How Bombas captured anonymous browsers and drove a 19% revenue lift with identity resolution

When your hero product is socks, every anonymous visitor matters. Here's how Bombas captured the ones that got away.

For over a decade, Bombas has been a comfort-focused apparel brand on a mission to help those facing homelessness. Operating on a one-purchased-equals-one-donated model, the company has now donated over 150 million essential items through more than 4,000 giving partners.

What started with socks — the #1 most requested item in homeless shelters — has expanded into underwear, t-shirts, bralettes, and slippers. 

But as Bombas' customer journeys became more complex across categories, a new challenge emerged: anonymous visitors were browsing, adding items to cart, then vanishing without a trace.

"Sock purchases are a pretty short consideration window for customers. If you need new socks, you're probably going to go out and buy them that week," explains Michelle DeStein, Director of Growth Marketing. For a mission-driven brand where every lost customer also means a lost donation, these disappearing high-intent shoppers represented both lost revenue and missed social impact.

The Challenge

As Bombas evolved from a single-product sock company into a multi-category apparel brand, its marketing team faced increasingly complex customer data challenges:

Anonymous traffic was slipping away. With socks being a relatively low-consideration purchase, customers often browse and abandon quickly. Without the ability to identify anonymous visitors, Bombas was unable to effectively re-engage these high-intent shoppers.

Segmentation couldn't keep up with growth. As the brand expanded its product line and customer base, basic marketing segmentation was no longer sophisticated enough to deliver personalized experiences across categories.

Manual processes limited strategic focus. The marketing team spent significant time on manual audience management and campaign optimization rather than developing sophisticated marketing strategies.

Holiday vs. year-round shopping patterns needed different approaches. Bombas needed to distinguish between customers who only shop during promotional periods versus those who make regular, year-round purchases.

The Solution

Bombas partnered with Simon Data in 2020 to create a centralized platform for all customer data, focusing on three key areas:

1. Complete customer 360 profiles

Simon's no-code segment builder allowed Bombas to leverage comprehensive customer data, including purchase history, demographics, and cross-channel engagement patterns. This enabled sophisticated audience segmentation for direct mail campaigns and lookalike modeling.

2. Real-time identity resolution

Simon's Identity+ capabilities helped Bombas identify anonymous website visitors and connect them to known customer profiles, dramatically expanding the reach of abandonment campaigns.

3. Connected data workflows

Through Simon's integration with Braze and trait syncing capabilities, Bombas automated customer data flows between platforms, eliminating manual processes and ensuring consistent identity management. 

Simon maintains ownership over contact properties while pushing them and updating them downstream in Braze, enabling sophisticated personalization within Braze's content and journey builders.

The Results

Within months of implementation, Bombas saw dramatic improvements across every aspect of their customer engagement strategy.

Smarter lookalike audiences powered direct mail success. Bombas used Simon's segment builder to separate year-round shoppers from holiday-only customers, creating more relevant direct mail campaigns that drove:

• 19% increase in conversion rate year-over-year
• 3% decrease in customer acquisition cost despite 23% spend increase

When targeting cross-category purchasers versus sock-only audiences for multi-category content, Bombas saw a 36% increase in non-sock revenue.

Identity resolution transformed abandonment campaigns. By identifying anonymous visitors in real-time, Bombas dramatically expanded its ability to re-engage high-intent shoppers, leading to a:

• 85% boost in abandoned browse send volume month-over-month
• 19% average monthly revenue lift since launch in Q4 2024

Automated workflows enabled hyper-targeted campaigns. The seamless data flow between Simon and Braze allowed Bombas to automatically sync customer traits and build sophisticated email campaigns without manual processes. For their "Build Your Own Underwear Pack" campaign, this automated precision targeting delivered:

• 450% increase in click-through rate
• 530% increase in revenue per delivery
• 12% decrease in unsubscribes — proving customers wanted this relevant content

The comprehensive approach transformed Bombas from struggling with anonymous traffic to delivering personalized experiences that drove both revenue growth and mission impact.

What's next for Bombas + Simon

The future of Bombas' marketing strategy hinges on finding the right balance between cutting-edge technology and human expertise.

"AI feels either scary or unapproachable for me," admits DeStein. "Being able to have a partner like Simon Data that we can rely on not only to help educate me on how we can use it but on how to help activate it is something that I always look for."

This partnership approach will be crucial as Bombas leverages Simon's AI capabilities to further enhance its segmentation strategy. The team is particularly excited about using AI to identify when customers are ready for cross-selling opportunities, as opposed to staying within their current product category, such as determining when a sock customer might be ready to try slippers.

For Bombas, having a strategic partner that can demystify AI while delivering practical applications means they can focus on what they do best: creating comfort and driving social impact.

Ready to CTA? Learn how Simon Data's customer data platform can help your brand deliver personalized experiences that drive results.

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