About Shady Rays
Shady Rays is an independent sunglasses company and one of the fastest-growing sunglasses brands in the U.S. Shady Rays distinguishes itself with a lifetime craftsmanship warranty, free replacements for lost sunglasses, and a comprehensive give back program: "Shady Rays Impact".
Shady Rays Impact includes partnerships with meaningful nonprofit organizations, each of which are spotlighted throughout the year. Shady Rays has worked with Verdn since 2021, and they've recovered over 150,000 lbs of ocean-bound plastic in that time. Since integrating Verdn into the wider impact program in 2023, Verdn now tracks the impact of the impact of every order placed by a Shady Rays customer.
Problem: if a brand's impact is hidden, you cannot generate value from it
Shady Rays Impact is a comprehensive program, comprising renowned charities, joint events, and large donations (both monetary and in-kind). With this new program, Shady Rays found it increasingly more important to be able to tell their charitable giving story to their customers — something they hadn't done much of in the past.
- The main way to learn more was a single 'About Us' style page
- Mission-based messaging had to compete with offers in email flows
- Customers could not see what projects their orders contributed to
A key part of Shady Rays Impact is engaging our community and customers about how they're supporting our efforts to give back to meaningful causes in our communities. We've worked with Verdn since 2021 to recover ocean-plastic, so expanding our partnership to our new impact program was a natural progression.
— Jenny, Strategic Communications Director
Solution: integrate impact into the purchase and post-purchase journey, and A/B test the results
With Verdn's help, Shady Rays installed custom impact badges throughout the buying journey: on the PDPs, the cart, and even in the checkout. Then they ran an A/B test so that only half of site visitors were exposed to the new elements at all, while the other half was not. By reviewing the different conversion rates between the two cohorts, Shady Rays could see a significant (p-value = 0.006) gap of 3% between the cohorts. The messaging works!
But they didn't stop there. Each Shady Rays customer now has a branded “impact timeline” created or updated each time they order. The timeline displays the projects they've supported, and how the projects are carried out. Shady Rays used Verdn's Klaviyo integration to send out these timelines in their post-purchase customer communications.
Result: a 3% conversion rate boost that pays for the give back program
Since integrating Verdn into its purchase and post-purchase journey, Shady Rays has seen:
- A 3% conversion rate uptick, which is statistically significant (p = 0.006)
- A 9.85x ROI
- Shady Rays Impact integrated into over 500,000 retention flows.
Teaming up with Verdn has been a game-changer for us. It's boosted our engagement with customers, increased the transparency of our impact, and generated a positive ROI from our give back program. Our customers love it as much as we do.
— Jenny, Strategic Communications Director
