Happy Sunday! I hope you've enjoyed your weekend and you're ready to get back to the week, fully energized and focused.
My latest obsession in New York City has been Blank Street coffee. When it first launched, I thought, "Ok, why do we need another coffee shop chain?" Then recently, I realized how their subscription model works, and realize how smart it is. It's like a gym membership model, but for coffee.
You can pay $12 per week ($12/week sounds so much better than $48/month) and that gets you:
- Free cold brew, free tea, and free hot coffee (You can get 1 item for free every 2 hours)
- $1 Espresso-based drinks ($1 for a 1-shot latte. $2 for a double-shot drink)
- Free delivery of your coffee, on orders over $5 (keep in mind that's $5 when each shot = $1, so that's multiple drinks at the gross order amount)
- 2x points (sounds great)
- 20% off (in fine print: coffee beans and merch, both of which are probably high margin)
So for $1.60/day, if you drink a latte every morning and normally pay $4, you can use Blank Street to get a great latte for $2.60 ($1.60 for the membership and $1 for the espresso shot).
Anyways, I'm obsessed with the brilliance of this model, it's marketing, the UX of their app, and the taste of the coffee. Their app also lets me give you a drink for free, so if you sign up, use my referral code for a free drink (I got a triple shot latte, and it was completely free): A16455
Let's just hope they can sustain this model because I love it!
Ok, now for today's email. I hope you're sitting down, Solawave in your hand, about to make your skin feel younger in the next 5 minutes, and you're ready to talk about bundles.
Bundles are something that most people look at, and think, "Wow that's a great idea" but then never apply it back to their own brand, or they don't explore the thought of it enough, to get crafty with what bundles they can sell. I'm going to just list out 9 bundles, and my hope is that 1 or 5 bundles make sense for you, and you can win with them. I also recommend building landing pages for bundles — that way you can have a good balance of educating who you're selling to and actually pushing the sale.
Here are 9 bundle frameworks. Take one. Make it. Send me the link. I might buy it!
New customer bundles.
These are my favorite to put together. For consumable products, new customer bundles are usually 2-3x the AOV of a single product on your site and include a variety of products or variants (flavors, scents, colors, etc). The goal with this order is to help someone get to what they want to be in their routine (a certain product, or a certain flavor), and eventually subscribe or become a repeat purchaser.
These bundles can be ones that you put together and have set on the site, or where you curate the specific products, and then allow someone to build their own bundle.
If you are selling a non-consumable product, then your main lever is price (to incentivize someone to buy it together, vs separate). You also need to educate WHY someone should buy it all together, vs just a one-off.
Re-order bundles.
If someone isn't coming back to make a purchase, you can have a bundle you sell them with another variety of products or variants. For example, if someone bought from a curated list of Best Sellers, push a bundle of alternative options or even just different products.
You could also use a tool like ReBuy's Reorder Page and just set up a Klaviyo trigger to go with their dynamic reorder landing page.
New flavor launch bundles.
This is something that I think our crew at Hint was ahead of the curve with — bundles of product, inclusive of a new hint water flavor, and discounted. So, why does this work?
It includes the new flavor
It keeps the AOV high (instead of 1 case, you're now buying 3)
It reminds you, as a customer, of the variety of products that hint carries
It's discounted and hits the free shipping threshold — the customer gets a great deal!
Sure, you could sell the single flavor alone, but why not keep the AOV high? If this sounds confusing, you just need to see the bundle landing page. The new flavor page they recently pushed has been taken down (promo ended), but here is one I found that isn't taken down:
Behavior-specific bundles.
These are easier to insert into evergreen content that comes from the brand, and are more "fun" to push. Examples are:
NYC apartment cookware bundle (maybe doesn't need every item)
Starting a new job skincare routine (just the basics, but enough to start)
Becoming a plant parent bundle (3 plants of different sizes, with a discount)
I'm just riffing on these, but you can see how they're just specific to behaviors that are quite common and would feel more personable in the messaging to the potential customer.
Promotional bundles.
If someone else is having a sale like Prime Day, host your own Prime Day sale or bundle on your own site. People are in the mood to spend already (Thank you Bezos), now join the party.
This also works for general promotions, where you might normally just run a "sale" — Valentine's Day, New Years, Black Friday, etc. Bundle up!
Like-minded products bundle.
If you're already selling products that compliment each other well, individually, then put them together. For example, Long Wknd sells a shampoo bar, and a conditioner bar. They also sell the Hair Duo which saves someone ~14%. The new Long Wknd site is world-class if I do say so myself.
Moment-centered bundles.
There are so many pop-culture moments that are happening — take advantage of it, especially when your brand makes sense to align with it.
JAJA Tequila (the Chainsmokers tequila brand) should be pushing bundles with the new Chainsmokers album, a poster, and 3 bottles of JAJA, call it "The Listening Party".
If you're a hydration product, you could align yourself to make bundles with every major festival where people stay dehydrated.
Moment-aligned bundles also do well with the earned media that covers the moments.
Co-branded bundles.
I just thought this one up with Conner from Disco Network a couple of weeks back, and it makes total sense. Sell a bundle with like-minded products: Jolie Shower, Long Wknd, & Jambys. Then split the acquisition cost, everyone gets a sale and a new customer.
I'll keep you posted on how this goes.
Founder favorite bundles.
These are probably the lowest hanging fruit, in addition to the ReBuy re-order page. Build a landing page where you speak to the founder's favorite products that are sold, and include the founding story, the brand story, and a deal to buy all of them together. This will work.
Ok, what bundles did I miss? Reply here and let me know. Include your Twitter handle in your reply too, so I can tag you.
On to some fun stuff...
Vendor of the Week:
Tapcart — The easiest way to build a stronger relationship with your customer
With Long Wknd, we've been working on a mobile app that looks as good as the new website, and Tapcart has been the easiest platform to use for it.
The platform is so simple to use, it's kind of like Docusign. On the left side, you have all the elements you can add to different pages of your mobile app, and you just click, hold, and drag the elements to wherever you want on the app.
You can easily insert product cards, quotes, timers, search bars, images, videos, etc., and then edit it to fit your look within a few minutes.
Tapcart also has a phenomenal customer experience team — anything you can't figure out how to implement the exact way you want it to look, feel and operate, their team steps in and helps you build it. With their help, it's pretty realistic to have a fully designed app within a couple of weeks.
Last thing I'll mention — Tapcart has all the integration built in. So syncing data with Shopify, subscriptions, reviews, email collection, etc. all happen seamlessly.
I highly recommend at least booking a demo with Tapcart. Or, at least check out how beautiful this Tapcart landing page is.
Click here to book a demo with Tapcart!
Jobs of the Week:
Sharma Brands — UX Designer (work with Bailee!)
Batch — Growth Marketing Lead (the QR codes!)
GXVE — eCommerce Manager (Gwen Stefani's brand!)
Question of the Week:
What is your favorite interview question to ask someone?
Brand of the Week:
Richard's Rain Water — Extremely tasty water from Texas
Drain the Rain. Save the Planet. It has to be the coolest headline for a brand. Richard's Rain Water claims they take direct rain water, and bottle it up in a can or a glass bottle. I have no idea how that is possible, but it tastes so purified and so good.
I couldn't find it in stores, outside of Austin, but you can order it directly on their website, here.
That's all for this week
Hopefully, today's newsletter was helpful, and you're able to make a bundle out of one of them. I'll be speaking at GROW NY this week — if you're around, say hi! We are also throwing an event after GROW, with ReBuy, so let me know if you're around for that too!
Get those 9 hours of sleep tonight. Stay hydrated. Sweat a couple of times. Stay focused. Have a great week!