Clothing The Gaps is an Aboriginal social enterprise and certified B Corp with roots in Wurundjeri Country, Australia. Offering everything from t-shirts to tote bags, they encourage their customers to “wear their values on their tee” and spark conversations that support First Nations justice.
But while Clothing The Gaps had built a strong community of supporters, they struggled to reach people effectively. Relying on email newsletters and daily social media posts wasn’t delivering the engagement they needed.
“We’d been using email marketing for a long time, and we were posting to social every day, but we weren’t seeing those cut-through and open rates that we were looking for,” said Laura Thompson, Gunditjmara woman and CEO at Clothing The Gaps.
That’s when Laura started looking at SMS to connect instantly with their community. Inspired by her own engagement with her favourite brands, she needed a solution that would support new paths of communication with customers.
Working with Sinch for smart campaigns
Clothing The Gaps wanted more than just a digital customer communications platform. They needed support and strategy from a partner who could help them get it right the first time. They knew that with Sinch, they’d get more than just technical support to send SMS messages – they’d get insight on the best ways to reach their audience.
That support came from Cameron Kellaghan-Tasker from Sinch, who worked closely with Laura and her team to make SMS a core part of their communications.
“We were able to work with Laura and Clothing The Gaps to implement a strategy that made sense for their customer base – being able to target them at the source using SMS,” Cameron said.
With Sinch’s help, Clothing The Gaps started developing smart, segmented campaigns that complemented email and social. For Black Friday, instead of sending messages to their entire list, they targeted their most engaged customers first and rolled out messages in phases.
“I remember thinking for Black Friday that we were just going to send a blast text message to everyone,” Laura said. “But with the support of Cam, we actually targeted our highly engaged audience first… and it paid off.”
They saw the results immediately. Campaign ROI reached an astounding 2000 per cent, with traffic to their Shopify site spiking the moment messages went out. Thousands of people were flocking to the website – something they had never seen with email marketing alone.
Support every step of the way
After seeing the boost in Black Friday sales, Clothing The Gaps and Sinch quickly developed a broader communications strategy and trusted partnership. Sinch even supports Clothing The Gaps by looking over text message drafts before they’re sent out, which gives the company plenty of peace of mind that what they’re sending will resonate.
Beyond retail campaigns, Clothing The Gaps has started using SMS to power its advocacy work. In addition to using SMS to talk about sales, they send messages around National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee (Naidoc) Week and during other points of the year when they’re campaigning for different actions or petitions that need to be signed.
The team is already planning for the holidays, with Sinch helping them strategise for Black Friday promotions and exploring how SMS can support their advocacy campaigns around January 26 and other key dates.
For both Clothing The Gaps and Sinch, the relationship goes beyond technology, thanks to a shared purpose and a vision of long-term growth. As Cameron said, “Not only is it about generating really positive returns in the campaign sense, but it’s also about spreading a really important message.”
