Transcript for "The Messaging Masterclass: The Playbook Behind Craft Club’s First $1M Month": Hey everyone. My name is Janelle Oberholzer, senior director international strategy here at Attentive. And today, I'm joined by Nikos, co founder of the Craft Club, to really share a little bit more about their story and how they've really evolved their social presence using key channels like SMS and email. Nikos, thank you so much for joining us Thanks for having me. It's great. As we get stuck in, I would love to learn more about really how the Craft Club journey started. Yeah. And really how that's your career evolved because I know speaking, this is not really where you started your career ten years ago. No. Definitely not. So I've always been in startups and ecommerce generally has been a big part of that. And that's kind of been my my kind of playing field for the last ten years. But, Craft Club started back, in COVID by my wife, Nikisa. And we were both, I was working on other e commerce ventures at the time and she was struggling to find something to do in COVID as we all were. We had hobbies like, you know, sourdough and you know, I was baking, but she wanted to do crafts. So she'd always had an interest in fashion and kind of textiles generally, and crafts really interested her. So she went to Spotlight, is kind of our big craft chain here in Australia. And she was looking for a craft kit that was modern, that suited her, that suited her kind of style and vibe. And she couldn't really find anything that reflected her as a young woman. So it was designs that maybe your nan might have done, you know, like a lorikeet or a koala. And so she thought, you know what? I think I can do a better job myself. And I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. Let's go ahead and do that. So she came out with a very small range of cross stitch kits. And these are the kind of kits where you're making a little x out of thread on a sheet of what's called Ada. Kind of like embroidery, but a little bit different. And she came up with a a line of designs and yeah, I set up a Shopify store and started doing kind of Facebook ads. And it really just started from there. We thought, know, look, it's a small market, it's crafts, you know, how many people could want this? And then fast forward, I think six to twelve months and we had that delta strain of COVID and we went into lockdowns. And so obviously the business really scaled there because people were stuck at home and had nothing to do. And then we came out with a line of latch hook rugs. So latch hook is, it's it was big in the seventies and eighties, and we've kind of brought it back in a bit of a renaissance. But it really you're making this single knot every time and with the kind of small piece of thread. And, yeah, you kind of do that again and again to make kind of complete rug. And she had some really cool designs that were really kind of funky and modern and and they really, really took off. And so from that point, we thought, you know what? This could be a bigger craft movement where, you know, we are bringing crafts generally into the twenty first century. Amazing. And and that's thing, like reading the reviews. And of course, with the business growing very fast, what were some of those early challenges you faced, Nikos, as we started to grow when it came to your multichannel strategy? Yeah. I think, you know, craft is it's a niche. It's not like selling a t shirt or some other homewares where you don't have to do serious education into what it is. Like, you have customers still coming to us to say, like, I don't get it. Like, how do I do it? Can I even do it? You know, you go and buy a t shirt and it's a pretty easy transaction for the consumer to understand. Yeah. It goes on my body. Yeah. I know my size. I then just choose based on design or taste. And so, you know, in craft club you do choose based on how it looks and how that's going to make you feel. But there are other factors that come into it because it's something that people don't usually know what it is. And so I think in the early days, we did a lot on social media, lot on, you know, Instagram and Facebook is still our largest top of funnel channel for us. And I think a lot of it came down to having really eye catching colorful designs. Like our brand is incredibly vibrant and most people's first experience of the Craft Club brand will be with something that is vibrant, exciting and that kind of hooks them in and makes them think, what is this? Can I do it? And usually some, most people will have had a family member, a friend, a man who might have done craft in the past and they go, I've seen that before or I get that. And so it'll kind of push them over the edge to give it a go. But yeah, for us, you know, it was very much a slow grind to start. Lots of ad spend on channels like Google and Messer, which is great for the early days because you have to scale, but it's expensive and it takes time. So for us having the ability to then really grow our internal customer base has been really, really powerful. I think our core base of customers are incredibly loyal. They love every new product and every new thing that we do. And we've really nurtured that with time because I guess that's the holy grail is to have a large cohort of customers that will just try any new craft that we decide that we wanna bring out or any new kind of thing that we wanna experiment with. And they're gonna be on board with that. So really trying to nurture that customer has been something that's been a constant, you know, mission for us and something that we've constantly had to do and things like Attentive have made that a lot easier for us. Amazing. And if we look at the channels, because of course email is there, we can educate, we share the new ideas, we share the latest product updates with our especially our loyal customers, because they live in those emails. They get excited. How have you found the partnership with Attentive and what did Attentive provide or deliver that really stood out for you? Yeah. No. It's been fantastic. So obviously, for an e commerce brand, email is a huge thing. It's kind of the big first starting point for a kind of internal communications channel. And we did the usual you'll send EDMs out for new product launches or for sales, but not doing too much more than that. And since joining with Attentive, we've built out a lot more journeys that would nurture the customer in their educational experience as well. Like after they receive a kit to be educated in how to do it and to make sure that their experience is as smooth and easy as possible. That's a really important thing for us. That's been instrumental. And I think SMS was something that we kind of became pretty late to the game in. We used to use very scrappy tools where you just upload a CSV. It shows you how much it's gonna cost and you kind of like hit send on some little message. And for us that was always just like a we've got a sale on or something really basic. Now obviously SMS is a lot more integrated into those journeys. So from it is one of the first touch points of our customer journey. Like they will be receiving their first discount codes through SMS. They're gonna receive their first kind of abandoned cart journeys through SMS rather than email these days. And we find that it just has a really strong cut through. MMS has been kind of one step above that. And it's so exciting that that's available in Australia now, as well as The States where we use it. Obviously, brand is so colorful and vibrant. And so to add that kind of richness into an SMS experience through SMS is so much better. Customers, if we are doing a new product launch, for example, customers can clearly see what it is, what it looks like, you know, if that's something they want to kind of go and explore further. And so, yeah, we found that to be really really instrumental in now how we launch products and how we launch things like sales. Amazing. And I love that. And is there any result that really stood out for you with across these key channels like SMS and email? Yeah, so, you know, as a fast growing e com brand, all our channels are important, but I think that the email SMS channels are incredibly important in driving those repeat purchases. And that, you know, as a founder, that's kind of where the profit is in a lot of time. You're spending huge amounts of money on Facebook and Google. And that's great for new customer acquisition. But for, you know, the bottom funnel for that kind of core customer base, that's where you're really making your money that you're taking home. So in terms of metrics, we've seen some great growth in our subscriber base. Thanks to Attentive. When we used to do that kind of sign up offer, it was very basic. It'd be get x percent off to leave your email and that was fine and it worked fine for years. But now we do a two tiered approach where it'll be the first tier will be email. The second tier will be get even more of a discount for adding your mobile number. That's had such a massive uplift. It's I think it's been around 200% increase from when we first started with attentive. So that's been fantastic just to get more people that we've already spent money on with Meta in the door. And if you're not getting at least their email or their phone number, you know, and they're bouncing off the site, that can be a bit of an issue. So trying to get as much of that data as possible has been really important for us. And now we can again, it might not be the right time for a customer to purchase something, but to nurture them through that has been really helpful and to have both their email and SMS makes it a lot easier. Something else that we've also tried since joining Attentive has been the browse abandonment journeys. We only did cart and checkout abandonment, which is pretty standard. Browse was pretty new for us and we've seen it, I think a little over 20% conversion rate from the browse abandonment journeys through SMS, which is just fantastic. Because again, craft is not one of those things that you buy straight away. You have to think about, am I gonna finish it? Is it right for me? I'm not sure. And so having those options for us in those abandonment journeys has been absolutely instrumental to our revenue growth. Amazing. And we see that. Global expansion is always exciting and especially with Craft Club expanding into The Americas, into The UK. What was the most exciting bit about the journey? And also, where is the next location we're going to? Yeah, great question. I think it was pretty slow to start. We were just kind of dipping our toes in the water. You'd maybe do a little Facebook campaign in one region or another. But yeah, we had to fulfill them from our Australian warehouse and that was quite a large cost. So you have to factor that in. But you know, we knew that there were markets out there that really wanted our products. And I think especially for businesses that are in niches, some businesses you can grow a massive business in a single region because it is a product that every single person could buy. We're not in that kind of market, sadly. It is a niche and that means we do have to venture into new markets that want to try our products. The big one for us was The US. It's a massive market that you can't ignore. Even with everything that's happening at the moment with tariffs, it's still such an important market for us and for many other e com brands out there. UK as well is also a massive market for crafts in the Northern Hemisphere is, you know, gets cold, unlike And that's, you know, really, you know, a common pastime for people in the Northern Hemisphere. And so those markets, we really did just start kind of small, kind of edged into them. And then rather quickly it started to accelerate because you realize, hey, there are lots of people around the world that also want these products. And that was super exciting. I think really having an SMS platform that allowed us to have, phone numbers for Canada, The US, The UK, Europe really helped us kind of give the full craft club experience to every market equally. Sometimes I think in the early days, it felt like we gave our Australian audience a superior experience because they were kind of in the home base, in the home territory. And it was easier for us to give them that tailored personalized experience just by the nature of we don't know other markets. We don't have access to things like mobile numbers and infrastructure in those markets to give the same experience to the customers. So for us having infrastructure like Attentive to enable us to serve those markets at the standard that we would expect of ourselves as founders and the standard that we'd expect to give to our customers was really really important. And for now, you know, we're still growing pretty pretty aggressively internationally. Singapore has been a really interesting market at the moment. It's small. It's quite contained, and it's easy to kind of have an impact in Singapore. And then like a lot of ecommerce brands, diversifying away from The United States a little bit. You know, for us it was our largest market by a country mile, and now we're seeing like a lot of other brands that diversification. Hey, there are markets like Canada, Germany, France, The Netherlands, South Africa. There are interesting markets out there that have a lot of people that might want your products, other than just the big UK, US kind of, you know, markets that we all think of. Amazing. And and that's the exciting thing is you can really take this program out everywhere. Yeah. And also, it's such a perfect gift if it's for a personal buy or for a gift. Everyone enjoys it everywhere we go, and I know speaking to customers and reading the reviews globally. Yeah. What is Craft Top Club doing today to stay ahead of that loyalty programs, ensuring customers feel valued and making the most of that loyal customer to drive the loyalist of the future? Yeah. It's a great question because obviously that's where our most valuable customer lies. We want more of those loyal customers, but you have to create them. Right? You can't just expect them to be loyal. Sometimes you get a loyal customer that just comes in and absolutely is obsessed with your brand and product. Yeah, they're a bit of a unicorn, but most people you have to nurture them to get them to that point in the end anyway. So we're doing a lot more journey based work, again, especially from that educational side, of the product. I think there are lots of different personas around that product. Some people just want to finish it and have it as effectively an object, like an accessory or something like that. Some people enjoy the cathartic meditative act of doing the craft. Others it's a gift and they really enjoy giving a gift that is practical. Other people feel like they need to have something that is not technologically inclined. They have to get off their phone or get off their laptop and a craft kit is an easy way of doing that. So to have journeys that kind of cater to these different messages is where the path we're heading down now. We're not quite there yet. When you think about journeys across SMS and email, I know from a lot of other brands that I've worked with and that we know personally. Like when you start thinking about it, your head can start to spin around every different segment of every different customer. And you do in an ideal world want to create journeys for them that feel natural and feel like they're being heard. But that ultimately is our kind of holy grail and we are working towards giving that really, tailored experience based on the value proposition that we're providing to certain customers and whether that and how that has an impact on their lives. And you can get that, I guess, you know, from sign up units. You can start with a survey of like, well, why are you here? What kind of drives you to purchase this product? And we're doing more surveys as well to get that feedback and then feed them into better journeys that serve that purpose. Amazing. And that's the thing is because, like I said, it's also that spreading the word. Because you build advocates. You're not just building that loyal customer of today, but it's also those future advocates for the brand Yeah. That as you especially think of that global strategy and expansion. And what are you most excited about this BFCM? And what are some of the tactics you will be using? So for every e commerce brand, Black Friday is it's the peak of the mountain. Right? Like, it is we are working towards this moment now. And globally, Black Friday is getting bigger every year. This year should be no different. You know, more email sends, more revenue generated. Like, I mean, the the data and the trends are showing that, yeah, you've gotta be on this kind of journey in the Black Friday space. This year, we we have a pretty tight sale plan usually. Like, we know exactly what we're gonna do for a sale and how that's going to work. But you should always be experimenting and no matter how big you get as a brand. And so this year, we're actually changing it all up and we kinda did it last minute, which is very craft club. We know we'll we'll have a great plan, then we'll go, nah. Let's tear it up. We'll we'll do it all it's all differently. So what we're doing this year, you know, non trade secret. It might not even work. So, you know, I'd like to come back here in a year and see whether this whole plan worked or not. But we're thinking of well, we are splitting up the sale into two. And so, obviously, people are doing it earlier, and you have to get in there and compete not only against your competitors, but you have to compete against share of wallet. Like it's a super competitive time. You've got to be in that fight, and you've got to be in that fight, you know, faster, harder, and smarter than other brands. And not just brands in your space. Like again, you're competing against share of wallet here. So you have to be pretty clever. And so what we're doing this year is we are splitting it up and we're doing two sales within the same theme. So thematically, it looks and feels the same, but our loyal customer base are getting a different offer earlier because look, we love them, we want to give them a strong offer, and we want to give that to them early. We want to get in, get out with our kind of loyal customer base. And so we're doing that a lot earlier and it's going to be a lot more of an aggressive discount for them because, you know, they've been along with us for the journey and we want to reward them. Obviously, it also costs less money for us to give them that kind of discount. And again, we want to give that to them earlier. Then we will be doing a different kind of offer for the more top of funnel where we are acquiring new customers. And so based on this, you know, we're giving two different audiences two unique experiences to again make them feel heard, seen in a very noisy time. Like Black Friday, it's as noisy as it gets. CPMs on Meta, usually for us, we were doing the analysis, they're up about 80% to previous months to what it is in the actual Black Friday period. So trying to do it smarter and earlier, that's going to save you a lot of money on Facebook and Google too. So there are plenty of reasons, to think about it strategically and not just think about it as a single sale like you would do any other sale because it is so competitive and it's so all encompassing at the moment. So that's what we're doing this year. Jury's out on whether it's going to work compared to our more standard sales structure. But we do think that this is the path we're going down where we're giving our customers a different experience to what we might give the market, you know, the market of new customers and new customer growth and giving them a unique experience that makes them feel kind of heard, seen, felt. And that is exciting, because we've seen adopting those different segmentations and the different strategies do drive more impact. And especially, I was looking up some recent Microsoft reporting and the average consumer now gets 114 emails a day. Wow! And we think of Black Friday that's two, three, four times. Yeah, yeah. That amount is how do we cut through the noise and that's where personalization and like I said both customers feeling valued but in different ways. Do you do anything post the FCM as well to still stay front of mind, especially with summer holidays here, when families are off, kids are at home and parents are thinking how to keep them busy? And well, some of us are still working during that time. Yeah. It's what happens after Black Friday, I think, is just as important as the actual sale. And of course, it's difficult because we get to the end of that race. We're gassed, and you just wanna be like, oh, it's Christmas time. Let's have a drink. But no, there is a lot of opportunity in that period too. Like we forget that in December, you know, conversion rates are still up. Retail spending is still in an elevated mood kind of mood. That's great. And you can still capitalize on that. So for us, we try and do pretty heavy nurturing and that's really brand led and customer led. So our Black Friday sale is heavily hyped. It's a pretty common strategy now. And our Black Friday sales are pretty aggressive. Like, the messaging is, you know, 30% off or 60% off and it's in your face and, you know, and that's pretty common these days and to see so much of that aggressive messaging. And it works for that period, but you've got to cool off on it pretty quick because it will burn the brand out. And so for us, Christmas is such a fun time to kind of bring the, I don't know, sound corny, the jolliness Yeah. Back into the brand. Last year, we did a twelve days of Christmas campaign. So like December 1 is the first, and then it goes the twelfth because you'll have shipping cutoffs. And that was great. We tried to do a new offer every day for twelve days. It was great in theory. I think, the team were pulling their hair out by the end of it because we were sending something like 80 DMs and 10 SMSs or something crazy like that in a twelve day period. But the philosophy of it was, look, let's go and do things for our customers. And we did some pretty fun things. We had some offers in there too that were financially driven. But we also had we gave, you know, a free coloring PDF, you know, just to send out to our kind of customers. We gave Christmas cards, like things that weren't financially driven that could give value to the customer. And that as a nurturing thing was really important. And it's really important for brands to remember that, yeah, again, the game doesn't stop just because Black Friday's ended. And it's a great time to warm down because the hangover of Black Friday, if not done correctly, will be rough. Like really rough. And usually the better the sail, the bigger hangover. But anything to kind of bring that landing in and make it a little bit more gentle really helps. And so I think it's always good to remember to do things that your audience might enjoy that is not just the sell sell sell message, you know. And that is so true. And like you said, like you don't want to burn out the brand. You want to stay front of mind and consumer expectations has changed so much. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in the consumer expectations when it comes to communicating with brands and also you and the team communicating with your consumers? Yeah. Obviously, everything is getting more competitive. Being on ad channels in Meta and Google are getting more competitive. So things like CPMs and CPCs and just general advertising costs are increasing. So you do have to play it smarter through other ways now. It's not as easy as just kind of slapping ads up. Obviously, the creative requirements are now so much more intense than they used to be, both for internal communication on social media, through ads, through emails. I think the expectations are higher than they've ever been really. I mean, like, we are now pumping out so much content for ads, social media, emails, SMS. Like, the consumer expects a high quality of content and more of it. And then to your point around the Microsoft data, like, there is so much out there. So it's gotta be better to cut through. And so the expectations are really high and I I don't know where this goes to from here because it feels like we're almost at peak expectation. Like, so many brands are doing such a good job now of communicating and delivering amazing products, at reasonable prices. I'm not sure where this really ends. But for us, I think it comes back to having clear purpose with the customers, a clear vision. You want to bring them in on the journey. And I think the expectations can be reduced almost if there is that authenticity and that personal feeling to the brand. Nakisa, the CEO of KraftKlob, she's still very much front and center of the brand. People love her. Every time we do a big sale, she is like the star of the ads. And every year we do a sale, you know, our customers are kind of expecting like what theme are they gonna do this year? Like, what kind of funny vibe or funny ads they're gonna pull out this year? And I think that is really, really great. And we do get a really nice wholesome energy out of our customer base when we are authentic with them. And we have had problems in the past. We've had problems with competitors or copycats, you know, trademark issues, and our customer base are the first ones to come and defend us on those because we've spent a long time communicating with them in an authentic, genuine way. Of course, the counter to that is when we're doing things like SMS and MMS especially, you can overdo it. Know, we're finding that more people and more brands are doing SMS messages and MMS. And so that's starting to feel almost a little spammy. And so you then have to again bring the authenticity back, bring the feeling of hey, this feels like a normal person I'm talking to or a nice brand just based out of Sydney, which we are. And that kind of applies. We do a lot of that in Black Friday too. We'll have the big sale banner sale kind of message, but we'll also have those personal emails from the case, those plain text ones. We've been experimenting a lot with plain text recently. We've been experimenting with plain text with inline images that Nikesh has taken on her iPhone of herself, kind of like getting an email from a friend or from mom or dad or auntie or an uncle. So doing that and the message that, you know, we put in that is genuinely authentic. We don't, you know, make up marketing messages for it. We'll just tell the customer about what's happening or maybe what our challenges are or what we're looking forward to. And the customers love that. They love feeling like they're part of our journey too, because then they feel like well they're buying from a brand that respects their time, value and money. Yeah. Know? And that's that's amazing because that's the thing. It still brings that true personalization to life. And as we look at 2026, what are some of the things you are most excited about as we prepare for the new year? There's some big partners that we're going to be working with. I won't mention who yet, but that's going to be really exciting working with new, other brands to kind of co create new products that hopefully our customers are going to enjoy. We're gonna be delving into supplies a lot more. Now there's some big gaps in the craft market for really strong supplies of yarn, threads, and other supplies. And we'll be looking into that as well, especially as our customer base, they're asking for more from us. They want more kits, but they also want more just general craft stuff in their lives. And that's great. And we love that. And so we're experimenting a lot more with different types of craft user that have different needs. I think we very much started in this. We're attracting a kind of customer that wants a kit. Now we're looking at other types of customers as well within that. And last question from me is: there's still brands that haven't fully adopted this multi channel strategy. Is there any advice you will give them as they think of expanding into SMS, into MMS and bringing that journey into their email strategy as well? Is there any advice you can share? Yeah, it's you just have to go for it. SMS, there's some hesitation that SMS will feel spammy or too in the face of the customer. And I think there is merit to that argument. But at the same time, again, we're in a very noisy world with a lot of messaging, and it's a brilliant way of getting in front of your customer in a way that's just really easy. And a customer is pretty much 99% of the time gonna check that message. So it's great to communicate those kind of things with customers. And remembering that, you know, not all customers are on Facebook. Not all customers are on Instagram. Not all customers are on emails or check emails. Know, like, I love checking my emails but I know people who'll just let their inboxes flow to, you know, 20,000 emails sitting there. But, you know, SMS is then a new channel to attract a new type of customer that does respond well to that. And I think by being on as many touch points as possible in today's brand ecosystem or give the customer that holistic experience for your brand. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Nikos. I absolutely love learning more about the brand. I'm excited to see these BFCM campaigns come to life and also what 2026 brings for us. I'm excited too. Thanks.