Strengthening the bond with its international community through conversation

CABAIA strengthens the bond with its community through conversational CRM

One woman in five owns a CABAIA bag. In under ten years, CABAIA has become one of the best-known French leather goods brands in Europe.

Present in e-commerce, in its own stores and through many resellers, the brand was built around an iconic product, and above all around a remarkably engaged community.

For a brand whose customers do not buy several times a year, the challenge is less about generating an immediate sale than about staying top of mind until the next need arises.

To meet that challenge, CABAIA chose to extend its CRM strategy with WhatsApp and RCS, and create conversations that are more useful, more immediate and more personalised.

An engaged community, and a retention challenge all of its own

CABAIA’s success does not rest on its products alone.

From the start, the brand grew by actively involving its community in the creation of new products. Surveys, co-creation phases, customer feedback: that closeness built a particularly strong relationship with its customers.

But that relationship is also a challenge.

Unlike cosmetics or fashion, purchase cycles in leather goods are far longer. A customer can be perfectly happy and still have no reason to buy again for months, sometimes years.

So the goal of CRM is not only to generate sales, but to sustain a lasting relationship between two purchases.

When email is no longer enough to start a conversation

Before WAX, CABAIA relied mainly on email to keep its customer relationship alive. Even then, something surprising was happening.

Customers regularly replied to marketing campaigns to thank the brand, share photos of their bags, or even of their cats.

That appetite for exchange confirmed a hunch: the community wanted more than a broadcast channel.

The real obstacle was not customer engagement, then, but the brand’s ability to offer a genuinely conversational channel without overloading its customer service team.

Designing a conversational strategy, not a copy of email

Rather than replay its email campaigns on mobile, CABAIA took a different route.

Each channel had to answer a specific use.

The teams started by rolling WhatsApp out in Germany, to observe behaviour, reassure the teams and gradually build their first conversational journeys.

After several months of experimentation, the brand extended the setup to other European countries before launching in France, its main market.

The aim was never to replace email, but to orchestrate the different channels intelligently.

One principle now guides their whole strategy: the right message, on the right channel, at the right moment.

Abandoned cart: clearing the last obstacles

Rather than send more promotional messages, CABAIA identified the moments where a conversation could genuinely create value for the customer.

The abandoned cart is no longer treated as a simple sales reminder.

With RCS and WhatsApp, customers get immediate answers to whatever is stopping them from completing their purchase: delivery, payment, availability or product recommendations.

The goal is to support the decision rather than push a discount.

Back in Stock: turning frustration into an experience

When a product comes back in stock, every minute counts.

Rather than depend on an email that risks being seen too late, CABAIA now lets customers choose to be notified straight on their phone.

This answers a particularly critical moment: a customer who has waited weeks for a product is already deep in their purchase intent.

The result: very few messages sent, and immediate effect, with no need to follow up.

Birthdays: strengthening the relationship above all

The message is designed first and foremost as a gesture towards the customer. The birthday journey shows that philosophy at work.

Not every automation is meant to generate revenue directly.

The goal is simply to create a positive interaction with the brand, at a moment when people are naturally more receptive to the messages they receive.

WhatsApp and RCS: two complementary channels

One of the most interesting lessons of the project concerns how WhatsApp and RCS complement each other.

To understand customer preferences better, CABAIA ran a double A/B test comparing the two channels, with fallback between WhatsApp, RCS and email.

First finding: the two channels are not interchangeable. Usage differs by profile and by moment in the journey.

Today, CABAIA favours:

• WhatsApp for retention journeys and richer conversations
• RCS for high-context campaigns, micro-segmentation and immediate interactions

This approach orchestrates the channels instead of pitting them against each other.

What comes next? Experiences designed for mobile alone

For Marie, the future is not about adapting existing email journeys.

It is about designing entirely new experiences, impossible to reproduce anywhere else.

The ambition is clear: make mobile a relationship channel in its own right, with experiences customers will find neither by email nor on the site.