Kissed Earth head of marketing details the digital marketing approach driving this pure-play brand's expansion
Celebrity support can provide a massive boost for any brand, and for Rachael Finch, her prominence as Miss Universe Australia 2009 and career as a reporter and reality television contestant has provided the ideal marketing foundation for her wellness brand, Kissed Earth.
But as the company now plans its expansion into the US, it is having to broaden and strengthen its marketing practices to ensure it achieves its goals.
Responsibility for the new strategy belongs to head of marketing, Amy Goodsell, who joined Kissed Earth in late 2020. Goodsell had freelanced for the company since its startup days, managing its database and communications strategy.
“I love working for the guys, I thought the product was really exciting,” Goodsell tells CMO. “I really love that startup atmosphere where you can really make a difference and be part of something that is bigger.”
One of Goodsell’s immediate challenges was to expand awareness of Kissed Earth beyond just those people who were also followers of Rachael Finch.
“Rach has a super healthy organic following, but when I came on board fulltime, we weren’t really reaching outside of that bubble,” Goodsell says. “We are trying everything. We are a pure play, so we don’t have any bricks and mortar. We do posters and banners with Myer as a partner, but outside of that it is all digital.”
One of the important changes Goodsell has made has been the introduction of Dotdigital as Kissed Earth’s marketing automation platform. Having worked with the platform in previous roles, Goodsell says she has been impressed with its ease-of-use, recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) analysis tools, built-in customer segmentation, and integration with paid and social ads.
The platform has also been critical in realising Goodsell’s goal of growing Kissed Earth’s database and generating more personalised campaigns, including more effective replenishment campaigns.
“Dotdigital allows us to tie into the CRM and ensure that we are not overcommunicating with our existing customers,” she says.
The ease with which she can change templates with Dotdigital has been especially helpful. “We are doing different things all the time, and any time we get a handle on exactly what we want our email template to look like, something changes,” Goodsell says.
“When I was using other platforms, you needed developers to change the templates, or a designer to change a template and bring something to life, and that was really expensive.
“For Dotdigital, it is the ease of the drag-and-drop, so you can change it for every campaign.”
Since adopting Dotdigital, Kissed Earth has witnessed a 30 per cent increase in database growth year-on-year with a customer retention rate of 61 per cent. The replenishment email campaigns have also proven effective, with campaigns for its Brilliance collagen booster delivering a 28 per cent open rate and 15 per cent click-to-open rate, while its collagen product, Cleanse, has become one of its fasted growing with a re-purchase rate of 22 per cent.
Goodsell says implementation of marketing automation has been critical as the company has begun ramping up its growth ambitions.
“We are looking at expanding into the US and looking at that market as a focus for the next 12 months, and we have started marketing there through social and Google as well,” Goodsell says.
Part of the US strategy sees Kissed Earth replicating the online competitions that Goodsell says have proven popular in Australia.
“It is something our loyal followers and fans love,” she says. “We moved that strategy over to the US and it has gone crazy. We have a really strong foundation audience, and it helps us to use that database in the US to find similar lookalike audiences.”
Strategies such as this, as well as a greater reliance on US-based influencers and localised content, will be essential with helping get Kissed Earth’s brand proposition into this new market.
“The ethos of the company is nothing but the very best, so the best and most powerful ingredients from nature,” Goodsell says. “Rach is such an authentic personality. She provides so much support information, and she goes over and above to help people how to use the products and get the best results.”
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