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Sarah & Sebastian

RETENTION + ENGINEERING + OMNICHANNEL · FINE JEWELLERY & PIERCING

Sarah & Sebastian

Service moments rewired into a retention engine

Unified

Customer view across retail, online and service

Step-change

Lifecycle programme depth

Building

Retention from service touchpoints

Multi-surface

Engagement across email, SMS and calendar

EngagementMulti-year partnership
IndustryFashion
DisciplinesRetention, Lifecycle, Engineering, Omnichannel, SMS, CRM Migration

Channel performance

Where the spend actually moved.

Lifecycle

Step-change

Programme depth

SMS

New revenue lane

Channel contribution

Omnichannel

Unified

In-store to online flow

Retention

Growing lift

Repeat behaviour

Overview

A fine jewellery and piercing house with a thriving retail footprint, a busy booking calendar and an online business that needed all three to behave as one. The opportunity wasn't to send more email. It was to wire the appointment system, the storefront and the lifecycle stack into a single customer view, so the service moments the brand was already creating could earn their keep across the whole relationship.

THE CHALLENGE

The stack was fragmented. A legacy email platform that didn't speak commerce, a booking system that lived in isolation, and a retail footprint generating data that never reached the lifecycle layer. Heavy transactional comms such as piercing reminders, aftercare guides and healing follow-ups were doing real work for the brand, but they sat outside the system that could build on them.

A brand redesign forced a template refresh across every touchpoint, which surfaced how brittle the underlying architecture had become. The team needed comms that matched the new identity, but more than that, they needed a system where in-store, online and service journeys finally behaved as one customer experience rather than three parallel ones.

Retention wasn't the problem on paper. The problem was that the systems couldn't see each other clearly enough to build on the work the brand was already doing well.

Sarah & Sebastian — case study photography

THE APPROACH

How the engagement was structured.

The first job was infrastructure. We built custom middleware to link the booking platform to the lifecycle stack, so every piercing appointment, aftercare moment and post-service touch became a trigger rather than a manual send. Bookings made in-store flowed through the same pipes as online activity. One customer, one timeline, regardless of where the relationship started.

We migrated the email programme onto a stack with native commerce integration, then rebuilt the template library to match the brand's redesigned identity. Transactional comms including appointment reminders, aftercare guides and healing check-ins were treated as retention surfaces in their own right, not utilities. We also built a save-to-calendar widget to lift attendance and keep the brand present in the customer's diary, not just their inbox.

Layered on top: segmented lifecycle journeys built around piercing milestones and purchase recency, SMS as a fast lane for time-sensitive moments, and a measurement view that read across the full omnichannel surface rather than channel by channel. Lifecycle, engineering and retention worked as one team, so the stack and the strategy moved together rather than waiting on each other.

SARAH & SEBASTIAN · IN THE ROOM

Inside the engagement.

The working moments behind the numbers.

Sarah & Sebastian founders profile photograph
Xanthe Zodiac campaign editorial photography, fine jewellery pendants
Xanthe Zodiac campaign landing editorial photography
Model wearing yellow gold Pillar Hoops earrings, lifestyle photography
Model wearing yellow gold Bold Chain necklace, lifestyle photography
Responsible craftsmanship editorial photography, Sarah & Sebastian
Sarah & Sebastian founders profile photograph
Xanthe Zodiac campaign editorial photography, fine jewellery pendants
Xanthe Zodiac campaign landing editorial photography
Model wearing yellow gold Pillar Hoops earrings, lifestyle photography
Model wearing yellow gold Bold Chain necklace, lifestyle photography
Responsible craftsmanship editorial photography, Sarah & Sebastian
Sarah & Sebastian founders profile photograph
Xanthe Zodiac campaign editorial photography, fine jewellery pendants
Xanthe Zodiac campaign landing editorial photography
Model wearing yellow gold Pillar Hoops earrings, lifestyle photography
Model wearing yellow gold Bold Chain necklace, lifestyle photography
Responsible craftsmanship editorial photography, Sarah & Sebastian

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Sarah & Sebastian — case study photography

THE OUTCOME

The omnichannel layer is the result that matters. In-store bookings now flow into the lifecycle stack automatically, so a piercing appointment kicks off a healing journey, an aftercare cadence and a re-engagement path without any manual lift. The brand's service moments, historically the highest-trust touchpoints in the business, finally compound across the customer relationship rather than ending at the door.

Retention metrics improved after the migration, with the lifecycle programme driving a step-change in contribution to revenue. SMS opened a new channel for time-sensitive comms without cannibalising email. The save-to-calendar widget lifted attendance and brought the brand into the customer's week in a way a marketing email never could.

We now operate as the engineering and retention partner behind the brand's omnichannel ambition: a genuine bricks-and-clicks win, not a slogan.

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50+brands
$750M+GMV
10+years