>>CHALLENGE
Detroit Grooming Co. (DGC) entered its strongest year yet in 2020, coming off a record-setting holiday season – the brand’s first since partnering with Franco. In January, the brand, which offers superior quality, hand-crafted men’s grooming products to both retail and wholesale customers, began planning for a March 13 sales event on 313 Day, honoring Detroit’s iconic area code. As planning entered its final days, the COVID-19 outbreak spread throughout the U.S. and abroad, massively hindering DGC’s wholesale sales for an undetermined amount of time.
Franco quickly shifted gears, still moving forward with an adapted 313 Day release, while also pivoting DGC’s marketing and communications efforts to focus on instilling a sense of normalcy and being there for their loyal audience.
>>APPROACH
Research & Planning
When determining the best place to reach consumer loyalists, Franco compared traffic, conversion rates and average costs-of-acquisition for each of DGC’s channels, aiming to help the company achieve the greatest “bang for their buck.” After determining DGC’s email and YouTube audiences were the more effective ones to target, Franco began planning a robust content marketing strategy, challenging us to help DGC create content that was on-brand, despite being less-produced and shot in a new location (inside the founder’s home).
Strategy & Implementation
To create content that allowed for simple and effective cross-platform promotion, Franco worked with DGC to develop the “Detroit Grooming Home Videos” series, in which DGC Founder Michael Haddad continued to appear in weekly YouTube videos featuring product demos, grooming how-to’s, company updates and more, now paired with content that fit the at-home setting. This included videos like an all-natural products run-down paired with tips on growing a victory garden, and a how-to video about beard oil paired with instructions on making the perfect cup of Turkish coffee.
Franco leveraged those YouTube videos in weekly targeted email blasts to various segments of DGC’s email audience according to their previous and predicted purchase behavior and typical engagement. In each email blast, videos were paired with short-term sales or special promotions that corresponded with the video’s topic and typically offered greater savings for higher purchases. These promotions sought to encourage customers to purchase larger amounts in shorter periods of time.
>>RESULTS
From March – May 2020
The 313 Day product release resulted in the company’s single highest grossing product release to date. Additional results during this 3-month time period included:
- 25% year-over-year increase in total sales revenue
- 51% year-over-year increase in online store sessions
- 3% year-over-year increase in average order value
- 17% year-over-year increase in number of total orders
- 64% year-over-year increase in consumer/retail sales (purchases made on the online store, not draft orders or wholesale hero)
- 489.48% year-over-year increase in YouTube referral traffic
- 4% of total sales attributed to YouTube referral traffic
- 15% of total sales attributed to MailChimp marketing
- 14% of total sales directly attributed to Google CPC ads
