Health food startup, Pinemelon, automated marketing communications in their app and email campaigns — this now generates 9.7% of their revenue, half of which does not require any manual input from marketers.
Health Food Startup Pinemelon Generates 9.7% of Revenue with Email and App Marketing
Pinemelon is a local-first online grocery delivery in Denver, Colorado
Business scale.
More than 21,000 customers in Denver
Goals
Boost customer retention: more supportive marketing & flows at every step of the customer journey
Solutions
Implement an omnichannel marketing hub Launch 21 communication flows across the email channel, website, and mobile app
IT stack.
A websiteiOS and Android mobile appsMaestra Marketing Automation Platform
Results
9.7% — DTC channel share in total net revenue55.8% — share of revenue from flows in DTC channel revenue
Time to value.
Five months
Noteworthy features
Extended welcome series help to change consumer habits and boost the first purchase conversion rate
November 8, 2023
Pinemelon is a Denver-based grocery delivery startup that is revolutionizing customer experience by offering same-day delivery of fresh farm products including produce, meats, eggs in addition to other products. This innovative approach to the local market has required Pinemelon to compete with offline retailers for customers while simultaneously reshaping their shopping habits.
In such a challenging endeavor, regular and well-planned communication with customers is essential. That’s precisely why Pinemelon turned to the Maestra marketing automation platform.
As a CEO, it was important for me to grasp the bigger picture regarding the automation of client communications. It was especially gratifying to observe that Maestra operates with a level of close collaboration that is often missing in many SaaS companies. They were able to present a detailed review of our work results and provide clear recommendations on where to invest additional resources to maximize the efficiency of our communication channels.
We needed to build a system that would allow us to engage with users on an ongoing basis and communicate with them at every stage of their journey. In the first stages, we want to introduce them to the benefits of Pinemelon (supporting local farmers, organic food, same-day delivery) and boost the conversion rate for their first orders. After that, our aim is to turn them into loyal customers to manage retention.
This could not be achieved with ad-hoc campaigns, which prompted us to implement a comprehensive marketing automation platform and develop an automated communication map
As a result, with Maestra, we have launched a total of 21 campaigns so far. We’re also really pleased with the customer service — we’re always given prompt and helpful answers to all our questions.
Marketing Automation Results
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9.7%DTC channels share in total net revenue
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55.8%share of revenue from automated campaigns in DTC channels revenue
The revenue was calculated using the Last Paid Click attribution model for the five-month period during which the brand has used Maestra, from June to October 2023
Share of revenue from automated campaigns in DTC channels revenue
55.8% of DTC channels revenue comes from automated campaigns, meaning they require no manual effort from the marketing team. Thus, even in months when Pinemelon does not send any bulk campaigns, these automated campaigns will consistently generate the revenue equivalent to this 55.8%
How Implementing Maestra Transformed Pinemelon’s Communications
The Maestra integration took two months and was carried out by two developers. During this time, Maestra was integrated with Pinemelon’s website, ERP backend for purchase information updates, and iOS app.
With all of their customer data now unified into a single platform, the company has gained the capability to manage its communications across all channels within a single window:
Before Maestra
With Maestra
Email. Occasional bulk ad-hoc campaigns sent via Mailchimp.
Regular bulk campaigns.
21 automated campaigns launched, including a complex and sophisticated onboarding series.
21 automated campaigns launched, including a complex and sophisticated onboarding series.
Push notifications. Pinemelon sent bulk and transactional push notifications through Firebase. This hindered the team’s ability to perform audience segmentation or implement automation.
Apart from manual and transactional mailings, push notifications are included in most automated flow.
Lead collection on the website. The only way to re-engage customers who hadn’t completed their first purchase and left the website was through advertising.
A pop-up on the website collects user data, allowing Pinemelon to re-engage customers through email campaigns even if they didn’t make a purchase during their initial visit.
In-depth segmentation. Thanks to Maestra, we can send campaigns not only to our entire audience, but to specific audience segments as well. We can create flexible customer segments based on our communication needs — which has been great!
Сampaign preparation. Campaign setup has been much smoother since we implemented the platform. We’ve had greater customization control
Customer support. The team is great to work with and gets back to us quickly whenever we have questions
Analytics. We’ve been able to keep track of metrics better.
The campaign preparation and sending process have become much easier. We just draft a scheme of a communication flow and provide a copy, the rest is handled by the Maestra team.
How Maestra Helped Pinemelon Set up an Automated Marketing System
We approached Maestra with the goal of boosting our retention, and it was for this specific goal that the team created a detailed customer communication roadmap. To better understand each campaign’s logic and contents, we discussed them with our customer success manager.
This resulted in 21 automated campaigns, all of which now help us win back customers. Before, if a customer abandoned their cart on our website, this would mean we lost that customer. Now, however, we have campaigns that automatically remind them to complete their order
For new customers, we have campaigns that introduce them to Pinemelon and our products, as well as encourage them to make their first order. Regular customers are sent reminders to stock up on products that they may be running out of.
Sample list of mobile push campaigns that were proposed for Pinemelon by Maestra’s customer success manager
To make adjustments and finalize new communications before launch, the Pinemelon team can simply add comments to the board
Below, we’ll explore several examples of automated flows.
Product Back in Stock Notification
This campaign is driven by the unique characteristics of our product range. Since the range consists of organic and farm-sourced products, rather than mass-produced items, popular farm goods often go out of stock quickly.
“Out of stock” is currently a metric that we are still working on optimizing for our business. We recognized that this was something that could potentially lead to customer attrition, and at this juncture, our goal was to retain customers and demonstrate the utmost care.
Customers are sent updates when a product they wanted to buy is back in stock. This flow also contains the customer’s cart contents to help them come back and complete their purchase with the in-stock item.
An example of a “Product Back in Stock” campaign
Discounts on Favorites
Customers who have added products to their wishlist get a notification when an item is discounted, complete with recommendations listing other products in their wishlist.
An example of a “Discounts on Favorites” email campaign
Regular Customer Reactivation
The reactivation flow encourages customers to make another purchase. Each push notification is sent with a large enough interval to avoid spamming recipients:
Part of the reactivation workflow
The Welcome Series — a Key Campaign for Pinemelon
Once the essential communication flows had been launched, the Pinemelon team began strategically refining them to increase the effectiveness of the DTC channel, starting with the pivotal Welcome Series.
The Welcome Series is one of our most important campaigns for two main reasons:
1. We are a startup operating in a highly competitive environment with well-established consumer habits. In our market, people prefer offline shopping. However, our product is reshaping these habits, making it essential for us to introduce ourselves to customers. Email campaigns help us explain how everything works and convey our values: we support local farmers and offer a wide range of products sourced directly from farms.
2. At this stage of our startup’s development, we are attracting a significant amount of traffic and it’s essential to effectively engage with this audience. The Welcome Series helps us boost the conversion rate for first orders
We therefore make an effort to capture every lead’s contact details and then highlight our most popular categories — organic, fresh, farm-sourced products — in our email campaigns. We also emphasize our value proposition, such as free same-day delivery, which is not common amongst our competitors.
Welcome Pop-up
Pinemelon has currently launched one pop-up on its website, inviting new website visitors to get 20% off in exchange for a newsletter subscription.
Welcome pop-up
Since its launch in July, the pop-up has reached a conversion rate of 7.81%.
Our pop-up allows us to collect contact details from users who have visited our website and perhaps haven’t found what they were looking for or are not ready to make a purchase just yet. Thanks to this pop-up, visitors don’t just leave the website — instead, they gradually convert into making their first purchase over time.
This optimizes customer acquisition cost for us which is crucial, considering that acquiring traffic can be very expensive.
Welcome Series
Initially, the Welcome Series was launched as a set of three introductory emails. Over time, the Pinemelon team wanted to make them more personalized to guide users through the product, enhance their experience and thereby increase first order conversion rates. Consequently, the series has evolved into a communication flow with multiple branches, where email content varies based on whether the customer has made their first purchase and subsequent purchases.
This campaign is sent to customers who have made a purchase
This campaign is sent to customers who have not made a purchase
Each email includes personalized product recommendations to help customers select products they’ll love.
Customers receive promo codes in every email, with varying discounts based on their purchase history and recency. This approach allows Pinemelon to maintain profitability while providing substantial discounts to those who have already experienced the benefits of the product and are likely to become regular users.
Next Steps
In the near future, Pinemelon’s primary focus is to work on saving push notification messages in their app. This will ensure that call-to-action prompts aren’t lost and users can engage with the CTA even after swiping and dismissing the push notification. Even with notifications disabled, customers will be displayed the messages they missed once they launch the app.
The company also intends to review the performance of current automated flows, both in email and push notifications, and make adjustments if necessary. The goal is to ensure that the communication experience from clients' perspective remains smooth and not overly intrusive. Additionally, Pinemelon aspires to conduct more experiments with push notifications and pop-up windows to increase conversions for first-time purchases.