Bombas (Email)

🎉 Offer pop-up 

Bombas uses a two-stage signup on mobile that gives you a great reason to sign up. 20% is significant when most brands offer 10-15%. 

Smartly, Bombas tells the subscriber the discount has already been applied, pre-framing them for their journey to become a customer.

Bombas is comfortable with discounting, likely because the cost of goods sold for socks is on the lower side, but by offering a steep discount on the first touch, you teach the customer to expect discounts throughout their lifecycle. 


Which gives email subscribers another reason to subscribe on SMS ♻️


💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Improve the copy. It’s super repetitive and mentions 20% off three times on the first screen in a way that seems lazy. However, maybe because 20% is significantly higher than customers are used to, it’s worth repeating as the main reason you’d sign up.
  • Test some images. According to a cross-analysis by Klaviyo, pop-ups that have imagery perform 40% better on average! 
  • Test a $ off discount instead of %. Those tend to convert better.
  • Does the offer really need to be 20%? Or could they go lower and still convert? Another good thing to test. 


👋 Welcome email 1

The first email in Bombas’ welcome series is solid and conversion-focused. Your code is delivered first, followed by their top product bundles categorized by gender.



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Make the CTA stand out. The primary Shop Now CTA has got to pop. Right now, it’s pretty small and hard to see, so it doesn’t catch your eye as a CTA should. 
  • Think about future campaigns. By getting the user to select their gender, Bombas can tag this and later send emails with better customization to improve conversion.
  • Increase AOV. Bombas smartly chooses to promote packs vs. individual products for higher AOV.  
  • Consider your brand. Note how the product page draws your eye down to the bright blue Bombas Pledge and arrow-shaped logo centered at the bottom. The pledge is genius because it makes customers feel good about their purchase. This is great visual brand building!  


🛒  Abandon cart sequence

Three and a half hours after we bounced from our first purchase, we received Bombas’ Abandon Cart Sequence. 

This seems slightly delayed as the normal timing is 1-2 hours for the first abandoned cart email.

This one came with a cheeky, alliterative title. 

Having identified ourselves as male through this sequence, it’s interesting to note that Bombas shows imagery of women to entice us back to the purchase. We doubt this is accidental.


Who doesn’t like to be close and comfortable?🤷‍♂️


🙋‍♀️ Welcome email 2: 

The second email in Bombas’ welcome sequence came two days after the purchase and focuses heavily on their replacement policy, which is positioned cleverly as “sock coverage.”

More than just offering a strong replacement policy, Bombas helps customers visualize its value by laying out hypothetical issues that customers can either relate to or be amused by. 



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Use humor. This email makes a strong play for brand affinity and LTV with both value and humor.
  • Include testimonials. After the graphic, Bombas continues the joke about alien abductions. It’s funny, but with this real estate, we’d rather see a testimonial from a professional spaghetti eater who’s taken advantage of the coverage.
  • Keep it simple. It’s quite a busy email, with at least five distinct font types. This could be part of the fun approach, but it could be tightened up. 
  • Don’t forget CTAs. The guarantee graphic is strong but could benefit from a CTA within that section. 


🧐 Post-purchase 1 / buyer’s campaign 

We couldn’t quite figure out if the next few emails were part of their automated post-purchase flow or separate holiday campaigns (notice the time-sensitive deals, which could be dynamic content in an automated flow). 


Either way, they’re using the classic post-purchase email technique: drive a second purchase with another discount.



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Timing matters. Sending a conversion-focused campaign one day after getting your first package is a little aggressive. We’d recommend waiting a few days to a week for shoppers to get a feel for their products. 
  • Make the offer clear. The deal structure here is confusing. There’s 20% off everything, and then 20% off 7 or more pairs—both with different codes. It’s almost always best to focus on one offer per email.


👊 Post-purchase 2 / buyer’s campaign 

Another conversion-focused email comes next, this one with many different offers. 



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Less is more. The deal structure is confusing. There are three emphasized percentages and five total percentage offers on this one email and five CTAs… There’s WAY too much going on here. 
  • Keep font sizes consistent. The hierarchy of font sizes isn’t ideal from a design perspective. 
  • Be clever with your language. We love the fun “Deck the Heels” CTA!
  • Simple wins. Remove half the content and consolidate deals to make it simpler. Also, make the 15% off holiday socks a completely separate campaign. 


🧦 Post-purchase 3 / buyer’s campaign 

We’re not sure how else to say it… The next email is a total flop, in our humble opinion. 😬



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Always consider design. This email starts with a triple banner and goes straight into a very busy infographic. The wavy shapes are also not aligned, and things just look messy. 
  • Put important info up top. “Get Your Bombas by 12/24” should be towards the top of the email, not at the very end. That’s critical information a shopper should know around the holidays, and many people will miss it where it is. 


🤘 Post-purchase 4 / buyer’s campaign 

We get thrown a bit of a curveball with the next email, which has a much simpler look. Maybe they’re testing text-based design, but it’s a little confusing given the previous emails. 😕


Regardless, this email might have done pretty well for them since it’s easier to understand!



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Don’t go for overkill. Another offer? Can they really test all these offers?
  • Share your shipping. Wait, what? Free 2-day shipping? Where was that offer in the other emails? That would have been nice to know! 


🖐 Post-purchase 5 

Aaaand finally, you get to learn a little bit about the mission behind the brand. If you made it past the barrage of offers and discounts, that is… 🙈



💡 Pro Tips from Pilothouse:

  • Keep copy concise. There’s a loooot of copy in this email. It’s great social proof, but there’s way too much.
  • Color consistency matters. The colors used here are inconsistent with the brand or previous emails. 
  • Make your CTA prominent. It’s hard to know the purpose of this email because they’ve hidden the CTA at the bottom.


🔎 Further observations and suggestions

Well folks, if you learned one thing today, it’s that even the biggest brands don’t always nail it on every channel. 🤷

Overall, Bombas’ emails fell flat in our inboxes. 


However, there’s plenty this already successful brand can do to improve their email marketing and see massive gains:

  • Spice up their copy to bring more life and personality to the brand 
  • Maintain consistency in branding and design throughout their emails 
  • Be more strategic about the order of their emails and flows 
  • Highlight fewer offers in a single email (ideally one) 
  • Enhance the size and placement of CTAs across the board 
  • Focus more on their brand mission of giving back and do it earlier.


Okay DTC’ers, that’s all for now… 😉 


👋Stay tuned for Part 3 of our brand breakdown on Bombas

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