Gifting & E-Commerce DTC

How SendAFriend Generated €1.8M/Year While Building a Data-Driven Team

SendAFriend is a €20M annual revenue gifting brand that saw a surge in website traffic from paid social advertising — particularly TikTok — but wasn't converting that traffic efficiently. DRIP's consulting approach not only generated €1.8M/year in additional revenue through optimized conversion paths but also trained the internal team to think in tests and data, creating lasting organizational capability.

€1.8M/yrAdditional Revenue

13.5xROI

€702KRevenue Impact

The Brand

SendAFriend is a US-based gifting brand that built its growth engine on social media — particularly TikTok — creating viral moments that drove massive traffic spikes. With €20M in annual revenue, the brand had proven product-market fit and strong social channel performance.

The challenge was converting that social traffic. TikTok users arrive with different expectations than search or email traffic — they're faster, more impulsive, and less patient. The site experience needed to match the speed and energy of the channels driving the traffic.

The Challenge

SendAFriend's TikTok-driven traffic had high bounce rates. Visitors arrived with strong gifting intent (Belonging 95) but the emotional journey from browsing to checkout didn't match the emotional promise of the brand.

Additionally, the team lacked a systematic framework for making data-driven decisions. Changes to the site were based on intuition and trends rather than tested hypotheses — leaving significant revenue on the table.

The Approach

DRIP identified Belonging (95), Comfort (85), and Security (70) as primary psychological drivers. Strategy focused on deepening emotional connection at every touchpoint — making each stuffed animal feel personal and each purchase feel meaningful.

The key insight was that emotional connection is paramount: customers are motivated by nurturing social circles, the gift transcends a mere transaction, and each stuffed animal becomes a tangible manifestation of care. Beyond running tests, DRIP took a consulting approach that actively trained SendAFriend's team to think in tests and data.

Key Tests & Results

Add Personality Traits to Single Product Animals in Cart

Added personality trait descriptions to individual stuffed animals in cart/checkout to strengthen emotional attachment and increase ARPU. Ran on Cart across all devices from Apr 2023 to Jun 2023.

Leveraged endowment effect, emotional attachment, personal relevance, and value perception to make each animal feel uniquely personal before purchase+3.63% ARPU across all devices

Add Emotional Elements to ATC on Available PDPs

Added emotional sub-line beneath Add to Cart button (e.g., 'feels like a hug') to trigger positive affect. Ran on PDP across all devices from Dec 2022 to Jan 2023.

Applied positive affect, emotional priming, memory association, and cognitive ease to lower purchase hesitation at the point of decision+3% ARPU across all devices

Overall Impact

Across 56 experiments, 18 produced statistically significant winners — a 32% win rate. The biggest wins came from emotional personalization and cart-stage engagement, where deepening the connection between customer and product drove measurable lifts in conversion and order value.

The engagement generated €1.8M/year in additional revenue at a 13.5x ROI — maximizing the return on SendAFriend's significant social media ad spend by ensuring the site converted the traffic those ads were driving.

The deeper impact was organizational. SendAFriend's team now approaches decisions through a testing lens. Instead of debating opinions about what the site should look like, they formulate hypotheses and let data determine the answer. This shift in thinking extends beyond CRO into product development, marketing, and operations.

The Takeaway

The SendAFriend case highlights a critical gap for social-first brands: the traffic source determines what the site needs to do. TikTok traffic behaves fundamentally differently from Google or email traffic. Optimizing without understanding these behavioral differences means optimizing for the wrong audience.

The consulting approach — training the team alongside running tests — created compounding value. DRIP's direct revenue impact was €1.8M/year, but the organizational capability built during the engagement continues to generate returns independently.

Thanks to DRIP, our team now thinks in tests and data. They've not only elevated our understanding of business-wide optimization but also trained us to tackle challenges with data-backed, test-driven solutions.