The Business
After starting by literally selling their very first T-shirts from the trunk of a car, BSTN has become one of Europe’s go-to destinations for premium sportswear. BSTN is a fashion retailer with deep roots in sneaker culture and exclusive product releases, partnering with premier suppliers. Because of this, they’ve built a loyal and highly engaged community. The brand is celebrated for its authenticity and commitment to sneaker culture, resonating with a younger audience that values style, identity, and connection.
The Challenge
Operating in the fast-paced and highly competitive sneaker and fashion retail space, BSTN must keep its audience engaged and loyal while navigating limited product availability and high demand. With alternative options only a click away, strengthening brand affinity and customer retention remains a key strategic focus.
“Our goal is to continuously deepen engagement with our community and build lasting relationships. While customers today have many options, we want BSTN to be their first choice — offering not just great products, but an experience and connection they can’t find anywhere else.”
The Solution
BSTN adopted a strategic omnichannel approach with SAP Emarsys, incorporating conversational messaging in partnership with Sinch and referral marketing with Mention Me to boost customer engagement.
Triggered omnichannel customer engagement with WhatsApp
The BSTN marketing team understood they needed to meet their customers where they are, and for them, that was WhatsApp. They saw the European market highly adopting this channel not only for chatting with their friends but engaging with brands. This new channel was appealing due to its high open and click rates compared with email.
By partnering with SAP Emarsys and Sinch, the team together created a conversational channel strategy that kept an omnichannel approach at its core and focused on collecting customer opt-ins. They then started looking at their high-performing campaigns in search of ways to amplify them with this new channel.
They enhanced a series of automated programs designed to re-engage customers who did not interact with email or web channels. BSTN now follows up with the shopper via WhatsApp. The team was able to deliver 172,000 personalized conversational messages in the first 90 days, significantly increasing customer engagement. Alongside WhatsApp, if there was still no engagement, the automation would then trigger a more expensive channel like digital ads, helping them to reduce costs and have tighter focus on where paid social budget was allocated.
Another opportunity BSTN identified for WhatsApp was time-sensitive messages. When the team announces exclusive product launches with premier partners, timing is everything. By creating an omnichannel product launch campaign, they increased visibility and made a greater impact in the highly competitive market. Other time-sensitive messages include triggered automations for when wish list items are back in stock. This is crucial to build trust and transparency with their loyal community of sneaker enthusiasts.
“We introduced WhatsApp as an additional channel because we knew it would strongly resonate with our community. It’s a platform our customers already use daily, and in markets like Germany, adoption and engagement are exceptionally high.”
Drove customer loyalty with referral marketing
With loyalty being the cornerstone of their sneaker culture, the BSTN marketing team knew they needed a way to harness their most loyal customers and turn them into brand advocates. Using SAP Emarsys’ out-of-the-box integration with
Mention Me, BSTN enriched customer profiles, launched coupon reminder campaigns, and drove repeat referrals with pre-built tactics.
“With SAP Emarsys and Mention Me, we’re looking to get our most engaged and loyal customers to share the love. And these customers who come to us via the program will turn out to be loyal customers in the future. We implemented the program six months ago and have seen good results so far.”
The Impact
With the strategic advice from their customer success manager at SAP Emarsys, BSTN was able to successfully integrate two solutions through Sinch and Mention Me that has impacted how they engage their growing loyal customer base. They were able to add a new revenue stream to their portfolio with WhatsApp, allowing for greater omnichannel engagement that created a more effective use of budget and resources. Plus, with Mention Me they discovered a way to better target their most loyal customers at scale.
"WhatsApp delivers the immediacy our community expects. Read rates and responses come faster, which helps time-sensitive launches land and turns interest into action — and it’s become a truly omnichannel tool for us, seamlessly complementing our other channels.”
About Sinch
Sinch provides everything you need to message, email, or call your customers at scale. From user verification to omnichannel campaigns, our APIs and applications have you covered. Together, Sinch and SAP Emarsys help marketers boost cross-channel customer engagement and retention efforts with effective messaging campaigns. The partnership is a symbiotic blend of core competencies of each platform – the highly sophisticated Martech platform capabilities from SAP Emarsys, complemented well with the anywhere/any channel communication platform capabilities of Sinch. Together, delivering a robust customer engagement platform.