Yotpo Grow 2021 Helped Early-Stage Black-owned Businesses Increase Sales, Solidify Customer Engagement Strategy

Yotpo, the eCommerce marketing platform that helps brands strengthen their relationships with consumers, today announced a call for applications for its Yotpo Grow brand incubator program. Designed to accelerate small businesses from often under-represented communities, Yotpo Grow will select 10 Black-owned brands to receive eCommerce-first marketing solutions for customer advocacy, engagement, and retention, a dedicated customer success manager, as well as access to events, workshops, and marketing opportunities throughout the year. The program is currently accepting applications through March 31, 2022.

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Yotpo has helped spur eCommerce growth for tens of thousands of brands, whether small businesses just starting out with reviews, SMS, or loyalty marketing, or larger enterprises looking for advanced segmentation and personalization. The company launched the Yotpo Grow accelerator program in 2021 to champion the budding brands of tomorrow, giving them the community support, knowledge, and tools needed to boost online sales and keep customers engaged. The Yotpo Grow inaugural class featured six Black-owned businesses: Sir Dogwood, CanDid Art, AVEC, Karen Jai Home, Your Sustainable Home, and Alaffia.

“Being part of Yotpo Grow and having access to this think-tank level group of people that have been able to help me with the challenges I face has been really phenomenal,” said Chaz Olajide, founder of Sir Dogwood, a Yotpo Grow brand. “As a small business owner, it’s been great to have a group of experts dedicated to my business and its unique needs, listening when I have challenges, and coming up with solutions to problems I didn’t even know I had.”

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Sir Dogwood’s mission is to make the pet industry more inclusive. Through Yotpo Grow, Sir Dogwood saw a 54% review request email open rate, a 10% referral conversion rate and 47x increase in ROI through the four SMS campaigns the company launched per month. Other Yotpo Grows brands also experienced measured success as part of the program. Luxury home company Karen Jai Home was able to generate 62x ROI from Yotpo SMSBump and natural drink mixer company AVEC ramped up reviews and loyalty , and with SMS sawa 28x ROI.

“We are incredibly proud of the success of the first class of Yotpo Grow companies,” said Kate Bould, Brand Marketing Senior Manager at Yotpo. “We started Yotpo Grow to capitalize on our strengths as a company while finding new ways to engage and support our community. Yotpo Grow has been a passion project for our team and it’s incredible to see the impact from supporting these inspiring brands. We can’t wait to see what the class of 2022 has to offer.”

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