☀️ In the interests of balance, a Friday fail… I’ve always had a soft spot for DM as a channel. I think it’s the romance of it, when done well… I a love beautiful, physical letter landing on my doormat. At Naked Wines we also ran some huge, very commercially successful DM campaigns. So this week I ran a little test… Now, something I’ve learnt over the years is the importance of counter-intuitively running an ABEYCFM campaign first, rather than an MVP. That is to say - absolute best execution you can feasibly manage. When you scale DM, you will inevitably make compromises. So for an initial test, it’s useful to just have a binary answer - can this work? We pulled out the stops: ✅ A letter from the founder ✅ Local references in the copy ✅ Handwritten address - “to the wine drinkers at number X” ✅ Coloured envelopes ✅ Folded A4 for chunkiness ✅ Quality print ✅ Personally signed ✅ Delivered in an area where we know we have customers already I’m ashamed to say I was looking forward to the LinkedIn post. Then… crickets. Zero redemptions. I’m not showing the copy (and therefore the code) just in case we get a few weekend orders. But I’ve been in this game long enough to know this is unlikely to turn around! A few people this week have very kindly congratulated me for “smashing it”. Which is lovely for my ego, but hides a much messier reality of testing, learning, failing, trying something new. On repeat. On the positive side, I spent a few hours in the sunshine, walked 18k steps and had time away from screens to think. Cheers to everybody else navigating the messy imperfections of startup life! And thank you to team Laylo for allowing me to scratch this itch Charlotte Fox, Alice Warr, Olyvia Glew
It’s fantastic you tried this Laura Riches. I’m not sure why this wouldn’t work. I’d certainly respond to a personal note like yours. Would you be brave enough to go round again and ask for feedback?!! That learning might be invaluable before you adjust and try again?
The marketing funnel is changing so fast, the best we can do is experiment and learn what still works and what doesn’t. We also tried a few regional DM campaigns to support new retail launches and didn’t see much in terms of drive to retail from it 🤷🏼♀️
Interesting - I am such a cynic these days that whenever I've received something like this in the past I have always assumed that they are 'fake' handwritten letters and have disregarded them on the assumption that they are trying to be something they are not. Perhaps says more about me than your campaign - but this is what I would have assumed!
You win some, you lose some. The life of a founder who's trying to smash it and surely smashes it most of the time! It's all part of the growing process. You've got this!
Great ethos though! I love the real and rustic but tbh if I got this I’d think it was s scam 😂. I wonder what would happen if you made it a bit less real (and therefore less lovely) but may be interesting!
Honestly, one of the best lessons I’ve had over the years is that getting a clear learning like this is a win in itself. It’s so easy to focus on the lack of results, but this is the real work - trying things, learning quickly, and using that to refine or pivot - the Lean Startup model in action! Great to see you sharing the realities of the journey too - it’s so easy to assume everyone else is “smashing it,” but it rarely looks like that behind the scenes! Here's to the learning, the knowledge and being a step closer to a great win 🍷
Love that you're testing DM — the physicality of a well-executed direct mail piece still cuts through in a way that most digital channels struggle to. Curious what the results looked like vs your benchmark!
Also while small scale this is also a BEAUTIFUL brand awareness piece that will 💯 have a poz impact in some way that you won’t be able to measure. It will be sat in people’s kitchens and will be there to remind them when they have a trigger to buy I’m sure x
I'm curious how long you gave this before calling it? Going by my own behaviour, and some experience doing this- something handwritten like this tends to be kept for a bit before it's acted on.