BlendJet Migrated ‘Kicking & Screaming,’ Then Generated $2.8M via SMS in 3 Months

Founded in 2017 out of trauma, healing, and romance, BlendJet hardly needs an introduction. More than makers of the world’s fastest-growing portable kitchen appliance, the brand exists to help people live longer, healthier lives.

And for good reason.

After suffering a traumatic brain injury, BlendJet’s co-founder and CEO Ryan Pamplin became laser-focused on his own health. Vegan cooking and nutrient-rich smoothies became favorite pastimes with his girlfriend, Kathryn O’Malley (now wife and VP of CX).

Together with John Zheng — an old friend Ryan had reconnected with in the wake of his recovery — BlendJet was born: The first electric blender that could make clump-free shakes or smoothies untethered from cords.

Today, the brand is sold in +30k retail stores, boasts millions of customers in 38 countries, and holds over 40 patents.

So, what brought BlendJet to Recart SMS?

The Problem of ‘Fake Growth’

Unlike most migration stories, BlendJet didn’t come to Recart with a problem. At least, not one it felt.

“Honestly, I didn’t want to switch,” recalls Pamplin, “but I trust Soma [Recart’s CEO], and they’d done good by us in the past. Facebook Messenger marketing was very valuable for a long time.”

Devoid of pain, there was, however, a suspicion — a lingering doubt surrounding its previous platform’s return on investment (ROI).

Why? Because attribution had been set to that platform’s default window: 1-day “view” + 30-day click. Given that open rates can’t be measured for text messages, every sale to a customer who’d received an SMS was attributed to SMS for 24 hours … and the same inflation was applied for 30 days to anyone who’d clicked.

As Colleen Johnson, BlendJet’s VP of Marketing, explains: “When we onboarded with Recart, they warned us our numbers were going to go down and look bad. We didn’t care. We just wanted it to be accurate.”

The Solution

BlendJet onboarded to Recart SMS in September of 2022. With the holidays fast approaching, it set its sights on three strategies to prove Recart’s value.

Accelerating New SMS Subscriptions

In conjunction with its long-time agency, Hustler Marketing, BlendJet had strong desktop conversion rates (CVR) for email opt-ins. Even on mobile, email’s CVR sat just north of 7.1%.

Mobile SMS conversions, on the other hand, saw a sharp decline to 1.7%.

BlendJet’s first step was to aggressively test its current popup — a responsive template used for both desktop and mobile (with phone number entry for SMS subscriptions) — against Recart’s mobile-only direct-to-text version.

The other change was adding a “minimized” view for Recart’s popups when anyone closed the form without completing it. Essentially, a small call-to-action in the bottom left of the screen.

Immediately, the mobile-specific version began outperforming its responsive counterpart. As traffic picked up into the holidays — and purchase intent with it — so too did the new popup’s lead in email and SMS capture.

Against the original 7.1% CVR for email, Recart’s popup lifted conversions +94% to 13.8%. For SMS, the gain was even more substantial. From 1.7% to 4.7%, an increase of +176%.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

In mid-December, BlendJet launched a second experiment — this time with a single click SMS opt-in that preloaded the same confirmation text into a visitor’s phone … simply by submitting their email.

Improving High-Performing Flows

BlendJet’s next order of business surrounded turning list members into paying customers.

Though often framed as a “retention” tool, the teams at Hustler and Recart implemented a robust SMS welcome series: 5 messages across 11 days.

After a straightforward “Thank you” + discount, subscribers were treated to a visually rich, social-proof packed, and benefit-heavy series.

The welcome flow did its job, generating nearly $1.3M in revenue over the holidays at a 6.7% conversion rate.

Between each text, the team placed conditional splits that removed any shoppers with items in their carts or who had made a purchase.

The former were sent a one-hour-delayed cart abandonment SMS, while the latter (subscribers turned customers) entered two additional flows.

First, an order-confirmation sequence that included a link to curated recipes 10 days after purchase. And a 30-day-delayed CTA for BlendJet accessories.

Second, upon shipping, those same new customers went into a fulfillment sequence with an opening notification followed 10 days later by a “How To” YouTube tutorial:
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During its first three months, BlendJet’s automations drove $2.3M — including a towering 96% increase between November and December.

Send Higher-Volume Campaigns More Efficiently

To round out its text trifecta, BlendJet’s final strategy meant applying its marketing calendar to SMS campaigns. The goal? Ramp up send volume — number of text + frequency — while also maintaining returns.

“We have the overall vision for our brand and know what we want to see,” notes Daniella Reda, Brand Manager at BlendJet.

For texts in particular, the campaigns leaned hard into two levers.

First and foremost, a clean list. Immediately after onboarding, Recart initiated handshakes for all of BlendJet’s contacts to determine validity. Roughly 30% of the phone numbers were unreachable (e.g., landlines, no-call registry, etc.), inactive, or simply fake.

Second, with costly bloat removed, BlendJet kicked off multiple sends each week — mixing full-list campaigns, engaged-last-180-days, and hyper-segmented reminders.

Black Friday serves as a potent example of this strategy in action …

To start, the brand announced an “Early Bird” sale on Thanksgiving, followed by a morning-of text on Black Friday. Both, full-list sends; both, straightforward SMS (no images or emojis); and both with solid returns — 6.8X and 14X.

Mid-day Black Friday, it excluded recent purchasers — as well as anyone with items in their cart — and fired off an MMS of the same offer. This time yielding 8.9X.

Finally, to top the whole thing off, it sent everyone who’d engaged with previous messages but hadn’t yet purchased an end-of-day SMS centered on the same deal all over again.

Urgency plus relevancy producing 57X.

That combination carried over directly into Cyber Monday … then into December and beyond. As Reda puts it: “Paola and Jordan are absolutely phenomenal.”

The Results: ‘Real Growth’

During Q4, BlendJet …

• Captured 74.7k new SMS subscribers
• Increased email CVR +94% and SMS +335%
• And generated $2.8M in click-only SMS revenue

But that’s according to Recart’s data. What about “real growth, not fake growth”?

While BlendJet is planning holdout tests later this year, for now, it’s pleased to let Google Analytics last-click be the judge.

In total, the brand grew Q4 revenue +87% YoY — a truly impressive feat given ecommerce’s baseline. Over those same months, its SMS saw a +277% lift.

“Along with Hustler,” says Pamplin, “Recart deserves all the credit for taking our feedback and guidance, applying it, and hitting grand slams over and over again. Like absurd year-over-year improvement in every metric that matters.”