Why it matters:
- Efforts are underway to phase out what’s been a key customer acquisition tool, third-party cookies, which track users’ preferences.
- For glassybaby, giving has been a powerful strategy that’s helped the candle company attract new, and loyal, customers to its brand.
- Soundtrack Your Brand prioritizes putting would-be customers in the driver’s seat, letting them thoroughly test out their product before buying.
Successful companies know that acquiring customers has to be an integral part of a business’ core strategy to boost brand and grow revenue. But for many, a major hurdle stands in the way: Customer acquisition has become much harder in recent years.
Businesses face fierce competition in selling their goods and services, while low attention spans in today’s digital age means it’s more difficult to attract customers.
At the same time, a customer acquisition tool that companies have long relied on is going by the wayside: third-party cookies. Marketers have leaned on third-party cookies, which track users’ preferences, to segment audiences and create and show personalized ads to bring customers in. But amid increasing privacy regulations to protect consumers’ personal data, third-party cookies are being phased out. In 2020, Google announced plans to slowly get rid of third-party cookies in Chrome and began the process in early 2024.
With the obstacles stacking up, today’s businesses have to get creative, and they’re carving out a new world of customer acquisition. For Seattle, Washington-based glassybaby, which makes hand-blown glass votive candle holders and drinking glasses with a story, this means partnering with nonprofits, mining data, and falling back on tried-and-true marketing methods like mailers. Their tactics that have been so successful that the company is on track to hit $32 million in sales this year, with a $35 million growth goal.
“We employ lots of different devices to try to engage people into the glassybaby brand,” Danny Baldino, Director of New Business Growth, told CO—. “But giving is really our most unique acquisition strategy.”
Giving back has been foundational to glassybaby’s brand since its founding; now it’s helping the company get new customers
When Lee Rhodes started glassybaby 20 years ago in her garage, she had Stage 4 cancer and was raising three young kids. She knew she wanted to donate a part of her proceeds to help families going through cancer treatment pay for care.
“We don’t have business goals, we have giving goals,” Baldino said, noting that the company sets its giving goals at the start of the year, and all business decisions go toward accomplishing that goal.
Since then, giving has become a good way to get new customers. glassybaby donates around $1 million a year, or 37% of its profits, to charity. It’s donated $14 million to date, and this year for the first time will give $500,000 to a single nonprofit, the B+ Foundation, which supports children who have cancer. The rest goes to a mix of groups that help people, animals, and the planet.
Through pop-up shops at charity events, glassybaby exposes new potential customers to its products. For example, Rhodes recently spoke in Phoenix at the annual brunch for Mother’s Grace—a nonprofit that helps mothers and families suffering from adversity. glassybaby made a donation to the nonprofit, and then glassybaby held a pop-up shop at the event.
“We utilize our giving to engage new people in the brand,” said Baldino. Pop-ups are successful because they’re a chance for people to get up close and personal with products, see and touch and light them, he said. “It’s a whole experience.”
Glassybaby then hosted a second pop-up at a mall in Scottsdale. Afterwards, the state rose to number three on its heatmap indicating areas of the highest sales, behind only Washington state and California.
While glassybaby leans on digital media for customer acquisition, it’s also found success in the more traditional marketing method of physical mailers. The company sent trifold brochures to some 200,000 people in its database who didn’t receive glassybaby emails, people who hadn’t shopped in six months, and those who never shopped before.
Data showed the highest response rate from customers who hadn’t shopped in six months. The strategy had a return on ad spend of $5 for every marketing dollar spent. Glassybaby followed up the mailer campaign with an email one.
“People are inundated with digital,” said Baldino. “So, if you have a beautiful physical mailing, it can be very effective. We’ll continue with the [mailers] that were the most successful.”
Finally, glassybaby fans and word of mouth are powerful customer acquisition tools, too, Baldino said. Customers develop rituals around the candles. Some regularly light a candle they received after a loved one died to remember that person. Others, like Seattle Seahawks fans, religiously light their glassybaby before each and every game. Limited edition glassybabies often sell out in days to people as far off as South Korea.
“Targeting different passion groups is a key way we’ve acquired new customers,” Baldino said. “With customer acquisition, when you combine a little bit of the new and a little bit of the old, it creates a little magic.”
[Read: Scaling Startups Share Their Winning Customer Retention Strategies]
Targeting different passion groups is a key way we’ve acquired new customers. With customer acquisition, when you combine a little bit of the new and a little bit of the old, it creates a little magic.
Danny Baldino, Director of New Business Growth, Glassybaby
For Charitybuzz, customer acquisition happens when the company delivers on its high-quality promises and focuses on sharing stories
Online auction site Charitybuzz has watched the costs to compete in online adverting rise over the years. In response, it’s crafted a more comprehensive customer acquisition plan: doubling down on sourcing high-quality experiences in order to bring new customers in, while more aggressively pursuing earned media.
“Traditional acquisition channels are becoming more costly,” said Charitybuzz CEO Ben Erwin. “It’s all pay-to-play, and it’s a much more competitive environment to break through all of the content and get your brand, product, or service noticed. So, it’s the combination of strategies that really drive the type of behavior that we want.”
The business has the added challenge of needing to acquire a very specific type of customer: one that can afford its often high-priced discretionary items – the average auctioned item goes for several thousands of dollars – like dinner with Cher, pitching a book to the Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf, or consulting with a celebrity matchmaker. The high-value customers are harder to find and more expensive to acquire.
“We have to make sure we’re acquiring someone who’s interested in our items and has the means to pay for what we’re selling,” he said. “We don’t care about acquiring customers for the sake of acquiring customers. We’d rather get 10 real prospects than 1,000 people who will join and register, but never really engage.”
Charitybuzz’s ability to acquire high-quality, unique experiences that deliver on their promise to customers is what truly drives user acquisition, Erwin said. Using this strategy over the last four years, Charitybuzz has acquired over 60,000 additional users, with over 30,000 of those users placing bids.
High-quality storytelling is also bringing customers in. The company is focusing on telling the stories of its auction experiences through media placements and by working with the publicists of the charities that receive funds after the auctions. In the second half of 2024, customer acquisition efforts will include more efforts around thought leadership and speaking engagements at conferences.
“We want to get out there a little more and tell our story,” Erwin said.
Soundtrack Your Brand encourages would-be customers to go for a test drive
Businesses seek out Soundtrack Your Brand when they want to enhance and streamline the background music they play in their stores, making it a cohesive part of their brand.
Around 87% of all businesses play music and 20% are using it specifically to improve the customer experience, according to a Soundtrack Your Brand study. Businesses that use personal streaming accounts like Spotify inside their stores risk fines for violating copyright law.
Soundtrack Your Brand, which bills itself as the first streaming service for business use, develops customized streaming lists based on a business’s characteristics, location, and target audience. This past April, the company introduced an artificial intelligence music playlist generator that creates a personalized playlist.
“We take away the friction and anxiety around what is the best music for my business and make it legal so businesses don’t have to spend countless hours a week on it,” said Ola Sars, Founder and CEO.
Businesses don’t run into issues around licensing structure or the use of intellectual property when they play songs for customers, and they’re able to play the right music at the right time for their brand, he added.
Soundtrack Your Brand has acquired — and retained — big U.S. brands like Lululemon, Uniqlo and IKEA by putting would-be customers in the driver’s seat: It lets users test-drive its platform, which gives legal access to some 150 million tracks through Spotify and Apple Music, before they have to commit with their pocketbooks.
“It’s the notion that, in this digital world, buyers don’t like to get sold to anymore,” said Sars. “They like to try it first rather than get a sales pitch. This is a huge change in customer acquisition. It’s how we capture our customers.”
Sars co-founded the company with Spotify, and they’re the principal investor. The connection with Spotify has helped attract companies to the brand, too. But it’s the self-serve approach that ultimately convinces businesses to come on board.
“We built a really good online product and we let people try it out first,” he said.
Companies that take this approach no longer need a huge salesforce, Sars believes. Instead, the role of the salesperson changes to more of a “sales assist” role. These employees serve as guides as potential new customers try out the platform, showing them how to use the technology for their business and suggesting ways to add value.
“The salesperson’s job is to become much more of a product specialist these days,” said Sars. “It’s about meeting them at the last mile rather than pitching cold.”
Sars sees the Soundtrack Your Brand platform as a tool that his clients can use to acquire customers, too. Sophisticated retailers today are creating new roles such as head of music or head of music experience to manage music across their brand globally, he said, and many are using Soundtrack Your Brand as their platform.
“This role is starting to show up because retailers understand how important this is to the customer experience.” A customized playlist that fits with Lululemon or Uniqlo’s brand may well help convert a would-be customer who wanders into a long-term one.
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