Birdy Botanicals Brings A Home Based Business In Front Of Customers Every Month With VerticalResponse

Background

Birdy Botanicals is a natural skincare line developed to provide an alternative to the mass marketed skin and beauty products available. Birdy Botanicals provides the best nature has to offer with sustainable, socially responsible business practices.

Problem

Founder of Birdy Botanicals Sally Waters saw a need for natural body care ingredients and cleaning products. In late 2007, she turned her idea into a home business, sharing products and ideas with friends and family. With the small list, she was able to create HTML emails to reach out to her target audience, which was her only source of marketing for the year. By 2008, Birdy Botanicals was ready for a broader launch. Without the convenience of a retail store, Sally needed a more robust solution to grow her email list to keep in front of people who’ve ordered from her and reach out to new customers.

Discovery

Birdy Botanicals looked into a couple of different email marketing solutions and ultimately chose VerticalResponse because it was the most straightforward and easy to use – and had the most competitive pricing. "I loved the graphics and had a much easier time creating a custom template through VerticalResponse’s website than with some of the other Email Service Providers I tried. Not only that, but VerticalResponse also offered free emails to test it out, so I knew what I was signing up for." said Sally Waters, founder of Birdy Botanicals. After familiarizing herself with the site, Sally was very impressed with the company’responsive customer service team.

Solution

Since beginning to use VerticalResponse, Birdy Botanicals has been able to establish itself as a resource to customers through informative bi-monthly emails. Since Sally’s business is entirely web-based, it has been essential to her growth and success to keep in communication with existing customers and to find new ones. She has made the most out of strategies suggested by VerticalResponse’s blog and uses her emails to advertise events, offer discount codes and provide educational health and beauty material that’s useful enough to share with friends.

Results

With VerticalResponse, Birdy Botanicals has experienced a great return on its marketing dollar. Most of its sales have been generated from the professional-looking emails that take only minutes to design and send out. VerticalResponse has allowed Birdy Botanicals to build its customer base and reach every monthly sales goal it has set. Sally has consistently seen open rates between 25% and 45% and click rates between 12% and 30%.

At one point Sally began giving out business cards that included an offer for 25% off first purchases for new recipients of the Birdy Botanicals newsletter. VerticalResponse’s CEO, Janine Popick was so impressed with this technique that she blogged about it on the company blog to share the list-growing tip with other VerticalResponse customers. "This particular offer has helped dramatically grow my list. I make a point of developing campaigns that directly benefit my customers, rather than simply plugging new products, so people want to forward to friends. Through VerticalResponse, I have been able to build my reputation as an expert and resource in the field and it has been super exciting," said Waters.

VerticalResponse has greatly helped Birdy Botanical get its business off of the ground. Sally stated, "I love VerticalResponse, I love the marketing information and the cost efficient marketing tips that it offers. VerticalResponse has proven to be such a great source to contact people and to keeespecially when you don’t have a retail location."