DTC Brand Taps Retail Marketing Technology Company to Automate Its Personalized Marketing and Scale the High-Touch Experiences That Keep Its Growing Community Coming Back

NOBULL, the high-growth athletic footwear, apparel and accessory brand, today announced the results of its new retention-driven growth strategy, powered by retail marketing technology company Bluecore. Since August 2020, NOBULL has been working with Bluecore to grow ecommerce revenue by increasing conversions and repeat purchases among customers. By matching its community of runners, trainers, lifters and everyday fitness enthusiasts with the products that fit their individual needs, NOBULL has increased its predicted customer lifetime value by 30% and reached a repeat buyer rate of 46%.

Despite a mass consumer migration to digital shopping channels--where retailers are not only competing with each other, but with every other digital experience too--NOBULL has attracted a cult of brand loyalists. Its customers do more than buy its footwear and apparel; they embody the NOBULL lifestyle. That’s because acquisition is only the beginning of the brand’s journey with shoppers. Its long-term growth is dependent on transforming one-time buyers into loyal repeat customers through marketing that focuses on the entire customer lifecycle.

When NOBULL set out to expand beyond its original CrossFit community to meet the needs of a diversified audience of golfers, indoor cyclists and other athletes, it teamed up with Bluecore to scale its personalized marketing. Automating the high-touch experience that has famously made NOBULL’s customers feel understood and recognized requires identifying who each of its shoppers are, what they're interested in and which products they interact with.

From there, Bluecore predicts which products each individual shopper will be most likely to buy next in the channel they’re most likely to buy based on their past interactions with specific products and categories. Bluecore dynamically pairs first-party shopper identity and behavioral data with NOBULL’s constantly changing product catalog, accounting for inventory levels and style attributes (e.g., material, color, size and product type). It then leverages the resulting insights to deliver one-to-one recommendations--via email, digital ad channels and NOBULL’s ecommerce site--to hundreds of thousands of shoppers.

NOBULL's email program, powered by Bluecore Communicate^™, drove 92% lift in conversions through merchandising triggers like price drops, new arrivals and back-in-stock notifications alone. NOBULL has also effectively scaled this level of personalization across communications delivered directly to shoppers while visiting its ecommerce store and browsing paid media channels through Bluecore Site^™ and Bluecore Advertise^™. This allows them to create a highly relevant experience for shoppers wherever they are.

Bluecore’s work with NOBULL has allowed the brand to scale the community loyalty it had already built in a way that’s authentic to the brand.

“Our marketing can’t just be about selling; it must prioritize cultivating long-term customer relationships and community that will result in longevity for the business,” said Todd Meleney, CMO of NOBULL. “The challenge that we’ve been able to successfully address with Bluecore is our need to move at the speed of the consumer without sacrificing brand and without access to limitless resources. With Bluecore, we’re able to scale our personalized communications no matter how large our audience becomes.”

“Retail has entered a new state of ‘Personal Commerce’ that requires brands to meet consumers where they are, with exactly what they want, when they want it,” said Fayez Mohamood, CEO of Bluecore. “NOBULL is a rare example of a brand that was working to achieve this far before it became obligatory. Its commitment to retention and loyalty may very well result in Nike-level success for the emerging DTC brand.”

Working with Bluecore also had the benefit of relieving strain on the customer service team when shoppers began receiving recommendations only for in-stock products, in their specific size. This reduced queries from confused customers who had just received a recommendation for a product specifically for them, only to discover it wasn’t available on the site.

“Before working with Bluecore, we discovered that some of our customers were receiving messages for products and sizes that were unavailable or for items that didn’t match their unique preferences,” said Joy Huang, Director of Loyalty and Retention Marketing at NOBULL. “This resulted in heavier-than-usual traffic to our customer service channels. Our work with Bluecore has had the pleasant yet unexpected consequence of reducing stress on our customer experience team.”

NOBULL’s work with Bluecore has allowed it to scale its personalized approach to an exponentially larger audience, without sacrificing the experience responsible for its original cult adoption.

“NOBULL’s product is what drew me to the company initially, but there is so much more to NOBULL than awesome gear,” said NOBULL customer Jaime Cronk. “Their customer service is top notch; they’re always going the extra mile to ensure their customers are happy. They have built a community of people from all different backgrounds, and yet, have found a way to bring us all together with their products and their visions for the future.”

You can learn more about NOBULL and Bluecore in the complete case study here.

About NOBULL

NOBULL is a footwear, apparel and accessory brand for people who train hard and don't believe in excuses. If you think gimmicks in your shoes make you a better athlete, NOBULL is not for you. NOBULL products perform with you when and where you need them. That's it. Our gear won't make you fitter. The only thing that will make you fitter is you. Working hard. Day after day.

About Bluecore

Bluecore is a marketing technology company that’s reimagining how the world’s fastest growing retail brands transform casual shoppers into lifetime customers. Through its patented shopper and product matching and the release of Bluecore Communicate^™, Bluecore Site^™, and Bluecore Advertise^™, brands are now able to personalize 100% of communications delivered to consumers through their email, ecommerce and paid media shopping experiences. Bluecore replaces manual processes with an intelligent, AI-driven workflow, allowing brands to manage these communications through a single interface. In 2019, the company bet big on itself when it introduced the industry’s first shared-success pricing model. It’s now credited with doubling email revenue and increasing customer retention, lifetime value and overall speed to marketing for more than 400 brands, including Express, Tommy Hilfiger, The North Face, Teleflora, and Bass Pro Shops.

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