How Smoke Cartel Achieves Success With IgnitePost’s Customizable Cards

WHO IS SMOKE CARTEL?

“Fast. Accessible. Convenient. We’re changing the way you shop online by offering an immersive, inclusive, and meaningful experience for all types of customers.”
- Sean Geng, CEO of Smoke Cartel

They had one mission and one mission only: make it easier for people to search and buy smoking gear. Meet Smoke Cartel, a popular eCommerce headshop that has been revolutionizing the smoking experience since 2013. Founded by Sean Geng, Darby Cox, and their team of glass lovers and counterculture enthusiasts, this company designs, manufactures, and delivers a wide variety of smoking equipment such as glass bongs, dab rigs, hand pipes, vaporizers, and other smoking accessories. Their offerings also include anything from herb grinders to travel pouches to butane torch lighters. Whatever you need to get the perfect heady experience, you are sure to find it at Smoke Cartel. It's a statement backed up by thousands of satisfied customers, and various articles from Forbes, Leafly, and HighTimes!

As an eCommerce store, Smoke Cartel is able to offer high quality smoking gear anywhere and everywhere, 24 hours a day. Keeping to their founding motto of making their products easily accessible, the shop stands out against typical brick-and-mortar smoke shops by offering two unique features: (1) discreet transactions and (2) incredibly personalized interactions.

EARNING CUSTOMER TRUST THROUGH DISCRETION & CUSTOMIZATION

"As a counterculture shop, our most important principle is customer privacy. We want our customers to trust us, and that means making sure they feel protected in every sense of the word."
- Sean Geng, CEO of Smoke Cartel

Customer privacy is unfortunately being less prioritized as more big data companies exchange information about their clients. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal in 2018 landed Facebook in boiling hot water and made the discussion of online security and confidentiality a huge deal. Millions of customers were enraged after learning their personal data had been "harvested" without consent and used against them for political advertising. This kind of "black market transaction" has led to a widespread loss of trust in social media platforms and online organizations. And that's a huge deal for the eCommerce industry.

eCommerce stores already had a tough road ahead of them when it comes to acquiring and retaining customers. Without a physical presence, customers can't have an actual experience with a brand. And thanks to a web oversaturated with ads and spam, catching and then maintaining public attention is a difficult task. So the question is, how can eCommerce stores stand out and cultivate stronger, more lasting relationships with their customers? There's a clear answer. You must make it clear that the customer is the most important element in your business. How? Two simple words: discretion and customization.

First, you must reassure customers about their digital safety and the integrity of your business. Make it clear that you value their comfort and their right to privacy. Make yourself trustworthy and develop a reputation for quick, easy, and secure transactions. Second, if you can't have a physical presence, the digital experiences you offer must make up for it! That means sending personal messages to make customers feel you see them as an valued individual and not a lone voice in a crowd of a million pre-written emails.

This is a two-fold strategy that Smoke Cartel has been mastering in their recent marketing campaigns, and they've been achieving that winning combination of discretion and customization by using the services of IgnitePost.

Interested in seeing the various ways you can customize and personalize handwritten cards using IgnitePost? We put together a free Quick Customization Guide showing all of the options so that you can have it in one place!  Click below to download it!

DOWNLOAD THE QUICK CUSTOMIZATION GUIDE

HOW IGNITEPOST HELPS YOU EARN CUSTOMER TRUST

"IgnitePost makes it easy to send private, personalized, handwritten cards. It's amazing how their services have it easier for us to connect with our customers on a more personal level."
- Angelica Sorauf, Brand Director of Smoke Cartel

Smoke Cartel has taken full advantage of IgnitePost, using every single customizable feature our company offers. The smoke shop personalizes the image on each handwritten card, providing a unique visual to each customer. The contents of each card are also customized. The smoke shop goes beyond a copy-and-paste generic message. They don’t just switch out the name at the top. Instead, extra effort is put in so each customer is not only personally addressed by name, but are also reminded of their purchases and given a discount code to use. Smoke Cartel even uses IgnitePost's insertion feature, providing logo stickers in each envelope for customers to use. Very little effort for new promotional opportunities!

Beyond the personalization IgnitePost provides, Smoke Cartel has chosen our company's messaging services because we guarantee customer privacy. Customers may be uncomfortable having friends, relatives, or neighbors know about their purchases. So normal direct mail postcards are a sure fire way to lose patronage, which limits typical marketing strategies. But IgnitePost sends all letters in a customizable envelope, thereby protecting the contents from the eyes of outsiders.

"We’ve tried different direct mailing services before, but we got complaints. After switching to IgnitePost, the experiences have been different! Our customers are much more receptive to our IgnitePost cards."
- Sean Geng, CEO of Smoke Cartel

FEEDBACK ABOUT IGNITEPOST CARDS:

"IgnitePost is a great service. It was easy to set up and allowed us to strengthen customer trust in Smoke Cartel and capitalize on those positive experiences."
- Sean Geng, CEO of Smoke Cartel

Smoke Cartel’s use of IgnitePost cards is a new approach to their marketing strategy, and it’s bringing in visible results. The headshop expects to see a rise in their sales, reviews, and referral rates in the coming months. And their customers seem to be having just as positive an experience!

So check out what you can achieve with IgnitePost!  Have your own ideas? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below.  Here is a free Quick Customization Guide that we put together showing the various ways you can customize our handwritten cards… take a look and let us know any ideas you might have

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