Mad Rabbit’s 4,500+ ambassadors Increased the Brand’s Monthly Revenue by 3X

OVERVIEW

Mad Rabbit is a fast-growing startup with 750,000+ loyal customers and big growth goals on the horizon. Almost half of all millennials and Gen Z Americans have at least one tattoo, and Mad Rabbit is frequently their go-to choice for tattoo care products since they are the first cosmetics company to truly focus on skincare for every stage of the tattoo journey – from right after getting inked at the studio, to long-term maintenance.

Mad Rabbit started its ambassador program in 2021 as a way to encourage their brand fans to share their positive personal experience with the brand to help build awareness and drive new customer referrals. Similar to their unique customer base, The Mad Rabbit ambassador community is composed of like-minded 25-44 year olds looking to engage with each other and authentically spread their love for the brand.

PROBLEM

 “Advertising online has become more and more difficult and is getting less and less of a return. And a big part of what you’ve done is your own content creation,” said Mark Cuban on the episode where MadRabbit was featured on SharkTank.

Before working with SocialLadder, Mad Rabbit recognized the positive impact of the ambassador community, but found it difficult to manage its ambassador program in a meaningful or scalable way. Their affiliate link tracking platform Refersion did not fully integrate into their site and lacked the ability to create social challenges + experiences for their ambassadors and there were no communication / community tools built in. 

As a result, the marketing team had to do additional manual work which limited the amount of time they could focus on connecting and engaging with their community. 

Additionally, due to the platform’s limitations, the marketing team had limited insight into the overall performance of ambassadors – for example, there was no way to confirm whether ambassadors were posting on their social platforms or the value of the content that was created and shared. This made it difficult for MadRabbit to scale or measure ROI for this marketing channel. 

But with a team of loyal ambassadors, they knew they needed to double down on this channel – which is why they chose to switch to SocialLadder–a platform that could: 

• Host a variety of social challenges that ambassadors could complete
• Simplify communication with their fans
• Automate steps of the ambassador management and compensation/payment process
• Boost social engagement
• Measure ROI for both referrals and earned media value (EMV) from ambassador created content
• Scale their ambassador community without hiring more full time program managers

SOLUTION 

Mad Rabbit was able to quickly migrate its existing ambassadors and simultaneously launch an “apply to be an ambassador” page powered by SocialLadder that is integrated into their Shopify customer portal/website. 

“The SocialLadder Implementation Team was proactive with Mad Rabbit’s pre-launch which helped us prevent any possible technical challenges, like we had seen in our former platform. Post Launch, SocialLadder’s Account Management team has been amazing with their hands on recommendations and expert advice to ensure ongoing success and support.” Erin Murray, Senior Vice President of Marketing. 

In addition to a gamified ambassador experience SocialLadder’s communication features such as SMS ambassador outreach has helped the Mad Rabbit team increase engagement. Now, instead of spending time on manually tracking and the tactical elements of their program, the marketing team can focus on ambassador relationships, customer acquisition and retention, and forecast future customer acquisition costs (CAC).

RESULTS

The SocialLadder platform lies at the epicenter of Mad Rabbit’s Ambassador strategy – making it a crucial part of their marketing strategy.  Since partnering with SocialLadder, Mad Rabbit has been able to create efficiencies so they can effectively manage its entire 4,500+ member ambassador community with a single person. 

Additionally:

• They’ve successfully recruited and engaged ambassadors on social platforms such as TikTok
• Increased the amount of organic user generated content they receive from their ambassador community
• Utilized their ambassador community to promote their launch in over 1200 GNC retail locations on social media

Like many DTC brands, Mad Rabbit had aggressive growth goals, and unlike many ambassador programs that are solely measured on community engagement and brand awareness, their team  is measuring the success by looking at revenue generated per ambassador each month, average cart size of a referred customer, and how many ambassadors are driving sales. Even with these revenue focused goals in place – the marketing team is out performing their projections.

Since launch they have :

• Increased the size of their ambassador team by 1.7X
• Revenue per month has grown 3X 
• The average order increased from 1.7 units to 2 units as a direct impact of ambassadors to sales
• Average order value went up 50% 
• A new customer referred to by an ambassador has a higher checkout than a normal check out value 

SocialLadder gave Mad Rabbit the ability to be more strategic and scale quickly across multiple segments – including customer loyalty and industry professionals. Over the next year, the marketing plans to expand their ambassador program to include its most loyal brand fans and develop a ”PRO” community with over 100 selected tattoo artists. 

TESTIMONIALS

“SocialLadder was the best fit for the company because it allowed us to build in the sales opportunity for ambassadors to earn commission but also a way to socialize the experience. It envelopes all social platforms and creates more diverse content. The synergy between the social component and the sales management creates a platform where everything is one place in an equal lens”

-Erin Murray, Senior Vice President of Marketing