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Chubbies revamps mobile messaging to effectively engage male shoppers

Online men?s shorts retailer Chubbies recently saw a 16 percent improvement in engagement after introducing new mobile messaging tactics through its application, leveraging effective timing and comedic content to target its audience. 

Users of the Chubbies?s mobile app were happily surprised to start receiving push-notifications that strayed away from the traditional marketing ploy. Rather than sharing reminders to purchase its products, consumers received notifications with numerous comedy references in an attempt to make them laugh. 

"Kahuna?s advanced tools for optimization made it easy to segment users and test the best message copy iterations before sending it out in real-time," said Preston Rutherford, Chubbies co-founder and head of mobile, website and email marketing. "Giving users a personalized experience has been critically important in maintaining the Chubbies brand in the eye of their users.  

"These optimization capabilities, paired with the humorous Chubbies brand voice are what enabled a 16 percent improvement in engagement on an already engaged user base and an 86 percent improvement in goal achievement," he said. "Chubbies' goal was to make users as happy as possible to have the Chubbies iPhone app. 

"They used messaging to bring their audience bite-sized capsules of the weekend to their day to day Over time, messages will add up and lead them to think about what they need for the weekend, pop open the app, and browse and buy items. It drives the experience and keeps Chubbies top of mind for its user base, and it will continue to drive revenue and engagement."

Kahuna is the developer Chubbie's mobile push-notification platform. 

Humor and consumers
Brands that play to the humorous side of consumers can see a significant increase in engagement and brand sentiment, as seen by Chubbies. The shorts manufacturer increased improvement with conversation rate goals by 86 percent with its new messages. 

Customers who opted in for Chubbies?s notifications received messages such as ?Utah, get me two,? a popular reference to the film Point Break that is popular with young male consumers. The brand also sent out a coded message saying let?s party, but in the language game Pig Latin, in which individuals scramble the word in a specific pattern and add extra syllables. 


Consumers value when a brand takes the time out to joke around with them or seem more human. Overly marketed content becomes a nuisance and can be easily overlooked. 


Mobile devices are highly personal for consumers, and it can be easy for a user to disengage with a brand. Introducing content that they want to be apart of it vital to an apps performance. 

Mobile app messages
Movie rental service Redbox introduced a multitude of notifications through its mobile application to better engage users as well, with push notifications accounting for 20 percent of its Text Club opt-ins during the first quarter of 2015 (see more). 

Marketers have been slow to embrace in-app messaging for fear of creating a spam-like experience and because of the priority put on drawing in new users, potentially missing out on a key strategy for boosting and maintaining engagement as a result (see more). 

"Chubbies will continue to use mobile as a primary channel to build authentic relationships that pave the way to conversions through long-term engagement," Mr. Rutherford said. "They will also use the data collected on mobile to inform communications on other channels to make sure each each interaction is consistent and appropriately personalized."

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer