About the Brand

INH Hair is all about building a community that champions self-expression

INH stands for Insert Name Here. And that’s because the brand believes that becoming who you want to be starts with how you express yourself. INH’s wide range of products—from extensions, hair color, and hot tools to haircare products—are designed to make its customers feel great daily. 

The company is also really big on community. It has an engaged social following and a massive Facebook group, where fans share their hair styles, creative looks and experiences.

Recently, we sat down with the brand's Senior Marketing Manager, Lisa Passanisi, and its Retention Specialist, Caitlin Ison. Together, the marketing duo gave us all the details on how a Tapcart mobile app helps INH Hair stand out in a crowded beauty space where every opportunity to engage with customers and build community counts.

‍

The Challenge 

INH Hair wanted an app that created a VIP CX for its returning customers

INH Hair knows that, at its core, the company is a mobile-first brand. Many of its customers were already shopping on their phones, so introducing an app, so long as it was great, seemed like the perfect way to offer those customers a seamless, frictionless VIP experience. 

Another reason to go all-in on an app? It’s an owned sales and marketing channel that INH can control 100%.

That means INH isn’t spending a fortune every time it wants to talk to customers… or wondering whether it can communicate with them at all. After all, some retention channels, such as SMS, may be unavailable to many international customers, restrict messages, or send them inconsistently.   

INH said that outside of email, its global customers weren’t getting any updates from the brand. But a Tapcart app solved the communication issues INH was having with third-party providers. That’s because as an owned channel, INH’s app allowed the brand to directly reach app customers via push notifications in the palm of their hands. And unlike SMS, there’s no extra cost. (See how Glamnetic ‍drives LTV through the magic of push notifications.)

An owned sales and marketing channel also means you don’t have to rely on social media algorithms to ensure your message will be seen. 

‍

The Solution

Tapcart built INH an app that’s frictionless and personalized

When the brand decided to build an app, INH and Tapcart focused on creating an exceptional experience for its best customers.

“The app is a great way to retain our best customers because it provides a VIP experience. App users are our #1 customers interested in all our products and love hair. We really try to create a community within the app to keep them coming back and feeling like they're part of the brand."
Caitlin Ison, Retention Specialist

It’s that level of customer intimacy that has helped INH Hair keep its best customers so close. After all, according to Caitlin, these are the same VIP customers who give you feedback on what they like, what they want to see, and what they want to do with your products.

In other words, app customers aren’t regular customers. They’re lifers. And the app experience not only reflects that but rewards it. These unique, app-only experiences attract more customers to the channel. 

INH Hair has made the app a hub of exclusivity with access to early product drops, seasonal giveaways, quizzes for color matching, hairstyles, extensions, and more. This personalization provides extra value, making it a VIP experience for the community — which is why we see higher AOV and LTV from app users. 

On top of that, the INH team promotes the app across its marketing channels and platforms like SMS and email to drive app downloads and turn more customers into app customers. 

“We definitely dedicate early access to our app for almost all our launches,” Caitlin said, “and that's something we lean on. The day before we launch is always like, hey, download our app. You get exclusive access, and obviously from there, we kind of have to think about, okay, they downloaded, but then how do we keep them?” 

Of course, INH retains them with a top-notch retention strategy, which includes keeping the app fast, fun, and engaging. And keeping a customer is more important than ever, especially as customer acquisition costs skyrocket. 

Still, if INH had to pick one time of year when moving customers over to the app mattered most, it’d pick the months before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Why? Tapcart’s data show that consumers are 40% more likely to download an app and opt into push notifications during Q4 than the rest of the year. The peak holiday season is the perfect time to start growing that app user base and push the subscriber list.

INH’s marketing strategy to set the brand up for BFCM success involves app exclusives in October. According to Lisa, the company calls this campaign “app trick-or-treating.” The team leverages games and rewards to incentivize customers to the app channel, where they’ll be reachable via push notifications as INH heads into the holiday season. (Need a BFCM game plan? We got you.) 

“In-app trick-or-treating has helped us in terms of sessions, engagement, and getting people excited to download the app, which is helpful as we go into Q4 to prep for BFCM. Everyone's inboxes are flooded and inundated. It's nice to have another kind of nudge for people.”
Lisa Passanisi, Senior Marketing Manager

‍

The Results

The app keeps customers engaged and excited through unique experiences, which boosts retention and LTV

With all that hard work to drive customers to the app, it’s no wonder that INH Hair gets hyper-specific about the performance of its push notifications. When Lisa and Caitlin look at metrics, they consider revenue per message, conversion rate, and average order value. Even if the company has more customers on an email list, it typically sees higher AOV and conversion on the app because that’s where its down-funnel customers shop.

Case in point: AOV is $120 on the app—but $100 on the online store.

“Even for myself, when I think about the apps I have on my phone, it's always the brands I engage with the most and the most excited for. And then that app typically becomes my main source of shopping for that brand.”
Lisa Passanisi, Senior Marketing Manager

Lisa also mentions the value of having an owned media channel where the brand can communicate with customers directly in the palms of their hands. What’s more, INH Hair can determine whether they’ve opened that push notification and taken action as a direct result, making every message smarter and more targeted than the one before.

But at the end of the day, no matter how much data a company sifts through or how many ways it crunches numbers, Lisa and Caitlin agree that when a brand prioritizes keeping customers engaged and excited, they’ll keep coming back for more.

“It’s all about thinking about the kind of products people would be interested in,” Caitlin said. “What kind of sales they'd want to see or even… It doesn't even have to be a sale or a promotion. It could be a game or something like that. We tend to treat our app audience differently compared to other funnels. They definitely get a unique experience.”

Find out how INH Hair and other top beauty brands — like Glamnetic and Dose of Colors — are breaking boundaries and sales records with Tapcart. Let's chat.