How email capture helped Little Words Project connect omnichannel data and personalize customer interactions

As a victim of bullying in college, Adriana Carrig discovered through painful personal experience that words matter. In order to turn her pain into hope for others, she made bracelets with affirmative words and phrases for herself and her sorority sisters. Soon her hobby grew into a much larger movement when she founded Little Words Project.

Eleven years and millions of bracelets later, Little Words Project is creating memorable moments and building kind communities around the country. Two years after the digital-native brand branched out into retail with their flagship store on Bleeker Street in New York City, Little Words Project now has 14 locations.

With community and connection such important elements of the brand, the company sought to remove friction in collecting customer emails so they could build stronger, long-term relationships with their in-store customers. Shopify POS, with its email capture at checkout feature, helped make this process significantly easier.

Since adopting email capture at checkout, Little Words Project has:

• Increased in-store email capture rates by over 20% on average, with rates increasing by up to 95% at multiple locations
• Increased percentage of POS orders with a customer email added by 21% across all stores
• Increased percentage of POS orders with a customer email added and marketing opt-in by 33% across all stores
• Enabled more targeted and effective marketing campaigns by integrating collected emails into data ecosystem
• Improved in-store customer service by enabling hands-free email capture for retail staff

The Challenge: One seamless customer experience, online and IRL

In just two years, Little Words Project has expanded their retail footprint rapidly, opening 14 locations across the US. “It’s an amazing feat to have so many stores open so quickly,” says Martin Hogan, Director of Stores at Little Words Project. “And Shopify is a big part of that effort because it helps make things as simple as possible at a store level.”

But for omnichannel businesses like Little Words Project, customer data is much easier to capture online than in-store since asking for a customer’s name and email can add friction at checkout. Many brands opt out of gathering this data entirely, but they miss out on having visibility into their retail buyers and thus can’t re-engage them, understand their omnichannel shopping behavior, or personalize marketing to them. Sam Sisca, VP of Retail at Little Words Project, emphasizes the value of overcoming in-store email capture challenges, saying, “By getting customers’ emails into the Little Words Project ecosystems, customers are not then just shopping at our store. They're also shopping online and having an omnichannel experience.”

The beading table is a keystone in-store experience for the brand and a great example of why optimizing the email capture process is important to the Little Words Project. Customers can make appointments to sit with in-store representatives, or “Beadtenders,” for help creating bracelets. Attending to customers as they create their bracelets is core to the Little Words Project experience, and Beadtenders don’t have a lot of time to spare for cumbersome email capture processes. “Being a Beadtender requires empathy and your complete attention,” Martin says. “One moment you’ll be with someone celebrating something fun and two seconds later helping someone going through a hard time. It’s a uniquely demanding job.”

With all of these responsibilities, Little Words Project’s Beadtenders and other in-store employees needed an email capture process that would help them keep focused on helping their customers and ensure a smooth, stress-free interaction.

The Solution: Shopify POS enhances in-store interactions

Little Words Project built their business on Shopify and is always interested in taking advantage of the platform’s latest innovations. When they learned about the email capture at checkout feature and its integration with Shop Pay, they began encouraging retail staff to start using it.

With email capture at checkout, Shopify POS helps Little Words Project connect with over 150 million customers on the Shop Pay network. A customer will complete their payment on a Shopify card reader, and if that transaction is matched to a Shop Pay user, the email on their account is automatically surfaced at checkout. From there, customers are given the option to receive their receipt digitally and opt in to receiving marketing communications with a single tap. Customers who aren’t yet on Shop can quickly enter their email address to receive a digital receipt and opt in to marketing.

Email capture also helps the team build a more comprehensive dashboard about their customers and sales data across store locations. “Email capture is a recent dashboard that we've added, and we pull the information from Shopify,” says Sam. “This email data is flowing into our marketing programs and the larger Little Words Project ecosystem. So customers are getting our promotional emails and announcements about new launches and events coming up at stores close to them.”

Through their retail CRM solution Endear, which is integrated with Shopify, the team can also personalize their communications. “If you've had a great experience at our beading table or if you tell us a special story, we can follow up with you,” Sam says.

As for the Beadtenders, email capture is helping keep in-store work hands-free. “If our staff is busy, having Shopify automatically handle email capture gives them the chance to finish tying a bracelet that somebody just made. It gives them more freedom and helps mitigate errors that can create friction in the interaction with a customer,” Martin says.

The Results: Stringing together data and community connections

Email capture at checkout helped Little Words Project better connect customer data across channels, free up staff time to focus on enhancing the in-store customer experience, improve operational efficiency, and better personalize their marketing messages.

“After integrating email capture, we gave our store teams an annual goal for email conversion by employee,” says Sam. “We’ve seen most of their email conversion rates increase by at least 20% and, in some cases, up to 95%. Shopify had a lot to do with this because the customer is able to quickly put in their information,” she says.

Now, the team is looking forward to expanding and strengthening their community to bring more traffic and engagement into their stores and ultimately drive sales. “We’re using data we’re getting from Shopify to attract customers near particular stores for exclusive beading experiences and appreciation events,” says Martin. Email capture at checkout has also enabled the team to optimize their loyalty program. “Our loyalty program is connected to Shopify, so you’re automatically signed up and can start earning points once your email is in,” says Sam.

As the team continues to expand the brand’s retail footprint, seamless email capture and data visibility help them remain true to Adriana’s founding mission for the company. “We're all about kindness and passing it on,” Sam says, “And making sure everyone who needs to hear words of affirmation and feel connected to a supportive community has that chance.” With Shopify, Little Words Project is amplifying their message, reaching more hearts, and growing their community every day.