Revision Skincare is a leading skincare brand, preferred by many dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and medical spas. Their clinically-proven, high-performing skincare products enhance skin’s appearance and reduce signs of aging, using only premium quality ingredients.
Expansion into Ecommerce
Prior to 2018, Revision Skincare was sold exclusively through skincare professionals and select distributors and wholesale channels. In 2018 they decided to launch a DTC ecommerce channel with the help of Metacake, which is not traditional in their industry.
While a DTC channel had the potential to grow their business substantially, they had to be careful not to compete with or cannibalize their existing business. They also needed to ensure that they would not disrupt their relationships with existing distributors and skincare professionals.
To do this, Metacake helped Revision Skincare launch their ecommerce business on the Shopify Plus platform with several customizations to both the store functionality and the checkout. One example of this was integrating with their backend system to pull in data on all of their skincare professional partners to the ecommerce site, allowing customers to find and select a skincare professional near them.
In the end, Revision Skincare actually provided a new way to support their skincare professional partners and bring them a new stream of revenue with their ecommerce channel.
Ecommerce During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Since launching their DTC ecommerce channel, it has become an integral part of their business.
Through influencer marketing, paid ads, and email marketing, the DTC channel has grown to be a significant portion of their overall business revenue and is their fastest-growing channel.
This channel became even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic as skincare offices around the world were shut down and their traditional business channel experienced a quick drop in sales. Their ecommerce store has been critical in sustaining Revision Skincare’s business during the pandemic, allowing them to continue serving end customers, as well as providing a stream of revenue for their skincare professional partners.
Metacake continues to provide ongoing store support and optimization services, along with paid ads management and email marketing services to further the growth of Revision Skincare’s business.
Ever wondered how to instantly boost your online revenue? The answer can be extracted from our recent partnership with a long standing luxury glassware company, called Lenox.
Lenox Corp came to us with a common problem. They had built a highly profitable online business, but it was using antiquated technology and had a poor user experience. Suspecting that they could boost their profit margins with a redesign, they brought us a challenge involving several layers of complexity.
ONE. Reengineer the user experience of a profitable website. TWO. Redesign the user interface to appeal to two dramatically different audiences. THREE. Navigate and optimize a technology platform with portions dating back to the 1980’s. FOUR. Test and iterate the redesign on a highly trafficked site. FIVE. Prove the success of the redesign via increased revenue. SIX. Do all of it in time to go live for the busiest season of the year.
ORCA has grown to become one of the leading outdoor brands in the US. The Metacake team helped ORCA design and build an DTC ecommerce store that reflected their refreshed branding and innovative products on the Shopify Plus platform. Our team was able to implement several customizations to meet the need to elevate the brand and customer journey. Store customizations included; interactive content elements, custom mega navigation, content blocks in the product grid, and an innovative cooler sizing tool that allows the customer to see the size of the cooler in comparison to their vehicle. The Shopify Plus platform has helped drive the growth of their ecommerce channel and improve the store experience for customers.
Why Metacake?
At Metacake, we are data-driven and multidisciplinary. Our unique approach to customer-centered experience design, coupled with the ability to track and refine our products, allows us to create brands, products, and campaigns that are extremely successful. We believe in growing brands that matter and in doing so based on analytics, not instinct (although we have a good sense of that too).
Testimonial
“We have loved working with the Metacake team. They have been great partners in helping us relaunch the Orca store. They bring a ton of experience to the table. They’re accessible, responsive, and have added value every step of the way. Metacake has been an asset to our team and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them to grow our business.”
-Mike Lewis – Director of Ecommerce – PrideSports / Orca
Country Nation was an eCommerce selling experience that sold product through video content pushed out through episodes. This collaboration was in partnership with Walmart and Brad Paisley. Metacake handled the branding and eCommerce platform design.
Peter Goodwin, Founder and CEO of Groove Life, first had the idea to advance the concept of silicone wedding rings while guiding adventure trips in the Alaskan bush. Peter’s active lifestyle made a metal wedding ring dangerous, and rubber rings were uncomfortable. He set out to design a highly durable yet extremely comfortable version of a silicone ring for active people everywhere.
That was in the summer of 2015. By December, he had launched his very own silicone ring— the Groove Ring— on Kickstarter and knocked it out of the park. From Kickstarter, Groove Life went on to rapidly build their business, moving their headquarters from Alaska to Nashville, Tennessee. Since then, the brand has skyrocketed, going from just 6 employees in January 2018 to now nearly 200 employees. Groove has evolved from a small silicone ring shop to an inspirational, outdoor lifestyle brand.
Partnering with Metacake for an Ecommerce Growth Strategy
As Groove was getting started, Peter connected with us here at Metacake. Our specialty is using deep ecommerce business experience coupled with top-notch expertise in website design, paid traffic, and email marketing to drive real, healthy growth for ecommerce-first brands. Our specialized team employs years of ecommerce experience to drive healthy business growth in key areas. These include business growth strategy, email marketing, paid marketing, and website migrations, and optimizations.
Metacake’s passion is for helping grow brands that matter, believing that customer-focused brands with authentic missions help build a better world. Groove’s mission and values were strongly aligned with our own and we saw massive potential for the brand. As a result, we were eager to come alongside Peter to help drive strategic growth for the company by unlocking several areas of opportunity.
The Recipe for Hyper Ecommerce Growth
If you look at Groove’s path to success, you’ll find there has not been any singular home run. Anyone seasoned in direct-to-consumer ecommerce businesses knows success requires a multi-faceted approach.
For Groove, we provided strategic and technical assistance in the following areas:
Site design and development
Email marketing
Paid marketing
Ongoing strategy, coaching, and consulting
Let’s dive into how each played an important role in scaling Groove Life from brand new to over 8 figures in revenue in just 3 years.
Site Design and Development
We worked with Groove to design and build a site on Shopify that reflected and communicated the purpose of their brand. This design strategy was far deeper than being aesthetically pleasing for the outdoor adventurer. Our primary focus was to create a seamless customer journey from homepage to checkout, with intuitive navigation to route customers where they need to go.
The work was not over once the site launched. From there, we provided guidance on an intentional content strategy to boost SEO as well as ongoing optimization efforts on critical pages to increase the conversion rate.
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing has also played a major role in acquiring new Groove customers. We worked closely with Groove’s team to scale Facebook, Instagram, and Google campaigns to competitive heights.
With paid advertising, we used a funnel approach that guides site visitors from the initial ad all the way through the first sale (and beyond):
Acquiring New Traffic:
Facebook and Instagram campaigns captured cold traffic with engaging video campaigns that helped new visitors understand why a silicone ring is a good idea and, more importantly, what Groove’s brand is all about. As ad inventory on Facebook became crowded and algorithms changed circa 2018, Groove found considerable success acquiring cold traffic using YouTube ads as well. For more on using video ads, check out our post on foolproof video ad funnels.
Retargeting Visitors:
After the initial site visit or product page view, they are retargeted with ads that message features and benefits as well as outstanding customer reviews. If customers add a ring to their cart but abandon checkout, they are taken a step further in the ad funnel and will be retargeted with dynamic product ads that remind them to complete their purchase.
Nurturing Customers:
We also utilized retargeting ads for previous customers whenever Groove ran a sale or launched a new product. However, the most effective tool for maintaining relationships with existing customers and increasing their lifetime value is email marketing, which we’ll walk through next.
Email Marketing
When done well and equipped by an email platform truly built for ecommerce, email marketing can have some of the largest impact for online revenue. And for Groove Life, a strong email program powered by Klaviyo became a home run.
Our secret sauce to sustainable, healthy ecommerce growth is growing a raving customer fan base. This takes more than simply sending emails that push sales and promotions. It requires building valuable relationships with site visitors and customers at scale.
Klaviyo is the perfect email service provider to accomplish this. We’ll provide a quick synopsis of our recipe for email success below, but you can dive into the entire gameplan in-depth right here.
Email Campaigns
We used a combination of promotion-driven and content-driven one-off email campaigns, all of which came from a marketing calendar.
Automated Sequences
Klaviyo’s automated email sequence tool allowed us to build entire automated flows that follow up with customers based on how they interacted with Groove’s site. This is extremely powerful for building customer relationships at scale.
Audience Segmentation
Using Klaviyo also allowed us to segment their quickly growing email list into smaller groups based on interest and behaviors. This meant Groove could talk to certain customer groups and exclude others, ensuring that emails are as relevant and personal as possible.
Ultimately an intentional email marketing strategy unlocked massive opportunity for Groove Life, which now manages over 1 million email contacts through Klaviyo. In Groove’s lifetime, over $8.5M in revenue can be directly attributed to email marketing in Klaviyo, with 58% related to automated flows and 42% from campaigns. This revenue is even greater when you take indirect attribution into account.
Snapshot of Groove’s List Growth:
To close…
One of the most important aspects of Groove’s business growth is its highly engaged audience. This engagement is evident across the board, from comments on Facebook ads to rave reviews on their site.
It’s important to note that this interactive customer base did not appear on their own. It took an intentional, multi-channel strategy that combined a great site experience, engaging paid marketing, and relevant email communication to build raving fans.
The result? A brand new business grew from 0 to over 8 figures in just three years.
Take a look at Founder and CEO Peter Goodwin’s take on this crazy growth in his testimonial video below!
“Metacake has become an integral part of our business over the past 3 years. We have tasked them with everything from design and development to driving our growth marketing. They are first class, professional and honest. They are the best agency we have worked with. I highly recommend them!
As a new brand, it was imperative that the design of imaylabeauty.com would have strong cross-channel campaign integration, accessibility, flexibility, and ease of purchase at its core.
With these goals, we built a new store for imayla beauty on the Shopify Plus platform. We created a high-quality ecommerce site experience for customers and enabled the expansion and growth of the business online. We continue to support their ecommerce store’s ongoing needs.
Why Metacake?
At Metacake, we are data driven and multidisciplinary. We have some of the top experience in the world in Shopify Plus (which hosts their online store), and we know the platform like the back of our hands. Better yet, we know how to GROW brands on these platforms. We believe in growing brands that matter and in doing so based off of analytics, not instinct (although we have a good sense about that too).
As a new brand, Tend wanted to launch an ecommerce store as a proof of concept for their oral spa brand. We built this store to match their existing style guidelines and incorporate it seamlessly into their primary site.
In addition to their store, we set them up on Klaviyo to manage their email marketing. This included the design of 3 automated email sequences for abandoned cart, pre-purchase, and post-purchase to bring customers back to the site and drive sales.
The Metacake team partnered with the Midland Radio team to migrate the Midland Radio site to the Shopify Plus platform. This decision to take advantage of Shopify’s secure and scalable infrastructure will make the site easier to manage for the Midland radio team moving forward. These benefits along with a significantly improved customer experience will enable the expansion and growth of the business online.
The primary goals for the new store were to:
-Refresh the design and create an updated overall look for the website
-Help customers more easily browse, find the right product for them and make a purchase decision
-Improve the overall promotional/marketing features available to help drive conversion rate and average order value
-Build the store on a stable, secure and scalable platform
-Have a more agile store platform that the Midland team can more easily manage day-to-day
Why Metacake?
At Metacake, we are data driven and multidisciplinary. Our unique approach of customer-centered experience design coupled with the ability to track and refine our products allows us to create brands, products, and campaigns that are extremely successful. We believe in growing brands that matter and in doing so based off of analytics, not instinct (although we have a good sense about that too).
We redesigned the herobanner on the homepage, and made some design modifications to the main navigation and footer.
“At The Pioneer Woman Mercantile design is very important to us. When it came to refreshing our Shopify store we were looking for an experienced partner that understood our vision and reflected our retail store’s beauty in the online experience. Additionally, Metacake has delivered strategic value by helping us improve our store experience which included navigation updates, improved user-flow, out-of-stock notifications and many more. We are excited to partner with Metacake and create an incredible experience for the friends that visit our online store everyday.”
Taylor Potter, Director of Ecommerce, The Pioneer Woman
