Name: The Messaging Masterclass: Inside The INKEY List’s Loyalty-First Growth Strategy
Uploaded: 2026-03-17T12:46:05.626Z
Duration: 27 min 13 s
Description: The Messaging Masterclass: Inside The INKEY List’s Loyalty-First Growth Strategy

Transcript for "The Messaging Masterclass: Inside The INKEY List’s Loyalty-First Growth Strategy": Strategy here at Attentive. And today, I'm joined by Georgie Little, Head of Growth at The INKEY List. Georgie, thank you so much for joining us today. I would love to learn more about yourself and also your journey within CRO. Yep, so as you said, I currently work at The INKEY List, but before that my journey within CRM has probably spanned like eleven or so years. I always knew that I wanted to get into marketing but I wasn't really sure what type of marketing. So when I very first started out after university, ended up doing a lot of short term roles in advertising and events and I was working for this high street retail brand as like a marketing assistant and I overheard some people talking about this brand called Sweaty Betty, which I didn't know of. They were saying like how amazing their offices were and it just made me want to apply to work for them and so there actually wasn't any jobs available at the time and so I just kind of sent off my CV into like the info and just like a really nice cover letter saying why I love the brand and they got back to me in a couple of weeks and were like 'hey, we're actually looking for a marketing coordinator. Do you want to come on interview?' And I got that role and at the time it was a great role for me because it was across all areas of marketing and so I could work across the PR team but also on organic social, a bit of digital and also in terms of it wasn't really called Serum back then but like catalogues and things like that and I just loved any of the marketing that you could tie back to numbers or data or results. And so I kind of fell into that side of marketing and then kind of moved into the role of email marketing executive and then slowly worked my way up and we actually didn't have a CRM team at Sweaty Betty when I joined and I was there to kind of put the first CRM team in place and so I kind of built that CRM team over the years. And I ended up being there for eight and a half years and saw kind of Sweaty Betty go from not much digital presence to like a huge digital presence, particularly during lockdown. And then about three years ago, I moved to the brand The INKEY List and I really wanted to move into a role that also has a lot of loyal customers, which I think skincare brands do, but I wanted to go somewhere completely different, so somewhere that wasn't Sweaty Betty is kind of a high price point and in clothing, whereas Inky is a more accessible price point, completely different business model, sold in multiple different retailers as well as online, so I just wanted to try something completely new. Amazing! And that is so exciting, Georgie, that you're able to start the journey at Sweaty Betty, but also take all that experience as you go into a very loyal brand like The INKEY List. And as we look at The INKEY List, can you share, especially for our viewers that's not heard about The INKEY List and more about the brand, the journey and how much you guys have grown over the last few years as well? Yeah. So The INKEY List is about seven years old and it was founded by Marc and Colette just before lockdown and they were really on a mission to make skincare accessible for all and they really want to kind of provide skincare knowledge so consumers can be making a really informed decision about what skincare to go for. And their whole ethos is around affordable, smart skincare that's got all of the good ingredients in but none of the fluff, none of the extras, none of the over top marketing that adds to the cost. So keeping prices really good for a customer. And we have a kind of tagline which is no BS, just better skin' which I really think the brand lives by and it's had amazing growth over the last few years. Lockdown skincare boomed and it kind of grew naturally with that and it's been really great to kind of see that continue to grow since. And going back into of course lockdown, I think we were all home realising about the amount of filters you'll meet on a Teams or Slides meeting and also how important skincare is. So as we look coming out of lockdown, there's been tremendous growth in The INKEY List from new products to the evolution in the brand. What are some of the biggest learnings and some of the biggest projects the brand has undertaken in the last three years since you've joined the company as well? Yeah. So since I joined the company, we launched a loyalty programme, so that was a really big thing. We really value our community and everyone that kind of is a fan of The INKEY List and so we really wanted to have a place where we could reward those customers that were buying from us frequently. So our launch programme we set up about three years ago when I first joined. We also changed providers to Attentive Mobile with SMS, which is another big kind of milestone for us to really help us reach our customers quickly and easily via the SMS channel. And then we've also launched a number of tools on our website. So again, all around kind of helping customers understand their skin better. We've launched an acne analyzer, we've launched a build your own routine tool on your site so you can kind of pick what works for you. We've made enhancements to our kind of skincare quiz. So, The Inkey List was actually one of the first brands that had a skincare quiz and now pretty much every brand does but we've kind of continued to evolve that over time as well. And that's amazing because that is so important thinking of the evolution of personalization and the critical role data plays within any customer experience. And it's amazing to see how The INKEY List is using that data. From looking at data personalization, how are you using that today when you speak to your customers, if it's either through SMS or email or even some of the other channels out there? Yeah, so we use as much data as we can and we use a lot of that data to power our journeys. At The INKEY List and myself, we are huge fans of journeys because it's things that can be running in the background and can just be driving revenue for us. So we're looking at all of the purchase data as a really great start in terms of how we talk to a customer if they're brand new to us versus if they bought from us before. And then we're looking into what products they purchase because that helps us know a little bit about what skin they have because we can kind of work that out so we know what goes well with each other. But then because we have things like the Acne Analyzer on-site, the Skin Care Quiz and Build Your Own Routine, we also get so much data on kind of what goals someone has around their skincare, but we also ask them the question which is like, what's your current knowledge of skincare? Like, how much do you know? And so then we can tailor our messaging towards someone who says, I'm an expert' or 'actually, I know nothing'. We can then make sure we're tailoring our marketing differently to those customers too. So, that's really important to us. We kind of do a mixture of everything from the purchase behavior but then also what the customer is telling us through those tools as well and then kind of use that to compile all of our journeys and also our campaigns. And that's exciting because that just again puts the customer at the heart of every experience and it's also the opportunity to enable and empower them. There's so much noise out there today, so how do we stay front of mind? The INKEY List does such an amazing job cutting through that noise. So, what role does Attentive Mobile play in the Inkie strategy today? Yeah, so we use Attentive Mobile for SMS and we're actually currently onboarding them for email, but from an SMS point of view, we use them every day. We're kind of always in the platform, but we love that channel to be kind of having a really easy conversation with our customers to kind of send them messages when it's the right time for them. And we love using SMS for kind of cultural moments or fun and things that are happening kind of day to day. So we actually don't plan our SMS campaign side too far in advance but we also use it for Journeys which we do plan much further in advance. And Journeys make up about 67% of our revenue and have a really high conversion rate. I think it's up to nearly 70%, 60 to 70%. And overall our SMS with Attentive Mobile has an ROI of seven, so it has a really good ROI which we love and so it just complements all of our other marketing channels so well for us. And I think another thing that Attentive Mobile is so great at is these sign up units. It really helps capture any kind of on-site traffic that's coming from our paid advertising or other channels. And then also, it boosts up our email sign ups as well. And so we found that's been a really great and efficient way to help lower our packs because once those customers hit the website, we're actually getting a much better sign up conversion rate through those attentive pop ups as well. Amazing! And it's always great to see that immediate impact we can see through a channel like SMS. And I know before we even started this session, we talked a bit about some of the creative ways the team has used some moments, not always thinking of discounts or big campaigns, but really grabbing what's happening around us in the world and using that as part of some of the strategies. Would you mind sharing some of those initiatives, Georgi, that the team ran with in the recent year? Yeah, of course. I mean, I could talk about this for a really long time. I absolutely love it. I think that's why SMS is so good because it's so fun and quick to turn around. You can literally think of an idea and ten minutes later you could be sending it to a customer. But we've done some really fun things. So, leaning not into discounts but into kind of moments that are happening. So, we sent messages this year after the Euros when the England Women's team won and that had a hugely great response rate which was amazing. We also did some really fun campaigns around the Oscars this year. So Hugh Grant mentioned Retinol on the red carpet and it just tied in really nicely with some of our products so we kind of jumped on that bandwagon and spoke to that in a kind of fun, funny kind of way. And we're also really lucky enough for some of our kind of new products to get featured on shows like This Morning in The UK and Good Morning America in The US. And so, for example, some of our best producers here have been featured and we don't always know when they're going to be on TV, they just suddenly appear and so we love sending messages after things like that, capitalizing on that moment being like 'hey, did you just catch us on TV or like 'find us here' and they all work really well for us as well. And that just shows every campaign doesn't always have to be attached to a discount or giving money back or anything for free, but it's just driving that brand awareness and I love the idea of sometimes being a little bit tongue in cheek and celebrating the lionesses was definitely one of my favourite over the past few months. What were some of your favourite journeys and what are some of the impacts the brand has seen with some of the journeys you've launched to date? Yeah, we actually have so many journeys running through The INKEY List and Attentive Mobile, which is amazing. We've got all the classic ones like the Welcome Journey and our Bowser and Cart Abandonment. These ones I think every brand has, so I won't chat on them too much, but they do amazingly well for us at The INKEY List. So we actually have an ROI of over 80 for our welcome journey via SMS which is awesome. And then I think our conversion rate on our cart abandonment is something like 70% so it's really, really strong. So we have just, they work great and I think it's because they just hit the customer at exactly the right time and also just the way that we can capture the data with so many customers when they're browsing our site. But then some of our more fun journeys, which I love and maybe don't drive as much total revenue but are just really interesting for The INKEY List, is all the ones we do off the back of our skincare quizzes to make sure a customer is getting messages that kind of support their skincare journey. We also love sending tailored messages off the back of what they've purchased. So actually sometimes reminding a customer to take a before or after or to keep using a product for six weeks to see the best results and sharing those clinical claims with a customer after they bought a product to remind them of kind of why that product is so strong. For example, we launched our Exosome Serum this year and it's an absolutely amazing product. It really makes your skin glow and we have some really great clinical claims on it like it increases collagen by 300% and reduces inflammation and so we love to kind of remind a customer of that to keep using it and that that just works amazingly for us. And our founder that got married this year our founders actually recently got married this summer which is really exciting and the female founder Colette has been using this new Exome product since it launched in April and she had an amazing skincare journey with this product and she actually ended up not wearing foundation at her wedding because of how amazing her skin was and how glowing it was and so we really capitalized on that true story and that B and A is from her and we pushed that across a lot of our journeys to customers that were buying Exosome and reminding customers kind of the journey that they can see and that just worked so well for us when we were really getting that storytelling and telling those kind of that real story, real life of our founders, which we loved. And then other journeys we love is our loyalty programmes. So we have about 10 journeys live all to do with loyalty. Anything from kind of giving customers points on their birthday, giving them special rewards, early access to products, reminding them of using their points and those journeys are also really effective for us. They're just like little nudges that remind the customer that they have something to spend with us or an action that they can do to get more points or giving them something like behind the scenes. And we love kind of those more community driven loyalty flows as well. So we have our really commercial ones but then we also have these other ones which I think are just as important about building overall lifetime value. And I know we've touched on loyalty a few times and even earlier today you shared some great insight on how The INKEY List is really driving that moment. Can you share some of those very specific personal experiences you've had with the loyalty customers and how The INKEY List is investing in that annual campaigns or strategies specifically to our own loyal customer base? Yes, so about three years ago, just after I started at The INKEY List, we set up The INKEY List Insiders, which is our loyalty programme And it has three tiers and so you can the more you spend, the more you can move up the tiers. And customers get points for shopping with us, but they also get points for completing their skincare quiz, leaving reviews, sharing B and As and interacting with the brands in a number of different ways. We really wanted to make it a super simple programme that really felt like it was giving something back to the customers that engage with us. So that's been going from strength to strength and we actually see that customers that are in our loyalty programme have a four time higher LTV than those that aren't. So it's something we really encourage your customer to be part of because we see their frequency increase but also their AOV, so how much they're spending per order, go up as well. Since launching that, we've then laid in loads of flows and campaigns from it. And one of our latest initiatives that we've done with Loyalty, which we introduced just over a year ago now, was an Insiders Week. So this is a week where we reward our best customers, where we have really great discounts and offers, but we also have exclusive offers and especially other things as well. We often give them early access to our brand new launches, give them chance to meet our founders, go on Zoom calls, chat to product developers or to our founder and just kind of all these different exciting things that they wouldn't normally get access to. We really value our community and they're obviously what makes The INKEY List so important and we're all about making sure everyone feels that they have access to the best skin. So we really want to make sure we're giving our loyal customers the best access to education, the best access to answers and the best access to all of the fun new products we're developing. And so we've now had three insiders weeks and the first one was last September and then we've had two this year. And outside of Black Friday, they are our best performing weeks of the entire year for revenue but also for traffic to our website and also for just engagement across a number of different channels. We just really see customers interacting with that week, which is really great to see. And that is quite a big strategy. Like if we look from your campaigns into journeys, into really driving that loyal customer experiences. Is the team utilizing any of the AI capabilities that helps them execute at scale for all these customers, not just in The UK, but globally as well? Yes, all the time. So, we're big fans of AI, particularly from a copywriting point of view. It really helps us keep our SMSs short and succinct but also just have that fun tone of voice and kind of keep that inky tone of voice. We just inject that personality into messages so we use it in that sense a lot. We've also been using AI Pro with Attentive, which has been really great for when to schedule SMSs, so we're really leaning a lot more heavily on send time optimisation than just kind of scheduling an SMS to go at a certain time. We've seen really good uplifts in results from actually letting the AI choose when it's the right time to deliver to a customer. And then also, we've been using it now and then to also add into segments as well, so the AI can help identify people that would maybe be relevant to receive that campaign that you haven't originally added into the message and also on the flip side, remove customers that maybe won't respond to that campaign. And so it's really helped all of the team kind of be faster at their jobs and more efficient and we're actually a really lean team and so, AI is really important to us and so, naturally across INKEY and every area of the business, we really encourage as much AI use as possible. And I think, as we've touched on it, it allows you to cater for that global customer and do everything very quickly at scale to drive impact. So, if we look at the global customers of The INKEY List, how have you had to adapt your strategy and direction with the recent tariff updates and the economical pressures the consumer is feeling? Yeah, I mean, think, like every brand, it's been a really interesting customer shift. One thing I think that we're really lucky at with The INKEY List is that we are a really good value and accessible price point. So, we've been leaning really heavily into our value and into educating customers even more to make sure they know that they can get effective skincare that doesn't have to be super expensive. And so, that's kind of the messaging that we continue to lean on into this year. But we have also been making shifts, so we did have to, off the back of the tariffs, increase quite a few prices in The US. And as our brand is all about transparency, we did a lot of messaging communicating to the customer and we actually did this via email, SMS or organic socials as well, saying that a price increase was coming and if you wanted to shop beforehand, please do, but also really outlining the reasons why some of our prices have to increase and that actually went down really well with customers because we made sure we were being really transparent with them in advance. Is loyalty all about discounts, Georgie? No, not at all. I mean, it does help, of course, and we make sure that we offer our insiders the best price as we do try and be as effective in terms of pricing to them as possible. But we also offer them so much more and we find that we actually see as good a results from the other things that we offer them. So, for example, early access to new products is so important and we try and give them early access to every single product that we're launching and we see they're some of our highest revenue days because you get such a wait list of people wanting to try the latest product that's launching and so giving them that access really helps. We also do fun things around gamification. So, for example, during our last Loyalty Week, Insiders Week, we did a 'your order might randomly be refunded' and so we actually just randomly, after week ended, picked random people and we sent them a refund. And during another Loyalty Week, we actually did it where if you order this week, you could win your free skincare for a year. So, we kind of did offers off the back of it, which is really fun. And then on top of that as well, we've done join, like, invitations to join our founders on a Zoom call or to meet a product developer on a Zoom call, which again, has had really great attendance and people love that kind of interaction with the brand. And off the back of our last Insiders Week, we actually did someone that orders this week during Insiders Week can actually go for dinner with our founder. And so we're doing one dinner in The US and one dinner in The UK with a customer. So those dinners haven't happened yet but we're just like in the process of talking to the customer and arranging that. So it's been really nice to offer these unique experiences, which is just a bit different and I think customers that really love a brand like, love those kind of little bits of extra things, so I'm really pleased to be able to offer that. One journey that does perform incredibly well for us is our cart abandonment journey. It has an ROI of 28 and a conversion rate of 72%, which is just amazing. I think it's just really about hitting the customer at the right time after they've kind of browsed our site and then left. Managing a global consumer base, Georges, is key that your tech stacks really work together and the data shared, as you shared earlier, really driving that personalization. How do you integrate your tech today? There are certain tools that really work together to help you drive that impact for the consumer. Yeah, of course. I think we're really lucky that a lot of our or most of our tech stack works really well together. They're So all pretty much out of the box integrations between different platforms and so it just means when we change providers or when we set something up, it's just done really instantly. So we use Shopify and then Attentive Mobile. We also link in with LoyaltyLion and Gorgias as our CX and they all just communicate really well together, which means data is so easily shared, which means that we can make sure that we don't message someone that's got like an open complaint with Customer Care, for example, or that we can send extra messages to our Loyalty customers via attentive, but also via another channel and we also can create channel affinities. So, yeah, they all work really well together. Amazing and that is key, especially as we think of the evolution and what is expected from the consumer as well. It is key that there is a consistent experience. And as we think of the year ahead, planning 2026, what are some of the key strategies that you and the team will be undertaking? And is there any specific programmes or projects that you're super excited about? Yeah, so in 2026, of course, we'll continue to focus on growth and retention, but I think it's going to be super important as we head into the new year to do things differently and to stand out because it's a really challenging economic time still and so we really want to make sure we're doing something different. And so we have launched this really exciting new thing, which I feel so grateful that I get to be working on because it's just really cool and different and it's something called Inky Labs and it's this opportunity with customers to work really closely with our product developers but also our co founder Colette on what comes next and what products we make next at Inky. And so what we're doing is we're reaching out to our loyal customers and our loyalty customers and inviting them to go on calls with us where they talk about what products they want, what they want to see from the brand. We also give them super early access and insights into what we're working on and what we're planning on launching. And then what we're doing is actually giving out samples for customers to try our products way ahead of their launching. And then we're also doing these small batch productions of products, which we may never make big. We may never put them on the shelves of Boots or Sephora, but we're just doing these small limited edition runs and there's some really amazing stuff that I can't wait to train myself that's coming out in the next couple of months. And we'll see how customers respond to them and if they go well, then we're kind of going to make them into bigger products potentially down the line or they might just be that, these really small unique opportunities that's potentially a trending ingredient that's working really well. And I think The INKEY List has always been an innovator. They've always been a brand that's been one step ahead. They've always launched ingredients that maybe aren't out there as much for the wider consumer. So for example, our Exosome product that launched this year. There are barely any products on the market that have Exosomes in it. It's such a really great ingredient but it's so hard to get it at an affordable consumer price point, which is what The INKEY List have done. And so this is kind of us, our way of continuing to do that, to continue to innovate, to give customers a chance to try really cool products and ingredients which maybe they wouldn't get to try on a regular basis. And it's a great way for us to engage with our community, to get people excited about the brand and what's coming up, and then also potentially lead to kind of great new products down the line. Something else I actually really love that we've started doing is these conversations with our co founder Colette. They're called No BS Convos and so they're following on from our whole tagline of being No BS and Straight to the Point. So we've actually started interviewing in a very similar setup to how we're talking but these kind of famous faces and people in loads of different industries including actually some Linus footballers where she's talking about what they find is BS in their industry and how it's all about cutting out the BS moving forward. And they're really great and really interesting to listen to. It is amazing to see how you've really leaned into your customer voice and really working with them to continue to evolve the brand, continue to build on that loyalty from the consumer. One question I always ask Georgina, I know you every time you see me for QBR, I ask this question: what is your favorite INKEY product? Oh, it would be hard to pick just one, but before I started INKEY, I knew nothing about skincare. I was a complete novice, like I've been using the same stuff since I was like 16 and my skin looks so much better now than it did a few years ago and so I think for me it's like three or four products that make a great routine, an INKEY that works really well but these are now like my ride or die products. I think I'll always be using them. So I love all of our cleansers so any is great but our oak cleansing balm is so amazing for taking off makeup. Hyaluronic acid I didn't even know what this was before I joined The INKEY List and I don't know if it's still that widely known but hyaluronic acid serum is just a great thing that everyone should have in their skincare and it really hydrates your skin and just makes it look really glowy and dewy. And then you've got Exosomes. I think I've mentioned this a few times but it's just such a great product. It just really makes your skin look really glowy and great. And then finally our bioactive moisturiser. It is so amazing. I use it twice a day morning and night because my skin's quite dry. It's a bit of a heavier moisturiser but it is so good for reducing fine lines, increasing your skin bounce and you just honestly look so hydrated when you use it. So, I'm a big fan of all of those products. And I love that and you know, I'm definitely caffeine cream. It is my go to every time I travel. My caffeine cream is in top of my bag because it's my go to on the go and it's just so easy to apply as well under makeup and actually, those tie dyes after long flights, long days, it just does wonders. Yeah, I agree. I actually used that this morning to make me look more awake for this interview. What is one thing you love about Attentive Mobile Georgie? I think I love most how easy it is to use. We're a small team and so I just love how simple it is to go in and create things, particularly on the SMS side. I love SMS as a channel in general because I think I said this earlier, you can come up with an idea and ten minutes later you could be sending it to customers because it's that quick to turn around, which I absolutely love. I also think the Attentive team are great. I love that we've been working with the same people for pretty much our whole time with Attentive and that's been really nice. I think that's so rare that you get to work with the same support teams and the same characters and that's been a really great part of our journey. Particularly as, again, I said, we're not a big team so we can really like it's great to have technical support and help from the Attentive team as well. Yeah, we definitely see ourselves as an extension of the INKEY team as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, Georgie, and really sharing your journey and The Inkilist journey with us and we are so excited to see what else INKEY is up to in 2026.