The Story
Ales By Mail brings small and independent breweries to an audience that is constantly seeking out the next great beer.
Launched in 2009, Ales by Mail became a fast success. Before selling beers online and effectively bringing local brews to a massive online market, marketing director John Pagan said, many of the craft breweries in the UK only distributed their beers locally.
Hyperlocal is more like it, because in some cases the local pub may be the only place serving their beer.
Ales by Mail customers love the access to a wide variety of brews, while breweries love the exposure to a large customer base.
In fact, limited edition craft brews are often sold out within minutes of going live on the Ales by Mail website.
While beer clubs leveraging a subscription model are becoming commonplace, Ales By Mail specializes in the Pick-n-Mix model.
Customers can choose from over 400 types of beers on the Ales by Mail website or storefront in Billericay.
There have been logistical challenges, like how to ship heavy beer packages to customers without bottles breaking, and developing efficient ways to pick and pack such a large stock at speed.
It’s such a bespoke requirement, that Ales By Mail has their own 10,000 square foot warehouse where they package and ship orders themselves.
There are also marketing challenges. John recognises their ever growing customer base, and the communication demands that brings.
The Results
Remarkety is a critical component, continuously finding opportunities to email Ales by Mail customers based on their purchase history and data.
When it comes to sending emails, he knew if Ales by Mail wasn’t emailing customers based on how they’re shopping on the website, they’d be missing a huge opportunity.
The first campaign Ales By Mail ran with Remarkety was the abandoned basket campaign.
Customers will price check, John admits, and without effective follow up emails, those customers might buy from somewhere else.
That’s why he also adds a dynamic coupon, personalized for each customer.
Thanks to Remarkety, Ales By Mail recovers over 20% of abandoned carts.
John wants to be chatty and personal with his customers, note their ‘Web-Elf’ in the email below.
He also ensures a constant presence of new products and promotion emails are delivered to a customer’s inbox.
That way, when they are ready to buy, Ales By Mail is their first thought.
At the same time, he doesn’t want to spam his customers and waste an audience that he built up over the course of five years with email blasts.
With open rates averaging close to 60%, it’s clear Ales By Mail customers are receptive to their email campaigns.
Not only does John like the emails Ales By Mail is sending with Remarkety’s help, he also likes the email updates from Remarkety.
Every week Remarkety sends out a performance update with the amount of purchases Ales By Mail generated with email.
As that number fluctuates, John knows when to get into the dashboard and use the system to easily refine his approach to maximise return.
So without John being a coding guru, he can leverage Remarkety to continually improve Ales By Mail emails and grow sales.
