase,” Ratnasothy says.

Of course, discounts still have their time and place. Kudd.ly’s biggest revenue earner of the year is Black Friday, but with their new approach to promotional offers, Black Friday 2024 isn’t going to be the typical deep price gouge that hurts the bottom line.

By focusing on giving the best offers out early, especially to VIPs, Kudd.ly will foster customer loyalty during a campaign that previously just produced one-time shoppers.

Plus, with analytics through Triple Whale, Kudd.ly plans to build flows that offer bundled deals and raise average order value (AOV) during the sale. “Black Friday is such an expensive time to acquire customers,” Ratnasothy explains. “Being able to execute on these insights saves us so much on our marketing costs.”