FOLLOW ALONG WITH ARIAN & CJ AS THEY BREAK DOWN THIS CASE STUDY:

BACKGROUND

The Feel Good Lab is an interesting company, and one that operates in a crowded and well-funded space: pain relief. The entirety of their homepage seems to fly counter to the typical way we view products in this space. Statements like “Pain Relief That’s Good For You” and usage of words like “healthy” suggest that, if nothing else, this company has a different take. Here at IgnitePOST, we’re always on the hunt for companies that do things differently, especially in the face of massive competition. It’s easy to see, then, why we’ve decided to write a profile.

CHALLENGE

Most emerging brands will struggle with the same three problems: awareness, acquisition, and retention. The Feel Good Lab is no exception.

Retention and high customer satisfaction was a main focus; they needed customers to both purchase often and be happy enough to spread the word to friends and family. Building trust and strong relationships are keys for this, but it takes a lot of time and effort to do properly.

Furthermore, they needed far more social proof to help get people in the door. Peer reviews and testimonials drive the bulk of any purchasing decision and can be the difference between success and failure in a small business.

One main challenge spans all of the problems here: creating strong relationships with customers. Since customer relationships are IgnitePOST’s specialty, The Feel Good Lab decided to give our handwritten notes a shot.

STRATEGY

CJ Forse, currently founder and CEO of marketing agency Vulgar, was leading the marketing strategy for The Feel Good Lab, a company he also co-founded. We worked alongside CJ to help formulate a winning plan.

Our goal: Make early customers feel good. People primarily make decisions with the same part of the brain associated with emotion; creating good feelings around the brand is a great way to gain mindshare and start building relationships.

The nature of The Feel Good Lab’s products means that there will never be too high of an AOV, so more than one order needed to be generated from each handwritten note to keep the campaign practical. But CJ’s data showed us some good news: once customers made their third purchase, they had over a 60% chance of returning for more.

Knowing this, we decided to begin following up after the second purchase with a handwritten thank-you note, and a discount for the third purchase.

If you’re currently creating your own loyalty-building strategy, you can utilize handwritten notes at any point where you need to create a deeper connection with your customers. Digital marketing often won’t cut it.

For the note itself, we always swear by the 3 C’s: Cut through the noise; Connect with the recipient; Call them to action. Handwritten cards physically limit how much you can write, but this can be a good thing. Keeping notes short and sweet ensures that there’s never filler or fluff getting in the way of what you really want to say.

After putting together a nice backing for the card, we used Shopify, Zapier, and IgnitePOST’s software to execute the campaign. Seamless integration between all three meant that setup was a breeze.

RESULTS

How do you get normal customers to turn into raving fans?

It’s simple: make them feel special.

To grow The Feel Good Lab, CJ and the team needed to make early customers feel special. Sending a handwritten card, as a reward for the first signs of loyalty, is the best possible way to do so. And when emails began rolling in, thanking them for the handwritten notes and raving about the company’s commitment to quality and care, their team knew that the campaign was working like a charm.

Happy customers are what make running a business fulfilling. Don’t pass up a good chance to create more of them.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Most marketers stop the customer journey after the first purchase. This is a mistake.

Remember, it’s the repeat purchases where DTC brands often make up most of their revenue. Furthermore, this revenue often comes at a far cheaper rate. The team at Vulgar says that at scale, getting customers to make a repeat purchase is a fraction of the cost of acquiring new customers.

Far too many companies don’t focus enough on their CLTV (customer lifetime value) in addition to to their CAC (customer acquisition cost). Paying attention to both is critical. When customers start making frequent repeat purchases, the math begins working in your favor. This is when you can really start to scale.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

“We’re using IgnitePOST to strengthen The Feel Good Lab’s customer relationships, primarily with repeat buyers. We’ve realized that these handwritten touchpoints do wonders for building trust. That trust turns into more repeat purchases and word of mouth.

— CJ Forse, Founder and CEO of Vulgar

ABOUT IGNITEPOST

IgnitePOST is a personalized, handwritten mail & analytics service.  It is the easiest, most convenient, and most effective way to send real handwritten cards to any client, customer, or prospect. Our goal is to increase your sales and revenue without adding any workload to your team.  Mail campaigns have been proven to be 20-30X more effective at getting a response from target recipients than their email counterparts, and IgnitePOST’s handwritten notes take these results to the next level.

We enable businesses to do the following:

• More authentic sales outreach (start off relationships on the right foot)
• More authentic customer service outreach / follow up (develop relationship/connection with customers so they buy more from you)
• More authentic customer retention (make sure customers stick around for as long as possible)

Relationships matter. Better relationships lead to happier customers and higher LTV.

For more information, or if you have any questions, please contact us! We want to hear from you: support@ignitepost.com

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