How Mini Katana Captured 525k Emails In Only 5 Months with Amped

Mini Katana offers katana, replica swords, and pocket knives that are perfect for enthusiasts and collectors alike. Over the past few years, the brand’s popularity has skyrocketed thanks to blades inspired by popular anime series like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, One Piece, and Naruto.

Mini Katana leveraged gamified popups even before partnering with Amped, but they were limited. The spin wheel that appeared when customers first hit the site had an opt-in rate well above the industry average, but it didn't collect zero-party data. 

As Karly Craig, the company's COO, points out: the new subscribers the team historically captured weren't necessarily ready to convert. Mini Katana still wanted to capture these leads in case one of their pipeline projects piqued their interest. However, the team needed a way to segment high-intent traffic to hone their follow-up efforts and close more leads. 

Leveraging gamified popups was the way forward, but Mini Katana needed a more robust and highly customizable solution. Fortunately, Karly discovered Amped.

When Karly brought on Amped, she wanted to test micro-commitments – a small follow-up step that would pull prospects further down the sales funnel. 

The Amped team strategized on how the Mini Katana team could accomplish this goal. After walking through various gamified popup styles and multi-step questions, Karly decided to test four options: 

1. A spinning wheel popup (their control group)
2. The spinning wheel with a follow-up question
3. A fruit ninja popup with floating fruit and an interactive katana cursor
4. The fruit ninja popup with a follow-up question

Then, the Amped team monitored the test, making tweaks to optimize the top performers. This white-glove service freed up significant time for the busy Mini Katana team to focus on other initiatives. Meanwhile, their list growth boomed in the background as more and more people visited the site, saw the popups, and opted in.

Ultimately, the spinning wheel with the follow-up question overwhelmingly won – increasing their opt-in rate to 26% (more than 8x the industry average). Even better, this impressive opt-in rate has led to significant list growth: 

• 26% opt-in rate
• 525k emails captured

Additionally, the well crafted follow-up question already yields zero-party data that the Mini Katana team is using to segment their audience and get more strategic with their marketing efforts. Moving forward, this data will continue to prove invaluable as the brand expands its product offerings and grows its user base.

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