US craft giant JOANN ushers in a new era with AI-powered copywriting

It began its story of inspiring creativity in 1943. Rooted in Cleveland, Ohio, JOANN is one of the largest crafts and fabric supplier in the United States. Originally a small family store, JOANN has since grown to become an omnipresent retailer across US suburbs with more than 850 locations and 23,000 employees.

From its DIY craft classes and its “Knit it” and “Bloom Room” store sections to its expert employees and its enduring presence in the sentimental moments of its customers’ lives, JOANN is universally loved.

Building on its efforts in recent years to digitally transform and refocus on the JOANN customer, the crafts giant used Phrasee’s AI-powered copywriting to improve customer engagement at an enterprise level and to put a customer-first approach at the heart of this transformation mission.

Not only did this progressive approach engage customers more effectively, but it also generated millions of dollars in incremental revenue for JOANN.

JOANN: A crafts mecca that puts its customers first

JOANN re-evaluated its brand strategy, becoming more sophisticated at leveraging data to better understand customers and maximize engagement with them. As part of this strategy, one of the goals was to make emails more engaging and relevant to JOANN’s customer base.

The CRM team wanted to learn more about what their audience wanted to hear. They would normally feature a discount in an email subject line, for instance, but didn’t usually try out more diverse techniques to improve email opens.

With millions of emails sent throughout the year, JOANN was ready to take the plunge and test Phrasee on its bread and butter: its general promotional emails.

“Two words: increased revenue”

After an initial testing period with Phrasee, a strong pattern and upward trend of positive email marketing performance emerged. Overall, Phrasee’s AI technologies have helped JOANN generate:

• A 10% average open uplift.
• A 26% average click uplift.
• Millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

“Day after day, Phrasee proved out,” proclaims Lee Washington II, CRM and Loyalty Strategy Manager at JOANN.

JOANN’s team also learned that language matters. Previously, the team would often mention a discount in a subject line but after testing subject lines with Phrasee, they learned that using the same language over and over isn’t always an effective technique for maximizing engagement.

The important thing is to test language and understand what resonates with an audience: “From a customer standpoint, don’t focus on the offer so much, focus on the engagement and that’s where the ah-ha moment for us came from,” says Lee.

But perhaps the biggest learning from using Phrasee for JOANN is that high-urgency and high-pressure language isn’t always the best thing for the customer.

“We want to be able to speak to the customer in the way they want to be spoken to so that it can be the most engaging, most enjoyable, most delightful exchange and interaction,” according to Gideon Toman, Manager, Digital Marketing at JOANN.

Results that go the whole nine yards

The most important thing to JOANN is the customer. After seeing the success of using Phrasee for email marketing campaigns, JOANN now wants to optimize language at every customer touchpoint.

Gideon says, “We have undergone a digital transformation. Our goal is to offer the best customer experience possible. Using our ESP send time optimization alongside Phrasee’s language optimization means we can deliver the right message at the right time.”