When The Elovaters released Shark Belly Motel, it became the biggest month of their career, pulling more than 35 million streams, debuting at #5 on Billboard, and selling out Red Rocks.
That growth also brought more fans into the band’s ecosystem. Instead of leaving those relationships on social platforms, The Elovaters used Laylo to capture first party fan data and put it to work.
Today, one Laylo agent recovers 28% of the band’s abandoned merch carts. Another automatically collects hundreds of fan shot videos with permission to repost.
As SVP at Ineffable Management, Reid Foster runs strategy for a roster of artists including Stick Figure and The Elovaters. He put AI agents to work on the band’s business, but thinks artists should rebel against AI in their creative output.
“Social media platforms change every day, so if that’s your only way to connect to your audience, you’re never gonna reach everyone… First party data is really the foundation everything else is built on.”— Reid Foster, SVP, Ineffable Management
That owned foundation is what allows Laylo’s Abandoned Cart Agent and UGC Agent to operate automatically in the background.
“We think about genuine exclusivity... This has cultivated a really cool community of collectors who trade with each other, meet up at shows, bring those things to our VIP meet & greets for the band to sign, etc.”
But even with high demand drops, plenty of fans add something to their cart and leave before buying.
Most cart recovery relies on static, automated emails that feel like spam.
Laylo’s Abandoned Cart Agent sends a personalized text based on the individual fan. It uses inputs like their name, what they were looking at, and what time of day they are most likely to make a purchase.
It also decides whether a discount is actually needed, holding one back when the fan looks likely to buy without it.
The Elovaters switched it on this spring. What surprised them most?
“How easy it was. We literally just checked a box.”
It is now recovering 28% of abandoned merch carts, roughly 9X the typical recovery rate of generic abandoned cart email workflows.
The band only pays when the agent recovers a sale. There are no messaging costs, so a text that doesn’t convert costs nothing. Across its run to date, the agent has returned 23X what it costs to operate.
The UGC Agent watches Instagram Story tags and DMs, spots fan footage worth keeping, and messages the fan for the original file before the Story expires. The clip lands in the band’s content library, rights cleared and ready to post. Over a single weekend of shows in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire this summer, it brought back hundreds of fan videos. The fan who shot the video gets asked properly and gets named when it goes up, which is a different exchange than a repost with no attribution.
The agent saves the team time without taking the fan out of the exchange.
“We had only ever really done one big campaign around UGC before, and collecting permission was something we had to think through and bake into the process manually. The fact that it was seamlessly baked in this time was icing on the cake, but the real juice is the content itself and ability to credit the original creator in the process.”
Because both agents run automatically, The Elovaters don’t have to manually manage day-to-day cart recovery or fan content collection. That leaves the team more time for creative projects, including collectible show keychains, a Red Rocks documentary on YouTube, and a new remix of “Staring At The Sun.”
For Foster, that’s exactly where AI belongs: taking repetitive work off the team’s plate without replacing the creative or human parts of the job.
Read the full Q&A on why he thinks AI belongs in your admin, not your art.
28%Abandoned merch carts recovered
23XNet revenue vs. operating cost
HundredsFan videos collected with permission
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