Learn how you can Unlock Limitless Customer Lifetime Value with CleverTap’s All-in-One Customer Engagement Platform.
Shopping has traditionally been a social activity — you go out with friends and get their opinion on the stuff you want to buy. However, online shopping has taken away the social aspect from shopping and turned it into a solitary exercise. With social commerce, that’s all changing.
Today, over 70% of shoppers search for products they need to buy on Instagram*. This trend is strong especially with millennials and Gen Z. Another notable trend is streetwear’s steady move into mainstream fashion. According to global research and advisory firm Gartner, streetwear is a rising industry with an estimated value of over $309 billion*.
Streetwear heads often used to shop from Facebook groups, Instagram pages, or subreddits dedicated to this subculture. However, with streetwear becoming mainstream, a lot of these avenues became overcrowded, which hindered buying and selling. Understanding the need to improve the shopping experience for streetwear fans while providing them the relevant products and community, BUMP was born.
Based out of London, BUMP is a leading peer-to-peer marketplace for streetwear and offers its users the experience of social commerce. Streetwear happens to be a segment where a lot of reselling happens, and BUMP facilitates the sale of rare vintage products alongside new releases.
Founded in 2016 by Jack Ryder and Sam Howarth, the startup now has a database of over 2 million users and features limited-edition streetwear from sought-after brands including Supreme, Yeezy, Palace, and Kith. BUMP was also a part of Y Combinator in 2018 and has recently received Series A funding from leading investors including Kleiner Perkins and e.ventures.
Wanting to know more about how they redefine shopping for an entire generation, we talked with Jake Mayell, Digital Marketing Director at BUMP.
What makes BUMP stand apart from other streetwear shopping avenues is that the platform places a lot of emphasis on buyer protection. Users can see how sellers are verified, where they are located, and their reliability. Equipped with a team of passionate streetwear experts, BUMP offers authentication on both new and used items.
Sellers ship the items to BUMP’s warehouses where they are examined for authenticity and closeness to seller description on the website. Once verified, the payment from the buyer reaches the seller and the product reaches the buyer. This process ensures that only genuine products reach the buyers from the platform, ruling out any chance of scams. Also, BUMP has teamed up with PayPal to protect users from counterfeit items.
As the sole person in charge of all marketing activities, Jake Mayell was scouting for a tool that could help BUMP execute CRM campaigns with ease. After receiving many recommendations from peers and technology partners, he shortlisted a few SaaS companies including CleverTap.
Many of the companies on the list were servicing billion-dollar companies and were executing massive campaigns. However, Jake was quite particular about choosing a company with a high-quality product and exceptional customer service. By the time our team had completed the demo, Jake realized that he’d found a perfect match with CleverTap.
Streetwear is a fast-moving fashion segment. With releases being dropped at lightning speed, communication needs to be relevant, timely, and contextual. Because they didn’t have the ability to segment their user base, BUMP previously sent user a welcome email, a follow-up email, and sporadic push notification campaigns.
Now they use RFM Analysis (recency, frequency, and monetary value) to segment their users and orchestrate customized campaigns and journeys for individual segments.
In the streetwear community, people are more likely to shop across brands, unlike luxury fashion. It was important for them to capitalize on this trend and identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling using intent-based targeting. For instance, if a release for Yeezy is approaching, it makes business sense to notify Supreme shoppers as well.
This method has worked quite well for BUMP: the average CTR (click-through rate) for their campaigns has been 8% against the industry benchmark of 1.8%. Another helpful feature is the ability to move users between campaigns, which have helped them turn at least 30,000 users at risk of churn back into active users.
The average app launch per month for BUMP is now 40% higher than the industry average. Another area where CleverTap has made a difference is in preventing uninstalls. The industry benchmark for the uninstall rate in the ecommerce industry is 42% — BUMP’s is a mere 11%.
While BUMP has been primarily an app-based product, the social commerce platform has recently witnessed a rise in the number of newly acquired users accessing the website. Jake considers it important to integrate CleverTap into the guest checkout process and improve the website shopping experience. Another actionable item is to incorporate web notifications for purchases made through the website.
BUMP also plans to focus on remarketing and create campaigns and journeys to increase conversions. Currently, 95% of conversions are from the app and 5% are from the website. By incorporating these changes, Jake feels that the ratio could become 50:50, and more users can be acquired and retained.
We are certain that BUMP has a huge opportunity to grow in terms of mindshare and market share as it works on strengthening customer experience on its website. We are proud to have partnered with them in their mission to redefine shopping for Gen Z.
