How Ezra Firestone's Cosmetics Brand BOOM! Achieved a 2600% ROI

Ezra Firestone is a legend in the ecommerce industry. He runs businesses that generate $20+ million in annual revenue, including BOOM! by Cindy Joseph, a pro-age cosmetics line, Smart Marketer, and Zipify Apps, which manages a portfolio of Shopify apps.

Ezra knows ecommerce. And how to retain customers.

In this case study, we review how Ezra and Boom use our Shopify direct mail solution, PostPilot, to drive retention and profits. We give you his playbook.

Why Ezra Needs to Increase Retention: Profits

Customer lifetime value is the lifeblood of cosmetics brands like BOOM!

Because of fierce competition in the cosmetics space, customer acquisition costs can be astronomical, and often exceed the gross margin on the first sale. The money is not made on the first purchase but on repeat purchases. (We call this the “One-Time Buyer Problem.”)

Simply put: to drive profits you need repeat purchases.

When someone buys for the first time, Ezra needs to turn them into a repeat customer fast, and prevent the customer from churning, because when a customer gets hooked on a certain type of cosmetics, she will keep coming back, leading to massive customer lifetime value.

How does Ezra know that a customer is about to churn? She stops buying. It’s as simple as that. Based on his customers’ behavior, he knows that if somebody buys more than once, but then doesn’t buy anything for at least 35 days, she probably won’t buy again, resulting in a churned customer.

Solution: The Win-Back Campaign

Armed with this knowledge, Ezra and BOOM deploy Win-Back Campaigns to pull defecting customers back into the fold. BOOM deploys win-backs in the three channels we recommend for every online retailer…

Top Three Ways to Retarget:

1. Facebook retargeting (i.e., using your retargeting audiences to pull previous buyers back to buy again)
2. Email retargeting (i.e., emailing past buyers and getting them to come back to buy again), and
3. Direct mail retargeting (i.e., snail mailing past buyers and getting them to come back to buy again).

These are one of the oldest campaigns in the book, so to speak. But most online retailers focus on #1, fewer add on #2, and only the smartest and most successful stack on #3.

Why add on direct mail?

Most retailers neglect direct mail—they think it’s slow, clunky, and requires a learning curve.

But they are ignoring a huge opportunity.

• Direct mail is often cheaper than a Facebook ad because the price of postage is capped
• Direct mail is read more than email (average email open rates are 20% … and postcard read rates are 80%+)
• Direct mail allows you to target customers who aren’t on your email list (or unsubscribed) and aren’t on Facebook!

Ezra knew this. We worked with him on the following textbook Win-Back Campaign…

HAVE US BUILD A WIN-BACK FOR YOU FREE >>

Ezra’s “Textbook” Win-Back Campaign

Here’s how Ezra set up his direct mail Win-Back in five steps:

1. Ezra added the PostPilot app to his Shopify store (2 min)
2. PostPilot pulled in his customer data (automatic)
3. Ezra built a simple “defecting customer” segment targeting 1) all customers who made one or more purchases and 2) who last purchased between 1-2 months ago.
4. Ezra designed a 15% off, limited time postcard offer to that segment (5 min).
5. Ezra automated the postcard campaign. In other words, every time a new customer matches that criteria, PostPilot will send her a card. (2 min)

That “Textbook” Win-Back took 15 minutes to generate and will work for 90% of online retailers.

Results: Ezra Turned $1,510 into $39,733

After a month, Ezra spent $1,510 on the campaign.

The results were phenomenal: with this one simple campaign, Ezra generated $39,732 in sales within the 45-day tracking window, which is a 2,631% ROI. Not only did he generate a massive amount of sales from the campaign, but he also won back these customers, and they will likely continue to spend money with BOOM! going forward, generating even more sales.

And now that the campaign is automated, he never has to touch it again.

Key Takeaways

• You don’t need complicated postcard marketing strategies. Even with a simple win-back campaign, you can generate outsized returns.
• Push your Win-Back through Facebook, Email, and Direct Mail.
• Postcard marketing works, and PostPilot makes it super easy.