From Anonymous Visitors to Loyal Customers: SportsShoes’ Success with Wunderkind

Despite its strong brand presence, SportsShoes lacked the tools to identify and engage different segments of its traffic. There was no overlay partner in place to distinguish new customers from existing ones, personalization capabilities within the existing tech stack were limited, and there were no incentives to encourage email subscriptions. At the same time, CPCs and paid media costs were increasing rapidly, making efficient conversion more important than ever. The team had not been incentivizing subscribers and with the limited capabilities of the technology at their disposal, they felt they were missing a major opportunity. Without a way to recognize and nurture visitors, valuable traffic was slipping through the cracks.

The turning point came when SportsShoes partnered with Wunderkind. Leveraging identity resolution technology and signals-based triggers, the retailer was able to identify previously unknown visitors and segment them from existing customers. This unlocked a new level of personalization and allowed SportsShoes to launch automated email programs such as browse abandonment and account abandonment, both of which began to deliver meaningful revenue with minimal additional effort from the brand’s lean marketing team. The partnership also transformed the way the business captured first-party data. With intelligent, non-intrusive onsite capture in place, SportsShoes saw its email subscriber base grow into the six figures, creating a pool of opted-in customers with far higher long-term value.

The impact was clear: subscriber growth surged, conversion rates improved, and the brand began to see a stronger return on ad spend. Most importantly, the partnership gave SportsShoes greater confidence in their upper-funnel media investments, knowing that the visitors they worked so hard to attract could be converted into valuable long-term customers once they landed on the site. Beyond the numbers, the relationship itself became a cornerstone of SportsShoes’ success. The marketing team valued Wunderkind not just for its performance but also for the trust and transparency it brought to the partnership. For a brand that is cautious about who it brings into its “family,” this cultural alignment was essential. SportsShoes has since renewed its partnership with Wunderkind for another two years, confident that continued innovation in personalization and AI-driven marketing will fuel future growth. In one of the most competitive retail categories, where costs are rising and digital competition is fierce, the collaboration has given SportsShoes the tools and confidence to not only keep pace but to thrive.