Sunscreen brand Supergoop has been sending SMS messages with text and email marketing platform Attentive since 2018. At the time, texting felt like a “much more untapped opportunity” for brands, Kim Nguyen, senior director of DTC and CRM at Supergoop, told us.

But the rapid adoption of SMS marketing in the last few years has changed the game, even for brands that have long been using the channel.

“Now SMS actually feels like such a table stakes core marketing channel,” Nguyen said. “How do we make sure that we’re continuing to cut through the noise?”

For brands like Supergoop, texting can come with big benefits. In the last year, the brand has seen 167% growth in subscribers YoY, an 11.5% conversion rate on one-time texts, and a 29x ROI, the company said; around a quarter of the brand’s sales last year came from text and email via last-click attribution, Nguyen said.

Nguyen said she attributes the sales success to Supergoop’s creative style and its audience segmentation tactics on the back end, both of which can allow the brand to break through.

Should have been an email?

When it comes to texting, Nguyen feels strongly about what doesn’t work. That can include a lack of message variation, along with too many messages overall.

“We’re now starting to see an avalanche of blind marketing where there isn’t much differentiation between what’s in an email and an SMS message,” she said.

Email inboxes can function like a search engine for consumers looking for deals, Nguyen said, while SMS inboxes can feel more personal. Because of the way texts are displayed, the number of messages a brand sends can also be more obvious to a consumer. “The SMS inbox, while valuable, is more sensitive than the email inbox,” she said.

In Nguyen’s view, a good brand text message should be more conversational and abbreviated than an email message, which is better suited for more editorial content. Case in point: one of Supergoop’s top-performing messages last year was a short quip on the solar eclipse to promote the brand’s SPF powder with the tagline, “Total eclipse of the part.”

“We’re really trying to make sure it’s not just the same copy-paste message, but there is a little bit of humor and there is something that’s tied to immediacy,” Nguyen said. “You might not see an email in your inbox for days or weeks, but you are likely going to see that SMS in real time.”

Conversations with friends brands

Nguyen said the Supergoop marketing team tries to balance the types of texts it sends customers, including product reminders, puns, and promos, but she acknowledged that some people only opt in to brand text messages for the deals. For that reason, the brand provides an option to “snooze” any nonpromo messaging.

But plenty of customers seem happy to receive all kinds of Supergoop messaging: only around 10% of subscribers have hit snooze so far, she said.

Supergoop takes those types of insights to build personalized customer profiles based on the type of messaging they like to receive and when, Nguyen said. That data is then stored alongside information about the customer’s email preferences and is used for coordinated messaging sends, Nguyen said.

“That’s a factor that’s been really driving a lot of our program success,” she said.

Before a brand can build profiles, however, it needs customers to sign up in the first place. Supergoop has encouraged SMS sign-ups with product teasers and at in-person events, but Nguyen said the most effective always-on approach has been providing welcome offers on the brand’s website if customers sign up with their email addresses and phone numbers.

In general, she said, SMS has allowed Supergoop to better engage with “mid- to lower-funnel shoppers” more effectively. And with summer around the corner, Nguyen said the brand plans to retarget customers in additional ways, like replenishment reminders to stock up on sunscreen they’ve previously purchased.

As Supergoop’s competition continues to heat up—the global sun-protection market is projected to generate $12.2 billion in revenue in 2025, according to Statista Market Insights—Nguyen said it’s even more important to engage with customers in a personal way.

“What is such a differentiator is the reputation and the voice of the brand and making sure that we carry those through in everything we do,” she said.