How Killstar Turned Wishlist Automation Into a Top Revenue Channel

‍Killstar’s innovation doesn’t stop at design; the team brings the same energy to community engagement. When they noticed customers actively saving items to their Wishlists, they turned it into an opportunity to engage more personally and drive real impact.

Challenge

As a DTC brand with a visually driven, product-rich catalog and a distinct audience base, Killstar was already relying on personalized outreach to inspire loyalty and drive conversions. They were running basic automation campaigns using Klaviyo to procure potential customers after cart abandonment, but the brand saw an untapped opportunity in how frequently customers used their Wishlist feature.

If you’ve ever used a Wishlist while shopping online, you know the deal. You’re not quite ready to buy, but you don’t want to completely part ways with something you love and perhaps intend to buy later when the time is right. 

Killstar saw that same behavior constantly playing out across their site. Customers were adding items to their Wishlists, but that’s where the journey often stopped. The team realized they had a trove of intent data from Wishlists, but hadn’t best strategically deployed that just yet.

That was a missed opportunity.

Killstar’s CRM team wanted to do more than just watch people build dream carts and bounce. They needed a way to make their customers actually act on that interest—by sending timely, relevant re-engagement messages that would pull shoppers back before they lose interest.

The tools were there: they were already using Klaviyo and Tapcart. But Wishlist events weren’t part of their flows yet. To close that gap, they turned to Swym’s Wishlist Plus and got to work building automated campaigns around Wishlist behavior. 

The goal? Turn “maybe later” into “add to cart” and “buy now.”
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“We noticed how often our customers add and create a wishlist with us, and knew we could use that to deliver an even more personalised experience,”
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Chloe Grant
CRM Lead

Solution

Killstar already had a loyal customer base that was extensively using their Wishlist feature. But the team wasn’t tapping into its full potential. That changed when they installed Swym in April 2019 and integrated their Wishlist Plus feature into their site. Here’s how it worked.

They installed Swym on their store—a simple, one-click install. No dev work needed. The CRM team could immediately start building flows based on Wishlist activity. And they didn’t stop at just one. They rolled out six high-intent flows:

• Wishlist Price Drop Recap
  telling customers when a saved item goes on sale, sparking urgency. Combined revenue: $74,395, with $20,377 (27%) from Tapcart-powered push notifications.
  
  
• Low Stock Alerts
  notifying shoppers when a wishlist item is about to sell out, tapping into FOMO. Push notifications drove $23,801 of $45,377 total revenue (52% of the flow’s impact).

• Wishlist Reminders
  nudging them to revisit and buy items they’ve saved but haven’t purchased yet. $18,202 of the $45,658 total revenue came from push (40%).
  
  
• Back-in-Stock Notifications
  sending an alert when their wishlist product is back in stock so they can quickly get their hands on it. Push notifications contributed $4,288 of $20,416 total revenue (21%).

• Wishlist Shared (when someone shares a list with a friend)
  notifying when a wishlist gets shared with someone else, encouraging gift purchases.
  
  
• Wishlist Confirmation
  confirming the list has been saved and keeps customers engaged for future updates.

Their CRM team, led by Chloe Grant, worked closely with Swym’s customer success manager to set up these flows. The experience revealed how valuable wishlist data could be in turning target customers into loyal buyers.
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‍“Safe to say we use pretty much all the data from our Swym integration.We now actively encourage customers to build a Wishlist as it helps us gather data for re-targeting in the future—even if they aren’t ready to buy just yet.”
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Chloe Grant
CRM Lead

After integrating Wishlist Plus, Killstar stopped treating Wishlist data like a passive feature and turned it into a full-blown engagement and revenue engine. Here’s how: 

• They targeted shoppers who saved items but didn’t buy.
  Flows like Wishlist Price Drop and Low Stock Alerts began nudging customers at the right time, with the right message. These weren’t cold prospects. They were people who’d already shown interest, so when they got a heads up that something they liked was now cheaper or about to sell out, they returned to complete the purchase. 

• They created urgency for high-intent shoppers.
  The Price Drop Recap flow alone generated over $74,000 in revenue, consistently ranking in Killstar’s top five flows by revenue. In fact, over $20,000 of that revenue came from the Push automation—proving that price-based retargeting works when tied to real intent.
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• They outperformed Browse Abandon on CVR and ROI-per-send.
  ‍Wishlist Flows beat Browse Abandonment rate on both conversion rate (1.28% vs. 0.92%) and revenue per 1,000 recipients ($454 vs. $228). This shows customers with Wishlist intent are about 39% more likely to convert than general browsers.

• They used both email and push to increase reach.
  ‍Swym also helped Killstar set up a multi-touch targeting strategy. They combined automated emails with push notifications via Tapcart, helping them reach customers across both web and mobile at key moments. This omnichannel delivery helped them engage customers wherever they were. In flows like “Low Stock” and “Reminder,” push notifications contributed equally—or even more—to revenue than email.

Even more impressive? The Wishlist Shared flow, which is triggered when someone shares a list with a friend, converts at 4.73%, suggesting that leveraging social-driven intent can be as powerful as price-based urgency triggers and individual shopping behavior.‍

Results by the numbers

The investment in wishlist-based personalization paid off in a big way. Using Swym’s Wishlist Plus, paired with Klaviyo and Tapcart, they built a series of personalized, customer-led, conversion-ready flows. In just nine months, those flows produced::

• $186,679 in revenue ($121,011 from email + $65,668 from Tapcart push notifications)
• 5,200+ items sold via Wishlist-triggered automation
• A 3.75x YoY increase in automation-driven email revenue, from 8% to 30%
• On average, the conversion rate across Wishlist flows hit 1.20%.

On average, the conversion rate across Wishlist flows hit 1.20%, which is on par with their abandon cart flows (1.02%) and outperforming browse abandonment (0.24%). Push notifications were responsible for over 50% of revenue in some flows like Wishlist Low Stock, proving their unique strength in mobile-first re-engagement.

With Swym, Killstar isn’t guessing anymore. They’re working with intent-rich signals and delivering them through both Klaviyo emails and Tapcart push—targeting only the customers who are just about to hit the “Buy Now” button.