How Cheeky Chickadee’s Winter Collections Turn Up The Heat (a Look at 2020 vs 2021 Campaign Tactics)

Cheeky Chickadee is a children’s clothing and swimwear company based out of Sydney, Australia. They specialise in bright, fun, hand-painted animal prints designed by founder, Connie, a mum of five. Their ethos is to “let kids be kids” and encourage children to have fun.

Cheeky Chickadee has built a loyal base of customers who love dressing their kids in unique prints and seeing what fun new designs Connie comes up with next.  Over the years, the Winter Drops in particular have been stand-out performers, with the release of winter styles highly anticipated by Cheeky’s customers. With this in mind, over the last two years we decided to use the anticipation of the Winter Collections to grow and nurture Cheeky’s customer base.  

In 2020, we saw an opportunity to reach out to potential customers in order to grow Cheeky’s newsletter list. We also identified an opportunity to give existing, highly engaged customers special treatment (keeping in mind that back then, Cheeky’s loyalty program didn’t exist). 

In 2021, we saw an opportunity to nurture existing subscribers, and use the hype around the Winter Collection to prompt them to opt-in to SMS marketing and the newly created loyalty program.

2020 Winter Drops

In 2020, Cheeky Chickadee launched their highly anticipated Winter Collection in two instalments. Knowing that in past years the Winter Collection was hugely successful, we decided to use the launch as a way of growing and nurturing Cheeky’s customers. 

To do this, we designed and launched a series of data capture forms onto Cheeky’s website using Justuno. The messaging of the forms prompted people to sign up (with their name and email address) to receive early access to the launch. The first form went up a week prior to Winter Drop 1, and was taken down right before early access went live. The same timing was used for the second set of desktop and mobile targeted forms for Winter Drop 2. 

Prior to the forms going up, we sent out a teaser campaign to give Cheeky members a sneak peak at what was coming. This hype tactic allowed us to create even more excitement around the upcoming collection. Plus, they were prompted to head over to the website to sign up via the popup to receive their exclusive early access. All regular data capture forms on Cheeky’s website were turned off, so that the early access popup would be the focus. 

Twenty four hours prior to Winter Drop 1 going live, an email campaign was sent out to those who signed up to receive early access. The email contained an exclusive link to access the drop, and these customers were prompted to shop the drop before it officially went live. Next, we sent out the official launch email to Cheeky’s newsletter list.

2021 Winter Drops

Cheeky Chickadee and its members are one big happy flock (read: family), so we saw an opportunity to give these existing members some special benefits.  For Cheeky’s 2021 Winter Collections, we wanted to do something different to the year prior, so we decided to take a risk. The risk we took was to not put up a Winter Drop-specific form encouraging new customers to sign up. We instead decided to offer early access only to those who were part of the loyalty program… and the risk paid off. 

To create hype surrounding Winter Drop 1, we sent existing Cheeky subscribers an email that announced when the drop was landing. While we didn’t want to give too much away, we gave Cheeky customers a sneak peak at new prints. We also told these customers that members of the Cheeky Flock (Cheeky Chickadee’s loyalty program) would receive early access. We included a prompt to sign up to the program, plus, we told customers to opt-in to SMS marketing to be alerted the moment their early access began.

To take it one step further, we decided to stagger the early access based on the customer’s level in the loyalty program – i.e. the higher the tier, the earlier the access. To create even more hype around the launch, Cheeky Chickadee locked their website for 24 hours prior to the launch. Yep, no one could make a purchase before the launch! We then gave Flock members a secret password with their early access email and SMS. 

The Winter drops in particular are always very popular, so we wanted loyalty members to gain first access as a way of saying thank you. Plus, with the Cheeky Flock being a brand new loyalty program, we felt this was a great way to show members how exciting being part of the program is.

2020 Winter Drops

As we anticipated, Cheeky Chickadee’s customers (plus new customers) were eager to sign up to receive early access to the Winter Drops. The desktop and mobile specific popups for Winter Drop 1 had an average engagement rate of 14.19% (where the industry standard for email opt-ins is 3-5% according to Justuno) and Drop 2 wasn’t far behind at 12.97%.  A total of 1,268 people signed up for early access to drop 1, and a further 1,031 signed up for drop 2. 

These campaigns ended up out-performing Cheeky’s 2020 Black Friday sale campaigns… so you might call it a success!

2021 Winter Drops

With the launch of the Cheeky Flock loyalty program, we expected engagement with the Winter collection to be high among members. We were pleasantly surprised with the results. For both Winter Drop 1 and Winter Drop 2, the open rate, click rate, and AOV of each campaign consistently increased as the loyalty status got higher. The AOV from the entry tier (Cheeky Chickadee) to the top loyalty tier (Cheeky Family) increased by a whopping 30.66% for Drop 1. For Winter Drop 2, the AOV increased again to 32.80% from Cheeky Chickadee to Cheeky Family.